My dieselpunk retelling of the fairy tale “Rapunzel” was included in an anthology edited by Rhonda Parrish and published by World Weaver Press in 2019. My short story appears alongside 13 others in Grimm, Grit, and Gasoline: Dieselpunk & Decopunk Fairy Tales.
The “punked up fairy tales” collection continues with other eras and options of aesthetics. This was one of the first fairy tale retellings I have written, and I contributed a blog post to the World Weaver Press blog about my writing and rewriting process.
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About this Anthology
The first of a series of “punked up” fairy tale retellings edited by Rhonda Parrish and published by World Weaver Press, Grimm, Grit, and Gasoline is an anthology focused on Dieselpunk retellings. (Dieselpunk is usually described as if technology had stopped advancing at the diesel internal combustion engine, so that 1930-1940s tech and aesthetic.
This anthology is full of beautiful fairy tale retellings. “Steel Dragons of a Luminous Sky” by Brian Trent and “The Loch” by Zannier Alejandra are among stories that have stuck with me for years since this anthology came out.
About the story “Ramps and Rocket”
I wrote a blog post for World Weaver Press about “Scattering Rapunzel’s Hairpins” and the writing process for this story. This describes the first iteration of a process I’ve since refined a great deal. Rapunzel is a German word for a salad green called Ramps or Rampion in English, particularly in Appalachian US. Rocket is the British English word for the salad green Arugula. So, yes, my title is basically the start of a decent salad.
The story has lesbian protagonists, and a disabled character, Rocket, plays the role of the “Prince.” This tale was written specifically for this anthology call, but it was also inspired by my own personal work with the Rapunzel fairy tale (as most of my retellings are).