FRACTURED Blog Tour Guest Post: Joanna Karaplis!

Today I am hosting Joanna Karaplis, author of Fractured: Happily Ever After? 3 Tales, which retells several classic fairy tales, as part of her FRACTURED blog tour. Here is the synopsis:

Everyone knows a fairytale or two. They’re the kind of stories that seem to stick with you. Maybe it’s the magic. Maybe it’s the handsome prince. Or maybe they’re just the absolute perfect place to lose yourself for a little while.

But what would happen if Snow White were around today? Would Cinderella still need a fairy godmother? And would the Little Mermaid show up on YouTube?

Joanna Karaplis has put an unexpected spin on "Snow White", "Cinderella", and "The Little Mermaid"; she’s quietly fractured the stories and then reassembled them for the 21st Century. So, while there may not be a whole lot of horse-drawn carriages and magic potions, you can be sure that there will be at least one evil witch and maybe even a handsome prince (or two)…

Welcome, Joanna, to Steph Su Reads!

From Brainstorming to Publication: FRACTURED's Journey

Thanks for hosting me on your blog, Steph. I have a hard time forcing myself to stick to a writing schedule, so I find it impressive when bloggers post daily, or even weekly!

This book started back in 2008, when I went for coffee with my former co-worker, editor Tonya Martin. She told me she wanted to publish a book of fractured fairytales, and I said, “What a coincidence, I’ve been wanting to write something like that!” So I jotted down a bunch of notes—basically, the main plots of a handful of well-known fairytales—and then decided which ones I wanted to re-tell.

I sent Tonya short, two-page samples of “Snow White and the Seven Dorks” and “Cyberella.” She loved them—and asked for a third story to round off the collection. I’d had the idea for “The Little Mermaid” re-telling right from the beginning, but I wasn’t sure I could make it work, so I also drafted outlines for retellings of “Beauty and the Beast” and “Little Red Riding Hood.” In the end, though, I committed to “The Little Mermaid.”

The next step was to expand my short two-page stories into full-length short stories. Then I workshopped the stories with a creative writing group, which was really helpful. My writing group was able to tell me that Yuki’s relationship with Jason came out of the blue and didn’t seem realistic, and that Cindy came off as a bitch in the first draft. These are the kinds of things you can miss as a writer, since you already know your characters so well. So I did a lot of revising before submitting the final drafts to Tonya.

Everything happened pretty quickly after that. Tonya sent me her edits and I did some more tweaking (including changing the ending to “Swan Song”), and then I got to see the illustrations from Jenn Brisson that they’d commissioned for each story. Before I knew it, I was proofing the typeset pages and the final cover, and then the book was sent for printing. It was finally time to switch gears to marketing and promotion instead: hence this blog tour! Thanks again for having me.

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Thanks, Joanna! Check out Joanna's website for more info about her or her book. And if you're interested, the rest of the blog tour schedule is below:

Nov. 15: Steph Su Reads and Word bookstore
Nov. 16: Word of Mouse Book Reviews and Bella’s Bookshelves
Nov. 17: The Reading Girl and Between the Pages
Nov. 18: Page Turners and Tahleen’s Mixed-Up Files
Nov. 19: YA Addict and YA Book Shelf