It’s exactly three months until publication of Sleeping Beauty’s Daughters. To mark this momentous non-anniversary, I give you — the book trailer!
Author: Diane Zahler
I'm the author of THE THIRTEENTH PRINCESS, A TRUE PRINCESS, PRINCESS OF THE WILD SWANS, and SLEEPING BEAUTY'S DAUGHTERS, all published by HarperCollins Children's Books, and BAKER'S MAGIC (Capstone, 2016) and THE MARVELWOOD MAGICIANS (Boyds Mills, 2017).
Sleeping Beauty’s Daughters ARC Giveaway!
Sleeping Beauty’s Daughters won’t be published until August 27. But that’s such a long time to wait…
Well, it’s Children’s Book Week — and I have an ARC of Sleeping Beauty’s Daughters to give away to celebrate children’s books! 
If you’d like to enter to win, post a comment stating which middle-grade children’s book is your absolute favorite and why. The contest is open until Friday, May 17, at 5 p.m. A lucky winner will be chosen randomly. U.S. entries only, please. So get those comments in — and good luck!
Let’s Hear It for the Black Death!
No doubt you’ve been anxiously waiting, as I have, to hear how middle-schoolers Kathryn and Jenna did in the state competition for National History Day with their brilliant documentary on the bubonic plague (interviews with me includ
ed)…
THEY WON FIRST PLACE!!!
On to Nationals, June 9-13 in College Park, MD!
A Proud Taste for E.L. Konigsburg
Today I found out that one of my favorite writers, E.L. Konigsburg, had died.
Her first two books, the Newbery Honor title Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth and the Newbery Award Winner From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, were published when I was exactly the right age t
o devour them. I read them and read them and read them again. I wanted to be Claudia and run away to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. And I wanted to be E.L. Konigsburg and write a book that made readers want to be my characters.
I was 20 when I finally got to the Met, and I walked from room to room seeing it through Claudia’s eyes. A couple of years later, I wrote my first novel, about a girl who runs away to live in Central Park. Like most first novels, it was completely unpublishable (a lack of originality was not its biggest problem), but it just goes to show: the influence of a great story lives on in its readers. The desire to write E.L. Konigsburg’s actual book has evolved into 
the desire to write as good a book as E.L. Konigsburg did, and I’ll keep trying to do it for as long as I write.
Thank you, Elaine Konigsburg, for the stories and the inspiration.
Some days you must learn a great deal. But you should also have days when you allow what is already in you to swell up and touch everything.
— E.L. Konigsburg
Misty-Eyed
We took a spring break trip to the Northern Neck of Virginia last week, searching for signs of 
spring, birds, and the ponies of Chincoteague. Long ago I was a little obsessed with Misty of Chincoteague, though I am really, r
eally not a horse person. I loved it so much that I read all the other Marguerite Henry books (none quite lived up to Misty).
The National Seashore at Assateague Island, where the ponies live, is accessible from two states, Virginia and Maryland. We were staying the night in Chincoteague, so we went in from the Virginia side. There were lots and lots of birds, and finally, at a great distance, a pony sighting — a group of five roaming through the sandy scrub. Still, that wasn’t enough for me. I was ready for a closeup.
In the morning we set out for the Maryland entrance to the park. It was freezing cold and snowing a little, so we weren’t feeling too hopeful. But…
Ponies!
Ponies sticking their heads into cars, sashaying across the road as if they owned it (which they sort of do), clipclopping down the bike path. Mistys here, Stormys there. It was a Marguerite Henry-lover’s dream.
(Spoiler fact alert: We learned, to my shock and consternation, that these are not really ponies. They are horses, stunted from their meager diet of scrub, and bloated from their excessive water-drinking because of the salty diet. And they BITE. But I still loved them.)
Just in case you were wondering, the Pony Swim and Pony Penning Days still happen. You can read about them here.
The Next Big Thing
It’s my turn to do The Next Big Thing Blog Hop! If you don’t already know, it’s an idea originating in Australia that celebrates what children’s/YA writers are working on or what they have coming up next. I was tagged to participate by the wonderful Shelby Bach, one of the very first manuscript readers for my very first children’s book, The Thirteenth Princess. 
She has her own new title coming out in July, Of Witches and Wind. You can read about it here. And she’s asked me to answer The Next Big Thing questions about my own upcoming book.
What is the working title of your next book?
The working — and final — title is Sleeping Beauty’s Daughters. Remarkably, this book has had the same title since its first moment.
Here’s its beautiful cover!
Where did the idea come from for the book?
It came from a brainstorming session with my then-editor, Maria Gomez. I had a contract for Princess of the Wild Swans and an “as-yet-unnamed fairy tale,” and we were tossing ideas around at lunch. She was the one who said, “What about something like…Sleeping Beauty’s Daughters?” I fell in love with the title, and the ideas sprang from that. Not the way I usually work!
What genre does your book fall under?
Middle grade fantasy, or fairy-tale retelling. For 8-12 year olds (or older, or younger) who love fairy tales and adventure.
What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?
I used to imagine various Fannings playing princesses in the film versions of my books, but 
they
just keep growing up. Now I think Quvenzhane Wallis would make a fabulous Luna — she’s the difficult younger sister in the book. And if she has an older sister…well, there’s my Aurora!
What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
What if Sleeping Beauty’s terrible curse was passed on to her children?
Who is publishing your book?
HarperCollins Children’s Books.
How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?
Probably about six months. But that was really just a start. Characters came and went, changed ages and hair colors, moved up and down in rank; settings emerged from the sea and disappeared again…only the plot stayed the same.
What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
This one isn’t really a retelling of a fairy tale, it’s an original tale. But it’s inspired by “Sleeping Beauty,” so I’ll mention some of the fairy tale retellings I admire enormously — Shannon Hale’s The Goose Girl, Robin McKinley’s Beauty, and Edith Pattou’s East. I don’t know if Sleeping Beauty’s Daughters can compare, but it aspires.
Who or what inspired you to write this book?
My sister and our relationship were a large part of the story’s inspiration. Not that we’re exactly like Luna and Aurora (I hope not, anyway — I’d be the extremely difficult Luna in our version), but I think the book is as much about sisters as it is about magic. I wanted to show the ups and downs that all sisters have in their relationships. My princesses torment each other, but they also have each others’ backs.
(This is a very old and kind of scary publicity photo for a book my sister and I wrote together. We had our makeup professionally done. Can you tell? I think that the fact that we co-authored books and didn’t kill each other is a testament to the bonds of sisterhood.)
What else about the book might pique the reader’s interest?
There’s magic, a curse, good fairies and bad, princesses, a cute boy, a voyage and a quest, danger, and sisters. I hope that list includes something to intrigue any reader!
Thanks for checking out my new book! Be sure to stop by the blog of Erin Jade Lange, author of the critically acclaimed Butter, who allowed me to tag her for next week (Wednesday, March 20). Her blog is here. And check out my co-blogger for the day, Mindee Arnett. And in addition, when I asked to tag Shelley Moore Thomas, author of the fabulous Seven Tales of Trinket, she told me that she’d already been tagged and asked to tag me instead! You can read her Next Big Thing answers here.
Hooray for the Bubonic Plague! (Not really. But sort of.)
In November, middle-school students Kathryn and Jenna interviewed me for a 
documentary on the bubonic plague outbreak of the 1340s. It’s their entry for the National History Day competition, which you can read about here. They were knowledgeable and skillful interviewers. They gave me chocolate. And now…
They have won FIRST PLACE in the local National History Day competition! Let’s have a round of applause!
Next, they take their documentary to the state level. And then…well, I’ll keep you posted!
Why We Do It
No words needed.
Hurry Up and Wait
Look what UPS brought me this afternoon!
The pace of publishing never fails to bewilder me. This book has been written and rewritten (and rewritten, and rewritten) over…well, over quite a long time. Between each rewrite, there was waiting. Lots and lots of waiting. I publicized Princess of the Wild Swans. I wrote other stuff. I went to Belgium for five months.
Then, suddenly, the cover was done, the manuscript was being copyedited, the galleys were proofread, and in a matter of weeks — ARCs!
Now we just have to wait until August.
Up and Running (More or Less)
I’m a person who swore she’d never blog…yet this is my third blog.
True, the first was a travel blog dedicated to a five-month period I spent in Belgium in 2012. Chocolate, waffles, and beer — did I really have a choice? And the second was just a sad little addendum to my sad little first website. But this one has its very own tab. It demands that I write something.
So…I think I’m going to use this space primarily to talk about what’s happening with my books. If there’s something you’d like to hear about from me, please let me know. I’ll take all suggestions under advisement. But there are so many really great and useful blogs about writing already; I don’t want to add another. I’m NOT going to give writing advice or describe My Process, though I may rant occasionally about the value of the adverb. Or my opinion of people who are threatened by the term “literary fiction.” (Of course, I’m the person who swore she’d never blog, so don’t take my word for any of this. I’m a very unreliable narrator.)
At the moment, I’m in that strange in-between time with Sleeping Beauty’s Daughters when proofreading is done and ARCs are yet to arrive. A sort of literary suspended animation. So I’ll give you the gorgeous book cover, if you haven’t seen it already. Love it, love it, love it!