Alethea Kontis – author of “Enchanted” (recently listed on Kirkus Reviews among the “Best Teen Books of 2012“), the award-winning “Alpha-Oops” series, and so much more – is a passionate and informed storyteller. Her diverse background includes, among other things, a love and respect for the theater and of the rich heritage of folklore and fairy tales, both of which informs her work and infuses it with authenticity and magic. Justin Macumber (co-host and founder of the Dead Robots’ Society podcast) joins me in a rousing 20(ish) minutes as Alethea waxes rhapsodic on the allure of fairy tales, who she writes for, her revision and editing process, and much more. The Fairy Queen is in the house people… woot! (and come back for more writerly goodness in Alethea’s Workshop Episode)

PROMO: Protecting Project Pulp podcast (part of the District of Wonders Network)



Showcase Episode: 20 Minutes with Alethea Kontis

[caution: mature language – listener discretion is advised]

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Episode Breakdown

01:08 – Alethea’s Fairy Tale Intro

07:20 – Why do you think the world has developed such an appetite for fairy tales lately?

08:10 – Everything goes in cycles. Vampires… they leave, they come back. Fairy tales… they leave they come back

08:20 – Every writing teacher is going to tell you to write what you love. Even if it’s not popular now, by the time your craft has caught up with the zeitgeist, it’ll be popular again

08:40 – Also, I think social networking is – in a way – virtually bringing back the oral tradition. Fairy tales were the blogs of Germany and the Dutch and the Italians of back then

09:30 – What do you think is your greatest asset as a writer, and what do you do to nurture it?

09:55 – My greatest strength is the performance side of the things

10:10 – The acting and the writing came together back when I was eighteen and made me who I am

10:20 – When I approach my writing, I’m thinking “What is my motivation” for this character?

10:35 – Every single character, I put myself in their head as though I was going to go on stage and play them as a character

10:40 – You have to really connect with those people before you start spouting words, but then when the words come, they’re so natural because that’s just who the character is

10:50 – Dialog has always been my strength, description has always been a challenge

11:20 – Someone said “Three sentences should be enough to describe anything”

11:35 – I think of poetry… or Twitter

11:45 – You need to do that to move the story along. If you dwell in the beauty of everything, everything gets lost in the forest

15:05 – However, I’m revising the sequel to “Enchanted” and I wish I had over written it so it would be easier to edit

15:15 – “Enchanted” was originally about 107K and it ended up about 74K… it is so easy to cut, than it is to cut and have to write 20K more words

15:50 – PROMO: Protecting Project Pulp podcast (part of the District of Wonders Network)



17:20 – What did you find in your first draft that you need to fix time and again?

17:55 – It was less of me finding it myself than it was the three-page edit letter from my editor

18:10 – It was really just me talking just to hear myself talk, and I needed to clear up things and make things simpler

18:25 – I also have a tendency to have a cast of thousands… I love to talk about people

18:5 – I have to make it logical, but I also have to have to keep it simple

19:00 – Ultimately it has to be a novel story about a girl and a boy falling in love, the end

19:15 – I can’t get sidetracked

19:20 – What will you do differently with the third book in the series

19:30 – It really IS a learning process

19:35 – I was forced to blow through the zero-draft of “Hero” in about two or three months

19:45 – My goal is to make the third novel (“Beloved”) my NaNoWriMo project

20:00 – That way I’ll have a year to go back to it and look at it and stew about it

20:45 – Are you a believer of writing as a group activity?

21:30 – I think there are pros and cons to it

21:35 – I tried that with The Codex Writers

21:55 – Within that group, you learn which people are keeping your voice and which ones are trying to completely re-write your story as they would write it

22:15 – Recognizing that is difficult, as is accepting it and responding to it

22:25 – Mary Robinette Kowal is amazing at this… holding readings and posting her novel as she writes it, getting feedback as she goes

23:00 – I wish I could be at a place like that

23:10 – I think it IS valuable

23:35 – What are your personal favorites among some of the contemporary takes on fairy tales?

25:10 – I wrote an article for the Huffington Post that never made to press

25:55 – While writing the article it occurred to me that “Pan’s Labyrinth” was a perfect retelling of “The Little Match Girl”

26:45 – The protagonist creates this entire to world to get away from a horrible world and in the end you’re left to decide whether it was real of if she “died” by surrendering to the horror

27:15 – For Disney re-tellings, I have to give the award to “The Little Mermaid”

27:25 – I order to re-tell that story and make it a happy ending, they had to do some major work. I think they did an amazing job

27:55 – Do you write to a “person” or composite that you try to appeal to?