Q: PLAIN KATE reads very much like a traditional, though much fleshed-out, folktale. Did any folktale traditions or mythic cycles especially inspire you to write this novel?
A: Right before I started Plain Kate, I read this huge collection of Russian fairy tales. I love fairy tales and I thought I knew them, but the Russian ones blew me away. They are like dark chocolate - very dark chocolate. They’re full of white nights and strange transformations, villains that read as tragic heroes, doomed heroes that still stand tall.
Plain Kate ended up with a setting that’s more Eastern European than anything, but that book of Russian tales cast the spell under which I wrote it. I know I got their weather and the garlic and a minor character named Niki. I hope I got some of their sad triumph, too.
Q: Your story begins “a long time ago”” but it seems to take place in another, more magical world. Do you envision Plain Kate’s world as a different one, or, just as in fairy tales and folklore, our world viewed differently?
A: I think Kate's world of “a long time ago” is the same world as “once upon a time.” It’s not our world, in the same way “the king of that country” is never one of the ones on the list from school. But it’s not really a world I invented either; it’s one I inherited and explored a little.
