New York Times bestselling author DANIELLE PAIGE’S latest novel, Spell of the Sinister, is a fairytale retelling where the fairy godmothers make the rules.
Read on for our Q&A with the author.
Many of your stories take well-known fairytales and turn them upside down. What draws you to reimagining these classic stories?
Fairytales were my first love as a reader and I guess I just never let them go. We never really outgrow our desire to find our happily ever afters. And these stories always left me with so many questions and so may what ifs. Why did the Fairy Godmother help Cinderella? What if Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz became wicked? As a writer, I’ve gotten to explore my questions and what ifs and add my stories to that great tradition of fairytales.
How did you come up with the idea for Spell of the Sinister?
Spell of the Sinister is the sequel to Wish Of the Wicked, my fairy godmother origin story. Both books come from my desire to find out where the fairy godmother came from and what was she really doing there helping Cinderella. I loved the idea of there being a secret sect of magical beings who helped aid the leaders and important people in the world. That sect is persecuted when a queen doesn’t like the advice of the sect. And the surviving members of that sect become the fairytale bad girls that we know and love like the Evil Queen, the Wicked Stepsisters and Maleficent. The fairy godmother in the making Farrow wants revenge at first but when she falls in love with the Queen’s son she begins to change course. Meanwhile her other sisters’ need for revenge only grows. In book two the fairy godmother Farrow is charged with stopping her sisters from the sect.
The world-building in Spell of the Sinister is very detailed. How do you approach creating such a layered world?
My background is in television. I started out writing soaps like Guiding Light and Days of Our Lives. So I think that experience of writing for so many characters having so much drama influenced the way I write my books.
What can you tell us about Bari and what did you enjoy most about crafting her character?
Bari and Farrow grew up together in the sect until the persecution separated them. Bari loves magic and she loves flying things. She can turn herself into a flock of birds or beetles or bees, basically anything with wings. She has spent her whole life hating humans because of what happened to her and her sisters and she is ready to take down all the Queendoms. (Did I mention that this is a matriarchy? I just needed to write something that put women on every throne!)
The inspiration for Bari is part Maleficent, part Wednesday Addams. She’s brash and so very certain of her path for vengeance. But just like Farrow before her she begins to question her path the closer she gets to what she wants.
As someone who has worked in television and is now deeply involved in writing novels, how do you think your background in the TV industry has influenced your storytelling approach in Spell of the Sinister?
I think that writing for television definitely has made me a better writer. It stretched me to move past my comfort zone as a writer and really made me feel like I could write anything. On soaps, I had to write about clones and ghosts and princesses, etc., and I just really got comfortable writing for so many genres. And getting to write for and see so many incredible actors say my words was just such a learning experience and confidence booster. (I was lucky enough to write for Matt Bomer, Hayden Panettierre, Brittany Snow, Paul Wesley, Frank Grillo, and so many more wonderful actors who have been so supportive of my journey as an author.
I think of chapters as scenes and I can see them and hear them play out in my head. And it definitely helps me with pacing and dialogue. I had a television exec tell me once that each scene should end with a slap metaphorically or actually (it was a soap opera.) And I think I carry that with me, each chapter ends with some kind of surprise either emotionally or actually. I’m writing for a new tv show now, Beyond The Gates, which premieres this month on CBS and on Paramount and it has been so much fun writing scripts again. I am sure that my next book will be a little soapier for it.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Danielle Paige is the author of Stealing Snow and its prequel novellas Before the Snow and Queen Rising, as well as the New York Times best-selling ‘Dorothy Must Die’ series: Dorothy Must Die, The Wicked Will Rise, Yellow Brick War, and seven prequel novellas. Before turning to young adult literature, she worked in the television industry, where she received a Writers Guild of America Award and was nominated for several Daytime Emmys.
She is a graduate of Columbia University and currently lives in New York City.
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