Not too long ago, while I was in my car, I came up with this idea about doing a novel based on some kick-ass princesses. To be honest, my first thought was to have it be an over-the-top parody of all the princess stories. My older daughter, Jessica, told me that doing a princess story would be harder than I made it sound. She pointed out that Disney has the whole ‘princess thing’ wrapped up pretty tight. Also, she mentioned that it would be hard for me to write it in a way that would appeal to older readers, because most people would assume any story about princesses would be aimed at young children.
But I want to do a story for young adults and bored older people. I want it to have strong, independent female characters. I want it to be exciting without going so far as having children battling to the death as mass entertainment, as in The Hunger Games books. Mostly, I don’t want it to end up as a stereotype in any way.
You might recall that I have already done a few posts about this idea. I showed you photos of all my layouts, and maps, and storylines and character sheets and that map I drew and painted. Well, between editing my murder mystery set in World War Two London with my head minion up in Canada… (I mean he lives there and we e-mail back and forth, not that I have been traveling up there without telling you about it)… and getting the third book of my action/humor science fiction series published, and working on that new wizard book for kids, I wrote the first chapter to set the story in motion.
Tell me what you think.
Let’s all work together to take the princesses back from the overly cute cartoon world of the Disney animation studios.
It isn’t easy, being green… but I think I can pull it off…
