My Unfair Godmother by Janette Rallison

MY UNFAIR GODMOTHER

by Janette Rallison


YA Fantasy

Walker Books
www.JanetteRallison.com

3 Signed Copies will be given away on Friday, November 18, 2011!

About the Book:

Tansy Miller has always felt that her divorced father has never had enough time for her. But mistakenly getting caught on the wrong side of the law wasn't exactly how she wanted to get his attention. Enter Chrysanthemum "Chrissy" Everstar, Tansy's fairy in shining, er, high heels. Chrissy is only a fair godmother, of course, so Tansy's three wishes don't exactly go according to plan. And if bringing Robin Hood to the twenty-first century isn't bad enough for Tansy, being transported back to the Middle Ages to deal with Rumpelstiltskin certainly is. She'll need the help of her blended family, her wits, and especially the cute police chief 's son to stop the gold-spinning story from spinning wildly out of control.

Check out our Exclusive Interview with the Author here:

1) How did you get the idea for the novel?

I’ve always loved fairy tales. (As a child, when adults asked me what I was going to be when I grew up, I told them I was going to be a princess. I was so disappointed when I realized that princess wasn’t a viable career option.) The fairy tale of Rumpelstiltskin never made any sense to me though. Why did Rumpelstiltskin want the queen’s baby? Why would anybody want to marry a king that had just threatened to kill you if you didn’t spin straw to gold? And why in the world did the king believe the miller’s daughter could actually do such a thing? Was he stupid or just looking for an excuse to kill her? I got to answer all of those questions in My Unfair Godmother and add a lot of fun twists too.

2) This would make a great film. Any talks of turning your book into a movie?

The movie rights for the companion book, My Fair Godmother, have been purchased, so who knows—there could be a string of fairy godmother movies. When I wrote these books, I wanted to create stories that were like my favorite movie: The Princess Bride. If these books do get made into movies, I hope they’ll have a similar fun feel to them.

3) Let's talk about your main character, Tansy. How did you think her up and is there any of you in her?

Tansy is basically a good girl who’s flirting with the rebellious crowd in order to get back at her dad. He left the family years ago when her parents divorced, and she’s never forgiven him for it. In that way, I’m not at all like Tansy. I was about as straight-laced as teenagers come. But in other ways I’m like Tansy. Her fairy godmother gives her a pathetic-o-meter to track her progress out of patheticness. On some days, I could use one of those.

4) Be honest, how many drafts did you have to write for this book? Any horrific scenes that were cut from the original that you want to share?

I was on a deadline, so I had to write this book really fast. There were only two drafts, and then it went to copyedits. The problem was that it was at copyedits when I found out I’d made a huge mistake that the editors hadn’t caught.

Do you know that there is a difference between straw and hay? I didn’t. I thought the words were synonymous. Nope. As it turns out, nothing eats straw. It has no nutritional value. And I had written all of these sentences like, “What will the king feed his horses if I change all the straw to gold?” Um, maybe all that hay that you didn’t change to gold?

Yeah, I tried to catch and change all of those references on the copyedits but one still slipped through anyway.

5) What's up next for you?

I’m always working on something. I’m going to write another Fairy Godmother twisted tale eventually, but right now I’ve been working on a YA fantasy series about kids who have superpowers to fight dragons. The first book is called Slayers and is under the pen name CJ Hill. I hope all my fans will like those books as well.

About the Author:

Janette Rallison is the award winning author of 17 novels and has sold over a million young adult books. Her novels have been on many reading and state lists including IRA Young Adults' Choices List. Her latest release is My Unfair Godmother, which tells the story of what happens when you get an incompetent fairy godmother. Visit the author online at: www.JanetteRallison.com.

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