Title Post: Heather Tomlinson on Toads and Diamonds

Greetings, blog readers! My name is Heather Tomlinson and I write fantasy novels for teens. Making stuff up seems to be my primary job description and yet, to purposely misquote the Cowardly Lion, “I do believe in research. I do, I do, I do, I do believe in research!”

An odd mantra for a fantasy writer? Maybe. But in my experience, waiting for inspiration is like anticipating spooks. You spend a lot of time looking around and chewing on your pencil, because that fickle creature pops in and out of view at the most inconvenient times. Research, now, a person can control.

Most productive when harnessed together, research and imagination can move the novel-writing along at a fast clip. If I’ve done my homework properly, my made-up setting’s authentic details—dress, food, manners, architecture, the natural world, the weather—will ground the reader in a world where magic forms one element of the whole. Because what’s a fantasy without magic? Not too fantastic.

In fact, my books are often based directly on fairy tales. Once I’ve picked a place and time for my retelling, I read and read and read. For Toads and Diamonds, out this month, I had thought of setting it at Versailles, the 17^th century French court location in which Charles Perrault’s version of the story was first published. Considering that I intended to turn his “good girls get rewarded and bad ones punished” moral inside-out, the setting seemed to call for a similar transformation.

India offered an intriguing possibility. During this same period, French traders were making the hazardous journey to the Mughal Empire to procure jewels and textiles, among other goods, for Louis XIV and his retinue. The Indian and French courts shared a number of similarities: political intrigue, tension between religious factions, a love of luxury and a penchant for displaying it. A girl who spoke jewels would be welcomed by either king. But what of her sister, whose “gift” was to have toads and snakes fall from her lips at every word? A harder sell, to be sure.

Fortunately, research soon turned up the book that convinced me that transplanting this short French tale would bear a novel’s fruit: Morna Livingston’s Steps to Water: The Ancient Stepwells of India. These amazing structures were built to conserve monsoon rainfall through the dry season. In one design, ranks of stairs flank a large tank, providing year-round access to the water as its level changes with the seasons. Garlanded with terraces and pavilions for shade and shelter, many stepwells were surrounded by orchards and gardens irrigated by runoff from the tanks. The photographs gave me goose bumps. Even more than the French story’s prosaic town fountain, this was a community focal point that reeked of magic.

Hello, inspiration! In such a beautiful and mysterious space, anything could happen. Two girls might be granted gifts they don’t understand. And half a world away from the tale’s original setting, attitudes might be just different enough that both sisters, working together, will win through their difficulties.

HEATHER TOMLINSON has taught English in Paris and French in the U.S. She lives on a houseboat in southern California with her engineer husband, her baby boy, and cats X, Y, and Z.