Cirrus@Austlit

'Several years into their marriage, Beauty and her once beastly husband are at a crossroads. Though they still love each other, they have not been able to have children nor talk about the problems that have beset them since the fairy curse was lifted. Instead, she devotes herself to the roses in their garden while he composes music to charm the most discerning Parisian audiences.

'But Beauty secretly longs for the Beast with whom she fell in love, and her husband fears he’s no longer the creature she most desires. When Peregrine, Beauty’s enigmatic fey sister-in-law, comes to visit, she sparks off a chain of events that will either heal the marriage or leave it in irretrievable tatters.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'The night after the tumultuous events at her grandmother’s house, Little Red ventures into the woods to find her missing grandmother. Instead, she discovers a stranger who claims to be her aunt … and learns a startling secret. Her family are wolves, changing form in phase with the moon, and the beast slain in grandmother’s cottage means she’ll not be home again.

'With the full moon overhead, Red learns she can undergo the change herself, but life as a wolf is not so easy as it might appear. The villagers distrust fanged beast and fell magic in equal measure, and every transformation places her family in peril. The secret her grandmother kept close could now bring death to her mother, her aunt, and even Red herself. There are paths that need to be chosen, and no decision will come without sacrifice.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'The Queen who’d once swept up the cinders is exiled to a distant wing of the palace, replaced by a younger, prettier girl who can bear her King an heir. Unwilling to accept the rapid deterioration of her power and desperately clinging to fraying strands of sanity, the exiled Queen journals the choices that led to her sorry state… and those she must make in order to reclaim her rightful place in the kingdom.

'But there’s more than one prisoner in the castle, and the conspiracy that draws tight around Queen and rival involves graver threats than a return to poverty.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Hard Places collects the very best of Kirstyn McDermott's short fiction written over the past twenty years along with a previously unpublished novella. From unsettling obsessions and brutal body horror to unexpected monsters and ghosts drifting through suburbia, these stories run the gamut of horror and the contemporary gothic. By turns harrowing, provocative and poignant, this collection will haunt you long after the last page is turned.'  (Publication summary)

'Bluebeard’s seventh wife is the first to survive his wrath, courtesy of ghostly warnings and the timely intervention of her brothers. The village burns her murderous husband, his crimes laid bare and his wealth passed on to her… but even after his death, Bluebeard’s house won’t allow anyone to leave. All wives—living and dead—remain trapped in their husband’s manor, even as the man who terrorised them proves to be less dead than they had hoped.

'Haunted by his vengeful ghost, can the wives find a way to break the curse that would bind them in darkness and torment forever?'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Antagonism among girls and women in fairy tales has been the subject of much critical and popular discussion over recent decades. Significantly less attention, however, has been paid to the frequent absence of collaborative female relationships in traditional fairy tales and their contemporary retellings. Holding re-visioned fairy tales to be a type of feminist creative praxis, this thesis investigates how mutually beneficial relationships between female characters may be constructed within such narratives. "Never Afters" is a collection of six re-visions, written as sequels to well-known fairy tales from the Western European corpus. Situated within a genre that commonly isolates female characters or foregrounds female antagonism, each re-vision employs one (or more) of five key strategies that are used by contemporary authors to imagine collaborative female relationships within retold fairy tales: inversion, insertion/deletion, expansion, fusion, and extrapolation. The exegesis contextualises my creative work and assesses the strengths and limitations of each strategy by critically examining how they are used in contemporary fairy tales by authors including Emma Donoghue, Theodora Goss, Angela Slatter, Aimee Bender, and Kelly Link. I demonstrate that expansion, fusion, and extrapolation best allow authors to introduce new female characters and fresh feminist perspectives that move away from female exceptionalism and instead foreground female collaboration and friendship as potent sources of narrative power. The exegesis further argues that the cognitive sciences, and schema theories in particular, may offer insights as to why collaborative female relationships have received such scant representation. Using case studies of my own creative praxis, I explore the ways in which female isolation and acrimony are re-inscribed in contemporary work and recommend the adoption of new frameworks through which creative writers may critically and reflexively interrogate their tacit storytelling knowledge.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'After marrying the prince and having her own child, Snow White visits her stepmother—promising to kill her in ever more horrible ways, at the same time attempting to stay away from the mirror that started it all.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'The antagonism that exists between girls/women in fairy tales has been the subject of much discussion over recent decades. Significantly less attention, however, has been paid to the absence of collaborative female relationships in both traditional fairy tales and their retellings. This paper argues that the cognitive sciences, and schema theories in particular, may offer insights as to why these types of relationships receive such scant representation in contemporary re-visioned fairy tales, which commonly continue to replicate the common narrative dynamic of female acrimony. Following a brief overview of schemas and their operation, the paper examines how story schemas and person schemas might intersect in the unconscious of the creative writer to influence the intuitions that accompany story creation and development. Finally, it is suggested that the adoption of new frameworks through which to critically and reflexively interrogate our tacit storytelling knowledge can result in real cognitive change and subsequent advancements in our creative practice. A case study of the writing of ‘Burnt sugar’, a novelette the author produced as part of her ongoing PhD research, is presented as an ‘in practice’ demonstration of the possible effects of schemas upon narrative creation.'  (Publication abstract)

'Decades after escaping the tower, Zel makes her living as a healer and wise-woman, travelling the lands with her family and the sentient, serpentine braid that still carries a touch of the witch’s magic. Short-haired and happy, Zel prepares for the birth of her first great-grandchild, only to find herself shaken by unexpected news: Mother Gothel is dead.

'Memories of the woman who raised her, isolated and imprisoned, unlock within Zel an equal measure of anger and grief, forcing her at last to reckon with the tragic events of that long-ago summer when her own children came of age … a season where implacable death stalked her family across the wild, grassy plains and the world Zel knew split open and soured.

'For there are graver threats in Zel’s world than witches, greater sorrows to be borne than the loss of true love, and some dangers from which even the oldest, strongest magic may not be enough to protect her.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Decades after the incident in the woods, Gretel has forged a good life in a small village, running a bakery and taking care of her brother and the stray, bedraggled women who find work as her apprentices. Business is good, and when it’s not, Gretel took more from the witch than a knack of making sweet treats and gingerbread, just as her brother returned home forever changed by the torture he experienced.

'The book of magic hidden beneath the stairs has kept Gretel and her household comfortable for years, but it also calls to Gretel in the night, demanding she return to the woods and replace the witch they killed. For years, she’s been resisting, determined to keep Hansel and her apprentices safe.

'Then Hansel’s drinking goes too far and Gretel realises her brother is dying. Finally, the seductive call of the book’s magic might be too strong to deny…'

Source: Publisher's blurb (Brain Jar Press).