A Riddle for Love

By Lara Nance

I’d like to introduce you to my newest release from Decadent. It’s called A Riddle for Love and it’s a sci-fi novella for the new Beyond Fairytale series.

She’s everything he ever dreamed of…

Dr. Avar Elsier has spent the past ten years developing the ideal human-like android for his company. In his spare time, he’s created the perfect persona for his dream woman that only needs the right body to make her real.

Unfortunately, such a body costs more than he possesses. When an emergency forces him to insert his “woman” into a unit designed for a high-paying customer, he falls in love and cannot bear to let her go.

Will he find a way to make their love last and escape from Mars before his secret is discovered or worse, the woman he loves is lost forever? 

I was in the middle of writing the fourth book in my steampunk adventure series when I received an e-mail from Decadent Publishing about their new Beyond Fairytales line. I was intrigued.

The trailer to introduce it was awesome and engaging. But what really appealed to me is that you would be assigned a Grimm’s fairytale instead of picking one, and you could write it in any genre you wanted.

One of my favorite games is to have someone state the beginning of a sentence and let me make up the rest and reel out a story from the result.  So far, I’ve never been stumped. Stories pop out of my head constantly. I find myself making up stories as I drive, or even as I walk down the dock to my boat.

I’ve made stories from my dreams, stories from magazine articles and urban legends, as well as observing people in a Starbuck’s. I can’t count the times when I’m seeing patients that a story about their life develops in my head from a chance remark they make. (And yes, I have used them in my other books… J)

So, to be given a challenge to write a story based on an assigned Grimm’s fairytale filled me with anticipatory delight. I was so excited to receive my assignment, I kept checking my e-mail every few minutes. I’d already decided whatever I received, I wanted to write in the Sci-fi genre. That upped the ante on the challenge even more.

Then I was assigned, “A Riddling Tale.” Okay, I had a moment of panic I’ll admit. This is more of a riddle than a story and it’s extremely short. How would I pull a novella out of less than a page of fairytale?

But as I said, I like a challenge. The crux of the original tale is that there are three women who are turned into identical flowers by a spell. One of the women is married so she is allowed to take human form and spend nights with her husband, but every morning must return to the field and become a flower with her sisters.

To break the spell, the husband must choose which flower is his wife and pick it. But the catch is that they are identical, how does he tell? He decided by noting that the two flowers who were in the field all night had dew on them and his wife’s flower didn’t. He picks her flower and she becomes human so they could live happily ever after. Sigh….

Yep, seriously, that’s all there is to the story in those two paragraphs.

First, I had to decide what the three identical items would be, and then let the story develop from there. As this was to be sci-fi, the idea of androids came to mind. Three, beautiful identical androids. Their creator, a nerdy but hunky scientist, would fall in love with one of them and then have to save her by figuring out which one she is among the three when they are all deactivated.

Set on Mars, this futuristic tale turned into a fun, sexy adventure about true love and how it can take many forms.  The Beyond Fairytales official bard, Nicodemus, found the tale intriguing and made it one of his favorites to carry across the galaxy and recite to others.

I hope you like this story as well and enjoy a little space action!

XOXOXO  

Lara Nance   

www.laranance.com

Stop by my website for a visit and let me know how you like this new twist to an old tale.

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