Mrs. Beast (PRINCESS BEAST)

An enchantingly dark story about what became of the great fairy tale beauties after they said “I DO”. The story begins with Beauty, who shortly after marrying the Prince realized she preferred her loving Beast to the vain and eccentric Prince. Leaving the comforts of the castle behind, she embarks on a quest to find Elora, the enchantress who changed the beast into a Prince, and convince her to change him back into the Beast. Her quest takes her through Grimm Land, a place where angst clings and spreads like lichen, and where she meets Snow White, Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella and learns what became of them after they married their princes. Snow White lives in a commune deep in the woods with the Seven Dwarfs, their seven wives and many children. Rapunzel lives in the low end of Storyendburg and makes her living on the streets. Sleeping Beauty is an opium addict living in the Kingdom of Dreams, and Cinderella hides behind a veil refusing to accept the toll aging has taken. Mrs. Beast turns fairy tale beauty inside out and invites the reader to do the same in this delicious twist on these fairy tale classics.

About the Author

In the mid-1980's, Ditchoff worked at WFSL-TV47 in Lansing, Michigan as head copywriter/creative consultant and then as a Graduate Teaching Assistant at Michigan State University. During this period, her early fiction and poetry was published in various literary magazines. Ditchoff's first book, Poetry: One, Two, Three, was published by Interact Press, an educational publisher, in 1989, as a guide for teaching poetry in the classroom. In 1993, Ditchoff was recognized in Who's Who in Writers, Editors & Poets: United States & Canada, 1992-1993 for her significant literary contributions. Ditchoff's first novel, The Mirror of Monsters and Prodigies, Coffee House Press, 1995, was a semi-fictional oral history of dwarves, giants, conjoined twins, bearded women, and other special people. The book was featured in a segment on NPR's All Things Considered. In 2003, Ditchoff's second novel, Seven Days & Seven Sins, was published by Shaye Areheart Books at Random House. Labeled a modern-day Our Town, the novel explored the subtle tragedies and the hope for redemption tucked deep inside every house in an average suburban neighborhood in Lansing, Michigan. Ditchoff moved to Liverpool in 2006 and completed her third novel, Mrs. Beast, about the lives of the Grimm's Fairy Tales princesses after they said "I Do." Stewart O'Nan, author of Snow Angels, said: "Mrs. Beast riffs on the story of Beauty and the Beast in a funky, contemporary way, much like Anne Sexton's Transformations took on the fairy tale, or John Gardner in his children's books. Pamela is a writer of great talent, ambition, and accomplishment." Mrs. Beast was published by Stay Thirsty Press, a division of Stay Thirsty Media, Inc., in March 2009, first as an eBook on the Amazon Kindle Platform for the Kindle, the iPhone and the iPod touch. In September, 2010, Stay Thirsty Press published Ditchoff's sequel to Mrs. Beast, Princess Beast. Pamela Ditchoff lives in Liverpool, Nova Scotia.

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