Monday, my short story Red Moon Rising came out in the Straying From the Path anthology from Drollerie Press. So as usual, here’s the backstory on its creation.
I’m not sure what magazine I read it in, but some years back I came across a Red Riding Hood story in which the narrator makes an off-hand remark to the effect, why is the wolf always a male? The story didn’t do much with the idea, but I immediately started thinking that if Red meets a she-wolf, the dynamic of the story changes. A lot.
So I started out with a story in which Red meets a wolf, discovers it’s not the male she was expecting … and then I was stumped. It was my friend and infrequent but invaluable beta-reader Dori who suggested some sort of maiden/mother/crone theme to add to the story; I tried it, and it clicked. Red was now a maiden in a world where the moon didn’t move in the sky, because a long time ago, the world’s cycles became frozen. But it’s about time for that to change …
Since I’d had success setting an earlier fairy-tale fantasy, Jack Be Nimble, in the present, I did the same with Red. It all came together … but not in the eyes of most of the editors I submitted to. One told me that they simply see too many Red Riding Hood stories to be interested, which isn’t that surprising: If you’ve ever seen Tex Avery’s Red Hot Riding Hood cartoon, it starts with Red complaining (accurately) that the story has been done for cartoons too many times (leading Avery to transfer it to a nightclub setting).
Fortunately, I stumbled across Drollerie, which happened to be doing a Red Riding Hood anthology … and the rest is history. And for anyone who’d like more history, Little Red Riding Hood Uncloaked is an excellent analysis of the many different versions of Little Red’s tale.
