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Hello, and good morning, Jennifer. How are you doing today? I'm

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Will Arrow? How are you?
Absolutely fantastic? I got asked the big

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question here, right here, in
the very beginning, with a book like

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Beastly Beauty, You've got to be
having merchandise with this. I mean,

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because the way that you design this, I want my little figurines, I

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want my T shirt, I want
something to go with this book. I'll

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get on that, Arrow, I'll
start printing T shirts and making figurines for

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you. This is an interesting concept, and it inspires me as a writer

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that you have taken something and just
kind of flip flopped it and made it

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into a story. And I love
that when writers will take your chances on

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that. Yes, it's my take
on the classic Beauty and the Beasts fairytale,

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but my story flips the script.
And as we know, in the

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classic version, the Beast calls the
shots, and he rages and he shouts

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and he takes prisoners, and the
Beauty has to accommodate him. She denies

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her own wishes as she tries to
understand him and sort of help him his

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better self. And I just had
enough of that. I wanted to reverse

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the story's power dynamic, and write
the beast as a young woman and the

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beauty as a young man, and
then see what happens. So I did,

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and I ended up with two not
just one, but two, you

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know, beings who are very complicated
and very wounded and damaged. And then

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watch them as they worked upon each
other to really reveal those wounds underneath their

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pain. Yeah, I was gonna
say Bo has a dark side too,

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because he's a thief. Oh Bo, Yeah he is, and he's he's

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you know, he was orphaned at
a young age. He's had a very

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hard life and he fell in with
a pack of robbers to survive, and

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he became this person who's sort of
always looking, you know, for the

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advantage, how to play somebody,
how to use somebody, what he can

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get out of the arrangement. And
as he meets Arabella, he changes and

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he learns how to be a friend, you know, how to be a

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romantic love interest. But he learns, most of all, and she does

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too, how to love himself,
you know, and she learns how to

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love herself, because that's you need
that before you can become a good friend

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or before you can be in a
romantic relationship. Yeah, when you talk

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about Arabella being the beast in this
story, but it's too much ambition,

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thinking too much about herself, taking
up too much space. I mean,

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I understand, I mean she could
have been a monster, but kind of

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in I like the way that you
paint the picture of her being beastly in

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a different way. Yes, Arabella
is this this smart, passionate, vitally

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young woman. She lives in seventeen
hundred France and a castle. She's a

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duke's daughter, his only child,
and she wants to be an architect.

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She wants to build and create and
make beautiful castles and palaces. But she's

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told, no, you can't be
any of this. You can't do any

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of this. You have one job, one duty, and that's to marry

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well, and that crushes her.
She tries to do what's expected of her,

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but eventually her emotion bursts out of
her and it leads her to make

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a terrible mistake, and that's what
brings the curse down on her, being

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trapped in that castle. I think
it's because we all went through the lockdown.

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I really could relate with this,
because you know, now when I

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read about stories being trapped in something, it's like, oh, I've been

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there, Oh I know what you're
doing. And so I really love the

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way that you bring things out because
in a way, writers are to help

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teach the readers how to do what
it is they need to do in life

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too, and this is an open
door for those who feel trapped very much

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so, and I think that's what
this fairy tale and all fairy tales do,

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and that's why we like them so
much. That's why they stick with

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us. I mean, they some
people see them as these very sort of

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simple princesses stories when neat and tidy, happy endings, but they're not.

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They're very rich, very complex,
and the original versions are often very dark,

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and when you hear one, it
stays with you forever. And I

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think, you know, we're attracted
to them as kids, we're attracted back

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to them as adults. And I've
thought of about why, and I think

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the answer is because they give us
the truth and they also give us a

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lot of hope. And the truth
can be you know, it can be

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pretty dark. Fairy Tales are telling
us that the world can be a hard,

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dark place full of monsters, and
you know, it has a dark

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forest in it, and you'll find
yourself hopelessly lost in that forest. But

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then they give us hope and they
show us that you can beat those monsters

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and you can get yourself out of
that forest and find your way home.

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When'd you say that one of Bo's
monsters was the fact that he thought love

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was an illusion. I mean,
I understand, but at the same time,

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when you feel love, it's a
completely different story, very much.

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So you know, Bo has loved
and he has lost. He loved his

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family, He loved his mother,
she died young. He loved his father,

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who, after he lost his wife, turned to drinking and died as

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a result of that. He has
been separated from his younger brother, so

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he's you know, he's built up
these emotional walls around himself and they've in

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him as much as that castle has
imprisoned the Arabella. Would you say that

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in your writing style, you have
made present the wounded heart, and this

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way the readers can go I feel
this and because I mean, one of

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the things that Julia Cameron always taught
us was the fact that learn how to

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paint a room with your words,
and you do that so well. Oh

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I'm so touched. Thank you so
much Erro. That's certainly my goal as

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a writer, and I'm happy to
know that my story has had that effect

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on you. You know. I
think, of course, in a story,

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you want to have action, and
you want to have suspense, and

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you want to pull the reader through, you know, with a good plot.

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But to me, if there's not
emotion, if there's not heart in

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the story, for me, it
just doesn't work, either as a writer

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or a reader. And I want
to give that heart and I want to

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give that emotion to my readers more
than anything. Now, this is gonna

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be a deep question creative person,
a creative person. When you sat down

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to write this story each and every
day, when you dedicated yourself with that

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writing discipline, did you see this
story as an animation or a real live

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person kind of story. I definitely
thought it as a real life person.

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For me. The whole story started
out, yes, with this image of

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Arabella, you know, this,
this teenager in France excuse me, in

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the seventeen hundreds and facing an arranged
marriage and wanting something different and wanting something

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better for herself. So she was
so real to me from the very beginning.

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And then you know, both sort
of walked out of the midst of

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my imagination as a fully formed human
being. And then all the servants around

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them too, because they it's their
story as well. You know, these

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people with their own hopes and dreams
are locked in the castle with Arabella,

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and their life comes to a halt
when that curse descends, and you know

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their longing to get out and resume
their lives as well. So all these

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people, you know, are real, living and breathing people. To me,

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so many people have that big dream, Oh if I only had all

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the money, if I had all
the power in the world. But you

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paint that picture of you know what, it's not as pretty as what we

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all think. Yes, I mean, Arabella's very wealthy, and you know,

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food is not a problem. The
castle is enchanted. Heat is not

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a problem. She has everything she
wants and yet nothing because she's not allowed

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to be who she really is.
Wow. Where can people go to find

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out more about you, Jennifer and
to give you lots of love? You

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can go to Jennifer Donnelly dot com, or you can go to all my

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social platforms at jen Wright's books.
Excellent. Please come back to the show

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anytime in the future. The door
is always going to be open for you.

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Ero, I would love to thank
you so much for having me.

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Will you'd be brilliant today? Okay, okay, I'll try my best.