Heather’s Bookshelf: Author Interview with Daniel Willard
Book Title: The Fairy Godmother’s Tale
Released: 11/13/24
Genre: Historical Fantasy
Interview by Heather L. Barksdale
What inspired you to write “The Fairy Godmother’s Tale”?
Marks: It really came in two parts. The first was watching a review of Disney's Wish and thinking "this could be a great origin story for a fairy godmother, if they'd just let her be the accidental villain of the first act." The second was getting my hands on a copy of the Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales, reading it cover to cover, and thinking that it would be really interesting to take these stories and plug them into German history. And...there was probably a not small amount of influence from an anime called Frieren in there too.
How did you come up with the names of your main characters?
Marks: Honestly, research. Germany at the time this story begins was divided into Protestant and Catholic principalities, and both religions had their own naming conventions (the Catholics tended towards a lot of names we see in English, while the Protestants tended towards names we consider more traditionally Germanic). So, for Elisa, I did a search on 17th Century Catholic women who lived in Germany, and came up with Elisabeth as a common name, and Elisa as an acceptable shortening of it. But, otherwise, I was very careful to make sure that the Catholics had proper Catholic names, while the Protestants had proper Protestant names.
Is there anything that you want readers to know about you, your writing process or your book?
Marks: I guess right now it would be the importance of research. This is historical fantasy - it is set in a very real time and place, and when you're writing this genre I think there is a moral obligation to do justice to that time and its people. I spent hundreds of dollars on research material, and read thousands of pages to get early modern Germany right. And the thing is that when you do this, you get led down very interesting rabbit holes that you otherwise wouldn't know existed. Elisa lives through the Enlightenment, which means that she grows up in an age where religion is all-important and sees the world change into one where science is king, and has to deal with getting left behind by that. It made for an amazing writing experience, and an really great character arc.
If "The Fairy Godmother’s Tale" were adapted into a movie, who would you like to see cast to play your lead characters?
Marks: I'm not sure I'd want to see it turned into a movie - I'm not sure I'd trust Hollywood to do justice to it. So, I'm afraid I haven't really thought about that.
When you encounter writer’s block, what do you do to break yourself out of it?
Marks: It's been a while since I had to deal with that. But, when I'm having trouble with a chapter, what I'll sometimes do is leave a placeholder for the rest of the scene, and then jump ahead and write the next bit. Sometimes, things just need to percolate.
Are there any tips that you would like to share with other aspiring authors?
Marks: Write. And I don't mean playing around with a generative AI like ChatGPT, I mean fingers on the keyboard, with no short cuts. None of us are good when we first start - the first novel I ever completed was terrible and unpublishable - but if we're very lucky, we're good enough. Just knowing you can finish a novel, even if it's crap, is important to writing the next one (and that next one will be better, as will the one after that). We only get better through practice, and that means doing the work and writing.
What is your favorite book, genre, and/or author?
Marks: These days, almost everything I read is non-fiction, mainly history with some science (as I write, I'm making my second attempt at reading and understanding Leonard Suskind's The Black Hole War, which involves rewiring your brain to wrap your mind around quantum physics).
What are you working on next?
Marks: I am writing a hard SF novel about a crash investigation on the moon. The entire thing is based on NASA's Artemis program, and explores why we're in space when space is so very dangerous to be in. It's my favourite novel so far, in large part because I was able to build a model of the moonbase out of Lego with my 6 year old daughter (who helped design it).
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