Thursday 3 June 2010

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Blog Tour: Jackson Pearce on the Paranormal and Fairytales

I am lucky enough to be the fourth stop on YA author Jackson Pearce's UK blog tour! Author of Sisters Red, Jackson is here to talk about how she came up with the idea for combining the paranormal with fairytales!

jackson pearceI have to admit something. And I don’t want any of you to be mad at me about it, but I feel like it’s time to come clean.

I’m kind of tired of reading about vampires.

And hey, I love me some vampire books. THE SILVER KISS? Classic. I read the TWILIGHT series just like everyone else on the planet. I get the appeal, and I’m all for some bad-boy-could-eat-your-face-but-chooses-not-to romance. I like the danger, the suspense, the tenderness that comes with a star-crossed romance. But still…I got kind of tired of reading about friendly vampires—and friendly monsters in general.

I was a little afraid when I started SISTERS RED that making my werewolves hardcore, face-eating monsters wouldn’t go over well; not just with potential readers, but with me. Friendly monsters were so normal that it seemed wrong somehow to make one of Jacob Black’s brethren a sadistic, rampaging killer. But the more I wrote, the more things started to fall into place. The easier it became—for, I suspect, one main reason:


sisters red by jackson pearceWerewolves are monsters. Or at least, in their original incarnations, they’re monsters. No matter what we’ve read recently, our first introduction to werewolves (and just about every other monster) was through fairytales when we were too young to even read the books ourselves.

I don’t think I realized the power fairytales—and books we read as children—have over us until I started writing SISTERS RED. Making the werewolves the monster again made me see why the stories where werewolves/vampires/zombies are nice, good looking guys are so popular: because they feel wildly different, because they tear apart what is totally engrained in our heads. Even though most people haven’t read a fairytale since they were little, the stories are strong enough to last for years, if not a lifetime.

When I finished writing SISTERS RED, I felt a little nostalgic—it was the fairytale I knew as a child, yet not. SISTERS RED doesn’t re-envision the villain, it doesn’t have cuddle, sexy werewolves, but rather is meant to play on the memories you have of the original stories—and reinvent them via your memories. And while I suspect that there will always be a place in the world (and in my heart) for star-crossed, romantic monsters, I hope that there’s also room for some old school, nostalgic, face-eating creatures too.


Thank you, Jackson, for such a great post, and thank you to Hodder for inviting me to take part in the blog tour! I'm actually going to cheat here and ask some questions the publicist at Hodder brought up about Jackson's post: Can women only write romantic horror? Does the gore fest remain a masculine domain?

Sisters Red will be released in the UK tomorrow, 3rd June, and can be bought on Amazon UK and Amazon US.

Don't forget to check out Jackson's website, and The Sweet Bonjour tomorrow to find out what Jackson's favourite re-tellings of fairytales and myths are.

7 comments:

  1. Wow what a great post - I'll definitely be checking out this book now x

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  2. I'm glad you enjoyed it! Sisters Red sounds amazing, I'm really looking forward to reading it! :)

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  3. Great post--I'm reading this now and it's awesome so far! :)

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  4. Fab guest post, I loved it. Actually one of the things I liked best about Sisters Red is that the werewolves really are scary.

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  5. Sasha - I'm glad you enjoyed it! It sounds amazing! I'm looking forward to reading it! Hope you enjoy it! :)

    Lauren - Glad you enjoyed it! Oh, well that's cool! I'm looking forward to reading it! :)

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  6. Awesome post!!! I double checked to make sure this book is on my wish list and *check* it is. I can't wait to read it!!!

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  7. I'm glad you enjoyed it! I hope you enjoy it when you read it! I can't wait to read it myself! :)

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