I had such a good time with the Dark Divinations series that I decided to give the same treatment to my own collection of stories, RieTales from Mocha Memoirs–which is an expanded version of the earlier collection RieVisions. (Yikes! That’s some mark-up, but it is out-of-print…) After this set, maybe I will keep going with more anthologies. These are fun.

The first story in the collection is entitled “Beauty within the Briars.” This may be the first of my fairy tale re-envisionings. My version of Sleeping Beauty definitely doesn’t hark back to Disney! Instead, it tells a darker story of twins separated at birth and a princess who feels she is missing something in life.

It was also an exercise in poetic language. I wanted to wax as lyrical as possible and still be writing prose.

It is based on the concept of yin and yang, which, in turn, explores dualism. I think it is my attempt at being philosophical. 🙂