Dreamtime Fantasy Authors Presents: 20 Facts About "Red, The Wolf"

1. This story is loosely based on "Little Red Riding Hood"--it's got a girl in a red cape named Red, a Granny character (the old woman who raised Red from a small child), a wolf, a "hunter" who pursues a wolf...

2. I first got the idea from watching the show Once Upon A Time which presented Red (or "Ruby") as a werewolf, but she had to keep her identity a secret.

3. The series of comments Red delivers to the Wolf disguised as her granny ("Oh Granny! What big eyes you've got!" and so on) find their way into this story, with three different characters commenting on her "keen nose", her "shrewd eyes", and her "sharp teeth"--keep an eye out for these references!

4. The title came first, from an author I follow producing an urban fantasy novel called "Red The Wolf Tracker"; I began thinking "What if, instead of tracking the wolf or having a wolf as a pet... what if she was the wolf?"

5. I've noticed that whenever "Little Red Riding Hood" featured the main heroine having the ability to change into a wolf, the wolf was still always a threat to the people around her, therefore it became dangerous for anyone to ever discover her secret. I didn't want that. I decided to twist it around by exploring how the dynamics might change if there were people who knew Red was a lycanthrope (wolf shifter), and trusted her in either form.

6. The hardest part? The very beginning. It took me at least two months longer than it should have to get this story rolling because I couldn't figure out how to begin it! I tried three different beginnings, then I attempted another that was a combination of two of the ideas... And the final submission that I ended up going with included none of those opening scenes.

7. This is actually the fifth fairy tale/fantasy story I've twisted! So far in my writing I've done re-tellings of "The Little Mermaid", "Cinderella", "Beauty and The Beast", "Jack and The Beanstalk", and I even wrote a flash fiction once that played around with the connection between Dorothy and her Aunt Em and Uncle Henry from The Wizard of Oz!

8. The name Red was a placeholder at first... but I couldn't come up with a reasonable substitute that wasn't vastly overplayed! So "Red" stuck.

9. The town name "Queston" is also a placeholder. It's "question" without the "i." That's often a convention I use when coming up with place names on the fly--just take a common word and tweak it a little. In my Little Mermaid re-telling, for example, the merfolk kingdom is called "Undersea" because it's under the sea, and the human kingdom is called "Overcliff" because it's situated on a cliff that rises up over the water. (And there's a kingdom on the other side of the channel from Overcliff--across the way, as it were--so I called it... what else? Crossway.)

10. There is more to the story! "Red, The Wolf" will become a serial on my blog, after the anthology is released.

11. I went with a different ending in the anthology version, to better keep the "short story" integrity--but it is only a small part to a much longer serial, so there will be plenty of room for shenanigans and twists!

12. Red's skin as a wolf isn't quite the same as her skin when she's a human. She can be wounded as a human and as long as the wound is bound, her skin is whole as a wolf. It does affect her strength though; the weakness and soreness is still the same, no matter what form she is in.

13. Along that logic, she doesn't shed her clothes when she changes form. There is a scene when she was carrying something in the pocket of her cloak as a human, but in wolf form she cannot access it.

14. Her fur as a wolf takes on a reddish tint. All the families of Queston know what the Red Wolf looks like. They teach their children what to look for, and train them to trust her and only her. There are a few who know of her shifting capabilities, but most of the villagers believe that the Red Wolf is the familiar of the red-caped Guardian. She doesn't correct them.

15. There is a particular flower that only grows high in the mountains above Queston. It's red in color and the blossoms look like a little hooded cape, so they're called "crimson hoods." Crimson hoods can be boiled to release the essence, which carries spectacular healing properties for just about any ailment. Most often, people like Deborah Garrity will mix the concentrated essence with oil and beeswax into a salve for wounds and sore muscles--something Red experiences quite often, in her line of work!

16. In the course of the serial version, it comes to a point when Red shifts into a wolf to track another wolf that has been causing trouble in the village, but when she tries to shift back, she is unable to do so.

17. I made the other wolf white because I had written an opening scene where the wolf actually hid among the sheep and escaped detection until "the Red Wolf" showed up... I canned that scene, but kept the color of the wolf.

18. While she's stuck as a wolf, Red is going to encounter someone who can see she is a wolf, but is unable to do anything about it... while the person who is able to help her change forms cannot perceive that she is a shapeshifter.

19. I even referenced another fairy tale in the midst of this one! Red gets wounded in wolf form, and a stranger encounters her. He takes her in and tends her wounds, and calls her "Beauty." Guess which fairy tale that is?

20. Dreamtime Damsels and Fatal Femmes is a charity anthology! As with Dreamtime Dragons, the Dreamtime Fantasy Authors continue to support the Abbington Ferret Refuge in Northamptonshire, England.

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If you found these facts interesting, be sure to look for "Red, The Wolf" within the covers of Dreamtime Damsels and Fatal Femmes, by the Dreamtime Fantasy Authors!

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