Kat Howard, author of Roses and Rot, joins us to talk about the truth behind fairy tales. Plus, we’re giving away one copy of her novel!
About ‘Roses and Rot’
When Imogen and her sister Marin are offered fellowships at the prestigious arts retreat at Melete, Imogen sees it as an opportunity to reconnect: a chance for them to finally be sisters again, in a place where nothing and no one from their rocky past can get to them. Even better, they can bond over supporting each other’s art — writing for Imogen, dance for Marin — as they push themselves to improve.
But Melete is not as it seems. Throughout the campus, emotions run wild and destructive. For Imogen, there are strange visions, simple paths turning to labyrinths, and the constant feeling that she is being watched.
Under all of its beauty, there is a secret at Melete: a secret that could bring fame, success, and even love to Imogen and Marin, but not without cost. Soon, Imogen finds that fairy tales can quickly turn into nightmares, as she is pitted against the sister she thought she knew. In her debut novel, Howard creates a dark, daring and adventurous modern-day fairy tale, posing the question: what would you sacrifice in the name of success?
Glass slippers, poisoned apples, and true stories by Kat Howard
When I sat down to write Roses and Rot, I knew it would be a story that would be full of fairy tales. I also knew that — if I did my job and wrote the book that I wanted to — it would be true.
I know how that sounds — even though we’re on the internet, I can see you slowly backing away. I’m not saying that I think fairy tales are true in the sense that they actually happened. (Though, really, if you’re heading into the woods and there’s an old lady waiting at the forest’s edge, maybe be nice to her? Just to be on the safe side.) But I think — and more importantly, for the purposes of my book, Imogen, my main character thinks — there are truths that can be found in them.
So what does it mean for a story to be true, especially in the context of things — the Fae, magic, bargains for guaranteed artistic success — that aren’t? What does it mean to write a true fairy tale?
For me, that means to peel my way down to the core of the story. To see its heart, to listen for the thing that resonates. It means to think in symbols, and to show their underlying meaning. We all know there aren’t talking mirrors, ready to point out the fairest, but we also know there are parents and step-parents who are willing to poison their children. There aren’t enchanted beasts waiting for true love to return them to their human form, but I think we all know what it is to hope to be seen for our true self, to be forgiven our occasionally beastly natures, and to be loved for who we are.
In Roses and Rot, Imogen thinks in fairy tales. They were a refuge for her when she was a child — a place where she could believe in “happily ever after” and that magic words like those might be a possible ending for her story. They were a place where she saw a way out:
I envied the girls in the fairy tales, sent by stepmothers to sleep in the ashes or in the barn with the beasts. The girls who ran. Smart girls, brave girls. Girls who escaped. Girls who saw what they wanted their fate to be and clawed for it.
As she grew older, fairy tales became the way she thought about telling stories — the stories that were most important to her. Because only in the impossibility of a fairy tale could she give voice to the truth inside of her stories. And this is one of those places where Imogen and I overlap — I write fantasy because it’s a genre that allows me to start with the metaphor. I can begin with the idea that monsters are real, and move on from there.
Because let’s face it — we all know monsters are real.
It’s that sort of truth that I talk about when I say I’m going to write a true fairy tale.
My book takes place in a kind of once upon a time, but that time is also now. There are monsters, even though most of them look — and some of them are — human. There is a forest — in the case of Roses and Rot I made that literal — where the story happens. There is a task to be done, and it seems impossible, like it might almost break Imogen. There is an ending. It’s not a completely happy one.
You go into the woods to find your story. If you are brave, if you are fortunate, you walk out of them to find your life.
And if I told it right, it’s true.
About the author
Kat Howard’s short fiction has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award, anthologized in best of and annual best of collections, and performed on NPR. Roses and Rot is her debut novel. She lives in New Hampshire.