So, the end of the first week of March and the first Vampire month author of this year has her chance to talk about a topic of her choice. Given that her work is based on vampires interacting with fairies, it makes sense that she discusses fairytales….
As I mentioned in the interview, I don’t think we should get cross if other people’s 
interpretations of folklore don’t fit into our own boxes for it. Folklore is an excellent raw material, and although I do use tropes from all sorts of fiction, I always go back to the original source, folklore and fairytales for my basis. Then I cherry pick what I want and what fits in with my universe. Writers and storytellers have always done that, and one of the things I find fascinating is reading old tales and seeing how attitudes and stories have changed and what hasn’t changed.
The Brothers Grimm even edited their own collections of fairytales, so that the final versions we know today are quite different than the original versions they collected.
Take the trope of a kiss breaking a spell. Did you know that most of the famous kisses from fairytales originally never happened?
Snow White, for example. In the original version, when Snow eats a bite of poisoned apple and the dwarves place her in a glass coffin, the prince does happen by, but he does not kiss her. Dead, pretty girls being his thing apparently, he begs the dwarves to let him have the coffin. They refuse at first, but he won’t give up, so they go ‘Oh all right, you weirdo’. The prince then has his servants carry the coffin around wherever he goes, until one day, one of the servants goes ‘bugger this for a game of soldiers’ and drops his end of the coffin, the shock of which jars the piece of apple free. No kiss.
And flipping the genders round, you all know the story of The Princess and the Frog. A princess drops her favourite ball into a pond and a frog retrieves it, and makes her promise to make him her companion afterwards, sharing her food and bed. The princess thinks ‘Sure, whatever, it’s just a dumb frog, I’ll just run off’. So she does. And then the frog turns up at her door, and she doesn’t want to keep to her end of the bargain, but the king says ‘You made a promise and you have to keep it, you’re a ruler after all, what would happen if we didn’t keep promises? Democracy, that’s what. So unless you want to be replaced by a prime minister you’ll court that frog’. So pulling her face a great deal and with more cajoling from her father, she lets the frog sit at the table and eat from her plate, and then takes it upstairs to her bedroom, but when she sees the frog creeping under her bedcovers, she thinks ‘Ew, and dad isn’t here to stop me’ and hurls the frog against her bedroom wall. This is the fairytale for people who think violence solves everything, as this does break the spell and the frog becomes a prince. No kiss.
And then there’s Sleeping Beauty or rather, Talia. In the original version, she was not cursed by a fairy, but nevertheless, getting a chip of flax under her fingernail after prinking herself on a spindle somehow caused her to go into a deep sleep. Her father places her in one of his mansions and then abandons her there, letting the mansion go to ruin. Must be nice to be rich enough that you can just abandon one of your mansions. One day, a king comes riding by, and his falcon flies into the mansion. I guess the king isn’t as rich as Talia’s dad, because he is not for losing a perfectly good falcon, and as no-one answers the door, he commands a ladder be brought and climbs into the house. Coming across Talia lying on a bed, and looking very pretty, and being unconscious and not being able to say no, he sleeps with her. Then he just leaves. No kiss. She gives birth nine months later to twins, and one of babies sucks her finger while looking for a nipple and sucks out the flax and she wakes up. Have I mentioned there was no kiss?
And that’s why I always go to the source. Most of what everyone knows about folklore and fairytales these days are surprisingly modern and wildly inaccurate to the earlier versions, insofar as you can be inaccurate about a lot of stuff people made up hundreds of years ago.
Stories change. And thank goodness they do!
Where to find Alicia:
So, the first victim of the Vampire interrogator in 2018 (by dint of the fact she got her responses back to me within 48 hours of getting the invite) is 
There is no single book, but my earliest influence was Patricia C. Wrede’s The Enchanted Forest Chronicles. I picked up Dragonsbane when I was 11 and it was this book that taught me a woman could be a king. It was this book that pointed out to me how silly fairy tales are and how much fun it is to poke fun at them. A few years later, I discovered the Discworld series and from when I was 14 until there were no more Discworld novels I always got the new one for my birthday. I think anyone who reads my work can tell it has also been a big influence on my writing.
Tell us about the place where you live. Have you ever derived any inspiration from your home or from anywhere you have visited?
I think because it always seems relevant to the collective fears and desires of the culture. For example, back when Bram Stoker’s Dracula was first published, we had a world that was evolving and developing at a fast rate, and the older generation were frightened of the change. Today we are more relaxed about vampires, we can use them in jokes, and yet still they represent a fear of something unknown, something dangerous, something attractive.
All writers have their own way of getting their ideas down on paper. Some plan their story structure in minute detail, while others myself included, prefer to paint with broad brush strokes and see where the ideas take us. But why do we feel the need to regurgitate reality into something that is fiction? I believe it is an integral part of what makes us human beings. Storytelling is a way of passing on knowledge and information. That information can come from a real experience or by the example of a creation, a parable to explain something in the world, or an example to follow. It is both a sociable and a solitary pursuit. It doesn’t have to be real, but it is very real to us, the writer.
by it; to get into the minds of our characters and to become them as they follow through with their lives. Once we’ve finished we need to get out there again, because no man (or woman) is an island. We need to polish, to hone and to share. This is where the writers group comes in. This can be a group of like minded people meeting in a pub and discussing each others’ work, but it can also be a group of people meeting in cyberspace, like the Dragon’s Rocketship, of whom I am proud to be a member. The best of these groups help each other out, the worst bitch and criticise because some egos believe they are writing profound literary fiction. Me, I just like telling a story. If your audience doesn’t understand it, you not they are missing the point. 
When John, Paul, George and Ringo appeared in the films A Hard Day’s Night and Help! they basically played themselves – the four cheeky lads from Liverpool – quick witted, dressed in collarless suits performing the best music of the day (and beyond actually) crafted by their own fair hands. But of course the plots that entwined the Beatles in those movies were fictitious: Paul’s fictional grandad in the form of Wilfred Brambell accompanying the boys on the train journey in A Hard Day’s Night and Ringo’s ring being sought after by an exotic cult in Help! Because they maintained their characters in fiction as in real life it opened up a door for their fans to somehow get an authentic insight of their idols, and no matter how absurd the storyline may be, it became a believable journey for the viewer (except perhaps the pursuit of Ringo’s ring!).
The first time I personally took note of a firm intention to mix fact with fiction in the literary world was through Dan Brown’s novels featuring the fictional character Professor Robert Langdon, a Harvard University professor of religious iconology and symbology. Brown’s novels Angels & Demons, The Da Vinci Code and The Lost Symbol introduces us to mind opening themes such as a bloodline of Jesus Christ, secret societies, the Masons, Opus Dei, the Illuminati and the Knights Templar. Some of these exist or existed. Fact. But as one reads Brown’s undoubted page turners it is often difficult to fathom exactly which is fiction and which is fact. And there you have it – suddenly the story is believable no matter how extreme the journey may take us. The reader can connect on an emotional level yet still be wildly entertained.
reality and I weave in facts with fiction to assist with that journey remaining believable. In Beneath the Floodlights I introduce the concept of vampires merging with a football team. Pretty random huh? One injection of fact I use in that particular novel is setting much of the book in Sutton Park, 2000 acres including ancient woodlands. Sutton Park is the seventh largest urban park in Europe and it is soaked in history. By the 10th century Sutton Park was established as a Royal Forest by the Anglo Saxon kings of Mercia and by the early 12th century, the Normans used it as a deer park. The land was then given to the people of Sutton Coldfield by King Henry VIII in 1528 and it had been used by that very same king for hunting. A bonafide roman road also cuts through a section of the park. So by using these facts, straight away I had a solid foundation to create a gripping tale.
Lurking Musings 