Welcome to Once Upon a Retelling! I'm a huge fan of retellings, and I'm really interested in hearing about authors' own love of the original stories, and what inspired them to retell those stories. And so Once Upon a Retelling was born, a feature in which I interview authors about their versions of well-loved tales.
Today, I'm really pleased to have Julia Ember stop by the blog to talk about her Peter Pan retelling, The Navigator's Touch!
Can you tell us a little about The Navigator’s Touch? What kind of a retelling of Peter Pan is it?I guess you could call it an “alternative villain origin story!” Following on from the events of The Seafarer’s Kiss, The Navigator’s Touch tells the story of Ragna, a Viking shieldmaiden who has lost her hand to a devious enemy, and is putting together a mercenary crew. At the beginning, Ragna is young and inexperienced, still reeling from the loss her family, but as the story goes on, she really grows into her own as a commander. The duology also draws inspiration from an Anglo-Saxon poem called The Seafarer, which tells the story of a sailor lost at sea. In the first book, I wanted to meld the story of The Little Mermaid together with that elegy to create something new. The second book is also a composite of fairy-tale and poem, this time with Peter Pan. There are original adaptations of the poem in The Navigator’s Touch that I loved working on!
