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TAMBA Author Interview – B. R. Myers

Rogue Princess

Recently, my friend, Isabella, and I were given the opportunity to interview B. R. Myers, author of Runaway Princess! It’s a beautiful sci-fi novel: a gender-swapped retelling of Cinderella! We loved the story, and it was so awesome to have the chance to speak with Ms. Myers and learn a bit about the behind-the-scenes of her book! 

Without further ado, here are some highlights from the interview:

Rosie: So how did you come up with the idea for Rogue Princess? I know it builds on that classic fairytale of Cinderella — but how did you initially think of doing a spin-off story?

B. R. Myers: In the beginning, I think I just wanted to do something different from the few contemporary novels I had already worked on. And coincidentally on Twitter, Pitmad was going on, which is when authors get to pitch their ideas for novels in a very limited number of characters. I noticed that there were a lot of retellings amongst the pitches, and I found that really cool! Cinderella is also my favourite fairytale, so that was the first thing that popped into my head when I first thought about possibly doing a twisted fairytale. So I started to think about how I could make it more unique, and gender swap came to mind. Then I joked about “oh, how about I set it in space!” and what do you know? 

Isabella: That’s so funny that it started as a joke! Yes, I’ve read many Cinderella retellings, but I’ve never encountered a gender-swap version, so I thought that was awesome! My next question is: what do you like best about being an author? What don’t you like?

B. R. Myers: What I love the most about being an author is meeting my readers, like you two! Connecting with other authors, other readers, is definitely my favourite part. As for what I don’t enjoy as much, I would have to say the “waiting” portion. When you’re trying to get published, there are so many external factors that take a long, long time to work out! For example, after I wrote Rogue Princess, I was super excited and I wanted to share it with the world, right away! But I had to wait for almost a year before the actual publishing because so much work goes into it, so that was definitely a test for my patience.

Read More

Teen SRC 2018 – Red Riding Hood by Sarah Blakley-Cartwright

Red Riding HoodOkayyy… so Red Riding Hood by Sarah Blakley-Cartwright is a twisted fairytale, which is usually one of my favourite genres. I saw the cover and I was instantly drawn in so I picked it up, which was a very good decision on my part ;). This is a darker version of the classic fairytale and there is a LOT more depth to the story than a little girl and her grandma getting eaten by a wolf. This novel is something that you will not be able to put down due to one main component. There is a mystery that is just begging to be solved. Usually, I’m pretty well-trained at predicting the murderer/antagonist (due to the many other books I’ve read) but in this one, I did not guess right at all. There were so many wrong paths that I strayed down right along with the main character and just super confusing details that aren’t explained until the end. Like other mystery genre reviews, I refuse to say anything else. But this book is a must read, trust me. The ending is a bit abrupt, but there is an extra excerpt on the website that will hopefully answer your questions. 5/5 stars definitely. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

P.S. There’s a love triangle involved… 🙂