Dia de los Muertos

Years ago, when I lived in El Paso, Texas I fell in love with many things... the desert, the moon hanging over the Franklin mountains, the abundance of roses, and the view of Mexico while driving I-10 to work every morning. But one of the things I carried with me when I left was the celebration of Dia De Los Muertos. From the moment, I saw the colorful art in curio shops and the mall and my friends' homes I was intrigued by a day to honor the dead. I'd already lost my mother and three of my grandparents. To discover there was a heritage of celebrating the dearly departed with festivals, food, music, dance, and vividly painted skulls and crafts drowning in flowers heartened and revivified me. Honoring the dead, celebrating their life, and being grateful they were part of mine, made for a deeper healer. One that returned me fully restored to a life, that up until then, I'd been a bit ambivalent about living.

So it's not all that surprising to me that when I decided to write a horrific fairy tale for Halloween, it transformed into something utterly different. One that celebrates November 1st. Dia de Los Muertos. The Day of the Dead.

I Am Lily Dane, a contemporary retelling of Han's Christian Andersen's "The Shadow", is coming soon.

I Am Lily Dane by Heidi Garret

ABOUT I Am Lily Dane:

Lily Dane is a bright light. A spiritually barren, consuming flame, she befriends girls whose inner lives are rich with dreams and compelling desire. Their unapologetic souls fascinate her. However, Lily’s interest in her peers isn’t friendly, she’s obsessed with the machinations of crushing their spirits.

Lily also has a shadow who is sentient. A freak of nature? An abomination? Who knows? But Lily’s shadow is consumed with stopping the emotional and psychological devastation its host always leaves in her wake.

I Am Lily Dane, A Horrific Fairy Tale is a psychologically dark retelling of Han’s Christian Andersen’s “The Shadow".

Once Upon a Time Today

How I Retold Hans Christian Andersen's "The Dryad"

The Tree Hugger, a Dystopian Fairy Tale is a retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Dryad.”. I absolutely love the idea of spirits whose lives are connected with trees. However, in the original tale, the dryad is flighty (really?) and curious. As is often the case in fairy tales, that curiosity doesn’t go unpunished.

But I ask you: What is wrong with wanting to see more of the world?

Nothing!

So, on those two counts, I altered the tale. Rather than the flighty creature in Andersen’s tale, I believe a nature-spirt born with a direct relationship to trees would be steady, solid, focused, and determined. Thus, Mags was born. More apt to be silent and solitary, sturdy and resilient than whimsical and capricious.

And what about that trip? The fact that Andersen’s dryad got punished for her curiosity and sense of adventure just didn’t sit well with me. I wanted my tree hugger to find joy at the end of her journey, to rise above her trials and tribulations. Mags is also curious when she leaves home. But her curiosity is driven from a deep wound. And though her journey isn’t characterized by whimsy, there are some wild woods and a bit of enchantment along the way.

The third novella in my Once Upon a Time Today collection, The Tree Hugger is now available.

The Tree Hugger on Pinterest

To celebrate this new release, all three novellas and the prelude to the Once Upon a Time Today collection, are $0.99.

What a perfect time to get your fairy tale fix!

How I Retold Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Mermaid"

When I read the original version of the “The Little Mermaid”, I was surprised with its spiritual emphasis. None of the movie remakes or retellings I’d read conveyed the original tale’s underlying theme: Mermaids don’t have souls and the little mermaid wanted one. Rather profound. But it left me with a dilemma. I have two goals for each Once Upon a Time Today novella. The first is to update the story with characters and setting, the second is to remain true to the original fairy tale’s essence while providing some kind of twist.

I realized if I remained true to the essence of “The Little Mermaid”, I’d be grappling with spiritual themes. I chose to go ahead and twist the original tale by having a mortal at risk of losing her immortal soul.

Although the sea witch is a critical figure in the original tale, she doesn’t get a lot of stage time. I’d read Wicked years ago and loved the spin on the Wicked Witch of the West, so I decided to focus my retelling on “the witch” as well. One fun detail: We see the “original” little mermaid come to the sea witch’s lair and have quite an impact on the sea witch’s apprentice in Dreaming of the Sea.

When it came to setting, I decided to make use of the convent that served as an important place in the original tale. Out of that decision, Miriam was born. Miriam seems to be almost everyone’s favorite character. Determined, but also dreamy, her journey in the story is quite spectacular.

How I Retold Han's Christian Andersen's "Beautiful"

I chose Han's Christian Andersen's "Beautiful" for the first retelling in my collection because beauty is something that has always moved and fascinated me, it's one of my obsessions. I do believe that whether one wishes to acknowledge it or not, beauty has a lot of power. However, the question of what is beautiful, is very personal. And though our perceptions of beauty are influenced by our families and culture, we all ultimately perceive the beautiful distinctly.

You see, I could go on and on...

In Andersen's tale, a male sculptor is besotted with a beautiful but quiet young lady. He misinterprets her reticence as depth and proceeds to marry her. As he lives with her, he discovers his wife's lack of speech isn't so much that "still waters run deep", more that she's rather passive and insipid. His awareness of her nature comes too late. It doesn't help that the young lady's overbearing mother moves in with the newlyweds.

I won't go into the rest of the tale here [SPOILER ALERT], but suffice it to say that by the end of the tale, the sculptor's eye for beauty has altered and matured.

To make this tale contemporary, I chose a female protagonist, Kerrin Mayham. She needed to be driven by beauty, so a film director seemed like the perfect profession. I wanted to remain true to the protagonist misjudging the interior of someone who was physically beautiful. Enter aspiring actor Anthony Zorr.

While he doesn't have an overbearing mother, he does have an aggressive agent in Marni Lamb. The story unfolds from there.

I added the narrative frame after the core story was written because I wanted to add another layer of enchantment to the tale. Allowing Kerrin to create a fairy tale by drawing from the experiences in her life, allowed me to recreate one of the special memories I shared with my own mother who seemed to spin the most fantastical tales out of nothing when I was child. But who knows? Perhaps she was drawing from the well of her experience too.

The Girl Who Believed in Fairy Tales

Loosely biographical, The Girl Who Believed in Fairy Tales is free! The three short stories chronicle the journey of a young girl spiritually sustained by fairy tales as she transforms into a woman who finds her place in the world by—what else?—writing fairy tales.

The Girl Who Believed in Fairy Tales on Pinterest

Fairy Tales and Finding Your Place in the World

Is The Weatherman a contemporary fairy tale? I'm going with yes. I've written about how fairy tales are tales of transformation that make use of symbols and archetypes. They're also stories about finding your place in the world. Most of the times, union with the perfect partner initiates the transition to becoming the ruler of your kingdom. However, that's not the case in The Weatherman, but I still think it can be considered a fairy tale.

The movie's main character, David Spritiz, is a middle-aged husband and father of two.

Nicolas Cage plays David. The movie is his fairy tale, because he's the overgrown kid/immature adult, and the story is about his transformation/growing up/finding his kingdom. His father, Robert Spritzel, is played by Michael Caine.

David is disconnected from his life: he phones it in. As the weatherman at a local TV station, David makes tons of money and doesn't work very hard for it. He's unfaithful to his wife and he's not an especially good father to his children. Whenever anyone recognizes him from his TV gig, he's not very gracious. He's kind of an asshole.

An asshole who really wants to move up in the world, i.e. get that weatherman gig on Hello America,  a national TV show in New York City, because then, everything will be good. His father will respect him, his wife will love him, and his children will be blessed with perfection.

In the real world, his wife wants a divorce, his daughter is overweight—David's father is the only one who will acknowledge she's unhappy, and his fresh-out-of-rehab son is getting seduced by a pedophile. Then Robert is diagnosed with lymphoma. With a National Book Award, a Pulitzer, and President Carter calling him "a national treasure," he's a hard act to follow.  The other bit, people throw things at David. Drive-bys. A Frosty, a Big Gulp, a fried apple pie, a soft taco, some falafel… the list goes on. It really pisses David off. It troubles his father—played with the gravitas that Michael Caine brings to the role—as well.

David is out of touch with reality. He doesn't really get how bad things have become, like he's under some lackluster spell. He tries to be playful with his wife, throws a snowball at her, and breaks her glasses. He takes his daughter to a winter picnic, and she tears her ACL in a potato-sack race. When his wife gets upset and her boyfriend intervenes, David has a public f&*k meltdown in the front yard. When he goes to a relationship workshop with his wife, he cheats on the trust exercise. It's pretty bad.

A year ago, he took his daughter to archery lessons, but she lost interest after the first lesson. He bought her a pack of them. As David's life falls apart, he returns to the archery club to take the unused lessons. After a few lessons, he brings his daughter back. The difference: This time he's the teacher. Although archery still doesn't interest her, he makes a greater attempt to find out what does. Things get tense when he learns that she wants to go bow hunting and kill animals. He doesn't want to kill animals. He invites her to go with him to his interview for the Hello America show in New York.

David's father joins them on the trip. He needs to see a specialist. The news isn't good. He has months to live. Confronted with his father's imminent death, David unleashes his frustration on his wife's boyfriend. Again. When it's over, David muses as he drives his father home.

"Here's something that, if you want your father to think you're not a silly f&*k, don't slap a guy across the face with a glove. Because if you do that, that's what he will think, unless your a nobleman or something in the nineteenth century, which I'm not."

The turning point comes when he's offered the Hello America job. He goes to his father's living funeral and tells his wife about the job offer, hoping she'll want to reconcile. She tells hims she's marrying her boyfriend. David goes outside to shoot his bow and arrow. When the boyfriend comes out for a smoke, David considers shooting him. When David returns inside to deliver his speech, he delivers his first line: "When I think of my dad, I think of  Bob Seger's Like a Rock," and the power goes out. He never gets to finish the speech.

One of the most poignant moments in the film follows. David  and Robert are sitting in the car. Robert plays Like a Rock on the car stereo, and says, "I don't really get it."

David says, it's this, "And I held firmly to what I felt was right, like a rock." He and his father finally connect. Robert passes on his last nugget of wisdom before he passes:

"In this shit life, we must chuck some things."

Before the movie ends, David gets that job with Hello America. It doesn't save his marriage, but he's finally able to let it go and accept his himself as the person he's truly become, The Weatherman.

His Happily Ever After? He walks around New York City with a bow and bag of arrows slung over his shoulder, and no one throws fast food at him ever again. He's inner transformation has radiated to the external world.

The symbols in the story?

I'd go with: The bow and arrow symbolizing the straight and true path/character; the fast food, (this one's directly addressed in the movie) society's contempt; and that job at Hello America is David inheriting his kingdom— finding his place in the world.

It's a beautiful, low-key, human story. I'm always puzzled by how much I love it, but I do love Nicolas Cage, and as I've been trying to say, for me, it's a fairy tale... and you know, I love fairy tales.