I began this story after reading a collection of short stories by Angela Carter. “Snow White” has always been a favorite tale of mine and I have placed this re-telling in nineteenth-century rural Louisiana. Near Vacherie, Louisiana, there are not only swamps but also old beautiful plantations. Some of them are restored but others are abandoned and ruined. The places I have seen captured my imagination and I combined them with my impression of Snow White as an object of envy and lust. My heroine Blanche is a hard-working girl who longs to be rich and to live in New Orleans, where her father was born. She is threatened constantly by the attention of the rustics who live around her. Her stepmother beats her when she finds Blanche in Jean-Jacques’ arms.

When Blanche runs away from home she is beguiled by Philipe de la Roche, who persuades her to live in New Orleans in a fancy house with seven women. Blanche does not realize that the women are prostitutes. The farmer Jean-Jacques, who loves Blanche, finds her before she is raped by a drunk man. Only Blanche’s stepmother Muriel threatens their happiness with a powerful spell. Blanche must belong to her or will forfeit her life.


I worked on "Blanche" until far into the wee hours of this morning and now am looking at it wondering what I was thinking. I am also wondering what I was thinking by spending so much time on my website and it still looks awful! I must not know how to program anymore. That's an understatement considering I don't touch HTML anymore. I am all about WYSIWYG editors and I am even now using Geocities' goofy PageBuilder which is good in some ways but severely deficient in others.

Anyway "Blanche" wa something I wrote when I was in college. I became interested in Angela Carter after my writing professor pointed out some similarities between my writing and hers. To be honest her "Snow-child" was an inadequate telling of Snow White in my opinion and I wondered how to give the myth new life. Her main interpretation of the story stayed with me, however, placing Snow White as an object of lust and envy. My "Blanche" is a Cajun girl living in a swamp shack with her stepmother who does voodoo. Several men court Blanche, five, not seven. I have not finished the story but sure did a lot last night till 3 a.m.! and am now wondering why I did.

"Blanche, " like "Cymbeline" is relegated as a "web site story" because even if I could publish it I'm not sure I would want to because it seems awfully weak. At the same time it exhibits the true flavor of my writing unlike "The Shrine" and "The Beekeeper" which both need re-writing badly.

What impressed on me strongly last night was that my web site and writing files have NO organization. I still don't know what to do about them. I don't know whether to make my files HTML or DOC and half of them are one and half are the other.

The sort of writing I'm trying to publish is more clear-cut. I have temporarily abandoned that futuristic to finish "Winter's Light" my pet story from college that has grown to 235 pages. I am also working on "Christine" which is less gothic in nature at least in the traditional sense. Now that I have quit my terrible job I have abandoned all of the weirdo novels I started-- whose excerpts I may have to publish just to impress to you that I had somewhat lost my mind-- in favor of things more publishable. Especially considering that I intend to make a living out of this.

Labels: story notes