Be Our Guest

Be Our Guest
A retelling of Beauty and the Beast

Now available on Amazon:
Paperback $7.39 + shipping
Kindle $2.99
Free on Kindle Unlimited
(paperback link not working temporarily for some reason)

This tale is part of the Global Beasts Series in which every book features a different country. This one is set in Thailand, against the government shutdown of Tiger Temple, a famous tourist theme park in Kanchanaburi. It's a tale as old as time, but it can be seen in many ways, with a wide variety of characters. The original tale was written in 1740, and this one brings the original to light against the traditional ideas of karma, reincarnation, and animism that have been in Thailand since before Buddhism ever arrived.

Global Beasts promo - due in. November!

Update

The new book, Be Our Guest, is almost ready; it should be published tomorrow. There's a kind of group agreement to "release" in November, but I decided that I could do that even if I published it now. Publish now, then change it a little, when I have more information about authors, titles, main webpages, etc. I will keep yoo posted here.

It's been hard writing this one, but mostly because activity around my house, where I have twelve kids at the mooment, the last of whom are not independent or possibly ever will be, has filled up my time. Perhaps my strategy should be to only do things that don't take a half an hour to get myself in the mood to write. Now, for example, I have my second cup of coffee, a perfect opportunity (as it is the first day of school), and I'm about to fall asleep because of how busy I've been, basically.

I made it straight up, kind of a classic folk tale in ways. I'm interested in experimental folk tales: gay versions, reverse-harem, or whatever, and I'm all in favor of messing with the genre. The only thing I don't like about the genre itself is the way stepmothers are always bad. I would do my part to change this, but it didn't happen this time around. As I pointed out at the end, at the wedding, it was kind of a fairy tale wedding. The boy marries the girl. Everything is perfect. Things work out. Hey, give me a break! I'm just starting out in this folk tale business.

Remember, I'll keep you posted here. I am not sure but I might have ignored some crucial requirements, but I'm banking on all-systems-go and going straight forward. Most of the other writers are women and like to weave in steamy sex scenes - with animals? shifters? bad guys? We'll have to read and find out. Mine, take my word for it, is straight-up.

links - Thailand, tigers, spirit houses

A Guide to Thai Spirit Houses
https://www.thethailandlife.com/thai-spirit-houses

A Grave (Yard) Dilemma
http://www.spirithouseconnection.com/article/a-grave-yard-dilemma/5

Thailand's Animist Practices and Beliefs
https://www.pattayaunlimited.com/thailands-animist-practices-and-beliefs/

What's a Spirit House?
https://www.thenotsoinnocentsabroad.com/blog/whats-a-spirit-house

Getting to the Truth Behind Thailand’s Infamous Tiger Temple
https://time.com/4470315/tiger-temple-thailand/

Beauty and the Beast III

Update. I am working on my version of Beauty and the Beast, and research on it has taught me a lot about folk tales and their place in the world.

My version intertwines with a story of the Thai government closing down Tiger Temple (story here) in 2016. About that time Disney was working on updating its 1991 animated classic with a live version that would come out in 2017 and gross $1.2 billion.

The live version was clearly a hit and stays in people's minds as representing the story. But I have several questions about it, just based on what I've read. I come from a generation that was more influenced by the animated ones, and Beauty and the Beast was clearly a classic; also, the music in the 1991 version was classic in itself and I think the 2017 movie was probably wise to not mess with it too much, or to change it only conservatively (I'm not sure if that description is adequate). Anyway my memory, my knowledge, my feeling all come from the animated version. How many people are like that?

So, is this younger generation clearly more influenced by the 2017? How does "live" actors tend to change your engagement with the fantasy of it? In this classic (as in many others) suspension of belief is a little incremental. It's easy to believe that animals talk, and have a heart, and a soul, and you can fall in love with them. How about animals changing? How about two species at once?

Lots of questions. Stay tuned; I'll put my book here. Heavily.

Beauty and the Beast II

Absorbed in writing my version of Beauty and the Beast, I have lots of frustration, doubt, uncertainty, questions...in short, I'm worried that others might be better equipped to write this story. Do I know the story? Do I know Thailand? Do I know how to write?

That's a quandary; I'm not sure of any of it. I'm having a little fun with it, although I found, when I went back after a break, that very little had been saved successfully. It seems I'd been writing and writing, yet it wasn't anywhere on my old computer. Had I failed to click on Save every night? I'm a lot more careful now.

But it was a lot easier to just change a few things at the beginning, and start again on the story. The people who are in on this project with me tend toward all kinds of different angles - hard-core romance, which always leads to the sex scene (same-sex, reverse harem or whatever), and to them this gives them a challenge to put an old story into a modern romance format, mixing in ancient legends from whhatever country they chose. I chose Thailand because of my desire to work in the story of Tiger Temple, a place in western Thailand with a drama associated with it. But my style is clearly different from theirs. I will even have trouble making it a romance at all, let alone a steamy modern one.

Of course Beauty and the Beast IS a romance and I will be true to that. My main character is in love with a tiger but at the same time always questioning what is real and whether magic can exist in this world. Can it? I the author am a little cynical. He's a tiger! She's not going to have sex. with him.

And can or will thhe tiger become human, if he finds love? Good question. Let me finish and I'll show you the story.

Beauty and the Beast

I've been asked to write a version of Beauty and the Beast: set in the 1700's, stressing the culture of a different country. Mine is Thailand. I'm all in.

First thing I did was to find this:
https://web.archive.org/web/20140726163822/http://www.endicott-studio.com/articleslist/beauty-and-the-beast-old-and-new-by-terri-windling.html

It's a careful (I think) listing of different takes on the story. Naturally it has changed a lot over the years. One conclusion is that with the Disney version we gain the razzle-dazzle of the movie, and the beautiful songs, but we lose some elements of the story, some of the complexity.

Obviously I need to do some research into the jealous sisters, etc.

My beast will be a tiger, not an elephant. More later.