Page 99 of Monster Among the Roses (Fairy Tale Quartet 1)

THE TABLE

Henry David Thoreau’s writing table:

The writing table mentioned in the story is an actual thing. It really is green and looks as if it could fall apart any moment. In the story, Isobel told Shaw her father bought it from the Pratchett Museum, which is a fictitious place. As far as I know, the Concord Museum currently has possession of the table. http://www.concordmuseum.org/assets/4.thoreau_desk.jpg

THE PAINTING

Iron Mill in The Hague by Vincent van Gogh:

This painting is a real thing. http://vggallery.com/misc/auctions.htm It appears the painting was last up for auction in 2007 and was sold for a steal, only 321,600 pounds in London. And if you’ve never seen the painting of van Gogh’s bedroom, here’s a replica to help you envision what the room looked like: https://news.artnet.com/app/news-upload/2016/02/van-gogh-bedroom-01-1200x471.jpg

NAMES IN THE STORY:

You can probably tell most of the names were adapted from the Disney version of Beauty and the Beast. Belle became Isobel, Gaston equals Gloria, Lumiere turned into Lewis. Mrs. Potts became Mrs. Pan, Cogsworth to Constance, and I originally had Chip becoming Charlie, but I liked how Kip rhymed with Chip. Except Kip was so close to Kit, and Kit Harrington is my absolute favorite actor on the show Game of Thrones, so that is how Kit got his name.

Shaw…who knows where Shaw came from! I just liked it. I have this strange compulsion to write enough heroes that I cover every letter in the alphabet. And I noticed I hadn’t yet written a hero whose name started with S, so to me, this meant his name had to start with an S! He could’ve very easily been Sam or Sebastian or Scully, but for some reason, I went with Shaw.

I can tell you where the name Hollander came from, though. At some point, I was going to have Shaw and Isobel have a conversation where Shaw talked about his great-grandfather, Gene, who survived the Holocaust. I wanted his surname to be authentic, so I searched for names of Holocaust survivors, until I found a Eugene Hollander who wrote the book From the Hell of the Holocaust: A Survivor’s Story. I ended up not writing that actual conversation in the book, but that is how I arrived at the name Shaw Hollander, nonetheless! It’s strange how my mind works, isn’t it?

ROSES:

I had to do a little research about roses becau

se, like Shaw, I knew nothing. My goal was to name a really rare rose for Isobel to grow, and that’s how I came across the name of the “Midnight Supreme Rose Bush” online. The seeds were for sale, and they were supposed to grow black roses with blue tips. That sounded pretty rare—and cool—to me, so I put them into the story…only to find out with a tad more research that black roses with blue tips were a fraud, because they didn’t even exist! Gasp, I know! The nerve of them to fool me like that. I then stumbled across this color wheel guide for roses: http://www.rosefile.com/RosePages/ColorsOfTheRose.html so I could learn what possible colors roses really could be. Still feeling deceived, I did a little more research to learn if you could even grow roses from seeds (I know that was a silly worry! I mean, how would any rose get here if at least one didn’t originally come from some seed?), and that’s where I learned about something called stratification to get a rose seed to take root. I did cheat a little on that part, though. Rose seeds really need to be in their cold/wet stratification treatment for four to sixteen weeks, and I don’t think Isobel’s rose seeds stratified that long before the baby roses bloomed. I’m such a cheater. Anywho…instead of taking out the fake “Midnight Supreme Rose Bush,” I decided to make it Shaw’s goof as well, which steered the story in the direction it ended up going!

BURN SURVIVORS:

I wasn’t accurate on everything Isobel went through. Aside from hearing problems, she probably would have suffered from vision problems too, and some scarred lungs as well as larynx issues, which would probably change her voice. There might also be the possibility of complications bearing children in the future due to all the chest x-rays and medications she would’ve had to take. If you want to read some accurate accounts of amazing real people who not only survived burn wounds but went on to do great things helping others, here’s a good place to go: https://www.phoenix-society.org/stories. You can learn about the man trapped in a burning nightclub under piles of people, who had to dig his way out, only to get hit on the head by a metal beam and yet still managed to find the exit through the smoke and flames. Or the soldier in Iraq who was conscious the whole time his hands were being burned after his convoy drove over a land mine. He went on to be a runner, just like Isobel. But mostly, you’ll learn the support a burn survivor can receive is vast and wonderful, and no one has to go through the years of seclusion that Isobel did. You can always find someone willing to help you if you seek it.

THE FAIRY TALE:

I wanted to learn a couple of the most original versions of Beauty and the Beast before writing the book, but it was impossible to pin down where the story originated! The best answer is eighteenth-century France. Some people say the earliest version came from Charles Perrault (who died in 1703), while some say Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve wrote it in 1740. In one version, Beauty was the youngest of six children. In another version, she was the youngest of three. But in most versions, the Beast caught someone stealing a rose, so I knew that had to stay.

I believe the 1946 movie adaptation came up with Avenant, a villain who wanted to kill the Beast, instead of Beauty’s sisters being the evil culprits. Disney turned Avenant into Gaston, and that’s where I came up with Gloria. It seemed crazy for my Gloria to attempt to physically kill my Beast (Isobel), but I thought she could definitely kill Isobel’s spirit, so that’s what she did.

I liked how the 1978 book Beauty by Robin McKinley and the Disney version made Beauty bookish, so I kept that. Plus, I wanted to keep the main theme that a person needed to express their heart and mind to become worth loving, so I used that too.

There is also a mirror involved in the original fairy tale that helps bring Beauty and the Beast back together at the end, so I found a way for a mirror—without all the cool magical stuff involved—to bring them back together at the end of my tale as well. And that’s how Shaw and Isobel’s story became Shaw and Isobel’s story!

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

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