Hello, and good morning, Jennifer. How are you doing today? I'm
Will Arrow? How are you? Absolutely fantastic? I got asked the big
question here, right here, in the very beginning, with a book like
Beastly Beauty, You've got to be having merchandise with this. I mean,
because the way that you design this, I want my little figurines, I
want my T shirt, I want something to go with this book. I'll
get on that, Arrow, I'll start printing T shirts and making figurines for
you. This is an interesting concept, and it inspires me as a writer
that you have taken something and just kind of flip flopped it and made it
into a story. And I love that when writers will take your chances on
that. Yes, it's my take on the classic Beauty and the Beasts fairytale,
but my story flips the script. And as we know, in the
classic version, the Beast calls the shots, and he rages and he shouts
and he takes prisoners, and the Beauty has to accommodate him. She denies
her own wishes as she tries to understand him and sort of help him his
better self. And I just had enough of that. I wanted to reverse
the story's power dynamic, and write the beast as a young woman and the
beauty as a young man, and then see what happens. So I did,
and I ended up with two not just one, but two, you
know, beings who are very complicated and very wounded and damaged. And then
watch them as they worked upon each other to really reveal those wounds underneath their
pain. Yeah, I was gonna say Bo has a dark side too,
because he's a thief. Oh Bo, Yeah he is, and he's he's
you know, he was orphaned at a young age. He's had a very
hard life and he fell in with a pack of robbers to survive, and
he became this person who's sort of always looking, you know, for the
advantage, how to play somebody, how to use somebody, what he can
get out of the arrangement. And as he meets Arabella, he changes and
he learns how to be a friend, you know, how to be a
romantic love interest. But he learns, most of all, and she does
too, how to love himself, you know, and she learns how to
love herself, because that's you need that before you can become a good friend
or before you can be in a romantic relationship. Yeah, when you talk
about Arabella being the beast in this story, but it's too much ambition,
thinking too much about herself, taking up too much space. I mean,
I understand, I mean she could have been a monster, but kind of
in I like the way that you paint the picture of her being beastly in
a different way. Yes, Arabella is this this smart, passionate, vitally
young woman. She lives in seventeen hundred France and a castle. She's a
duke's daughter, his only child, and she wants to be an architect.
She wants to build and create and make beautiful castles and palaces. But she's
told, no, you can't be any of this. You can't do any
of this. You have one job, one duty, and that's to marry
well, and that crushes her. She tries to do what's expected of her,
but eventually her emotion bursts out of her and it leads her to make
a terrible mistake, and that's what brings the curse down on her, being
trapped in that castle. I think it's because we all went through the lockdown.
I really could relate with this, because you know, now when I
read about stories being trapped in something, it's like, oh, I've been
there, Oh I know what you're doing. And so I really love the
way that you bring things out because in a way, writers are to help
teach the readers how to do what it is they need to do in life
too, and this is an open door for those who feel trapped very much
so, and I think that's what this fairy tale and all fairy tales do,
and that's why we like them so much. That's why they stick with
us. I mean, they some people see them as these very sort of
simple princesses stories when neat and tidy, happy endings, but they're not.
They're very rich, very complex, and the original versions are often very dark,
and when you hear one, it stays with you forever. And I
think, you know, we're attracted to them as kids, we're attracted back
to them as adults. And I've thought of about why, and I think
the answer is because they give us the truth and they also give us a
lot of hope. And the truth can be you know, it can be
pretty dark. Fairy Tales are telling us that the world can be a hard,
dark place full of monsters, and you know, it has a dark
forest in it, and you'll find yourself hopelessly lost in that forest. But
then they give us hope and they show us that you can beat those monsters
and you can get yourself out of that forest and find your way home.
When'd you say that one of Bo's monsters was the fact that he thought love
was an illusion. I mean, I understand, but at the same time,
when you feel love, it's a completely different story, very much.
So you know, Bo has loved and he has lost. He loved his
family, He loved his mother, she died young. He loved his father,
who, after he lost his wife, turned to drinking and died as
a result of that. He has been separated from his younger brother, so
he's you know, he's built up these emotional walls around himself and they've in
him as much as that castle has imprisoned the Arabella. Would you say that
in your writing style, you have made present the wounded heart, and this
way the readers can go I feel this and because I mean, one of
the things that Julia Cameron always taught us was the fact that learn how to
paint a room with your words, and you do that so well. Oh
I'm so touched. Thank you so much Erro. That's certainly my goal as
a writer, and I'm happy to know that my story has had that effect
on you. You know. I think, of course, in a story,
you want to have action, and you want to have suspense, and
you want to pull the reader through, you know, with a good plot.
But to me, if there's not emotion, if there's not heart in
the story, for me, it just doesn't work, either as a writer
or a reader. And I want to give that heart and I want to
give that emotion to my readers more than anything. Now, this is gonna
be a deep question creative person, a creative person. When you sat down
to write this story each and every day, when you dedicated yourself with that
writing discipline, did you see this story as an animation or a real live
person kind of story. I definitely thought it as a real life person.
For me. The whole story started out, yes, with this image of
Arabella, you know, this, this teenager in France excuse me, in
the seventeen hundreds and facing an arranged marriage and wanting something different and wanting something
better for herself. So she was so real to me from the very beginning.
And then you know, both sort of walked out of the midst of
my imagination as a fully formed human being. And then all the servants around
them too, because they it's their story as well. You know, these
people with their own hopes and dreams are locked in the castle with Arabella,
and their life comes to a halt when that curse descends, and you know
their longing to get out and resume their lives as well. So all these
people, you know, are real, living and breathing people. To me,
so many people have that big dream, Oh if I only had all
the money, if I had all the power in the world. But you
paint that picture of you know what, it's not as pretty as what we
all think. Yes, I mean, Arabella's very wealthy, and you know,
food is not a problem. The castle is enchanted. Heat is not
a problem. She has everything she wants and yet nothing because she's not allowed
to be who she really is. Wow. Where can people go to find
out more about you, Jennifer and to give you lots of love? You
can go to Jennifer Donnelly dot com, or you can go to all my
social platforms at jen Wright's books. Excellent. Please come back to the show
anytime in the future. The door is always going to be open for you.
Ero, I would love to thank you so much for having me.
Will you'd be brilliant today? Okay, okay, I'll try my best.