Stalking Shadows by Cyla Panin5/8/2023 I usually start with a spark of an idea - place, time, magic - and the main character. When coming up with new book ideas, what comes to you first plot or the characters? I named my main character, Marie, after Mary-Jeanne Valet. If it was two sisters who were the unwilling terrorizers - one as a beast and one as the person to selects people to die. I started thinking about that, and what a story like Beauty and the Beast would be like if the girls in the story held much more of the power. I read all the articles I could find and learned that a young girl named Marie-Jeanne Valet fought off the beast and won. When I found out about the historical mystery of the Beast of Gévaudan, which was a beast of some kind that killed many people in the Gévaudan valley in France in the 18th century, I was fascinated by this really awful thing that we still didn’t have a solid explanation for. I’ve always loved the original, more gritty versions on fairytales. STALKING SHADOWS is a feminist, gothic retelling of Beauty and the Beast, where Marie must select her sister’s victims to protect her, but when a child turns up dead she’s forced to break the curse or face who’s really become a monster. How excited are you for people to read your book? Can you tell us a little bit about Stalking Shadow? Hi Cyla, thank you for being on my blog today to discuss your debut YA fantasy novel Stalking Shadows.
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