Of Beast and Beauty Blog Tour Stop: Guest Post

I'm really glad and excited to be taking part in Rockstar Book Tours' blog tour for Stacey Jay's Of Beast and Beauty. I am currently reading Of Beast and Beauty and it is absolutely original and gorgeous so far, and the world (which is on an alien planet) is so interesting and captivating. In fact, I found the world in the novel to be so interesting and captivating, that for the guest post I asked Stacey Jay what her inspiration was for writing her Beauty and the Beast retelling on an alien planet. Check out what Stacey has to say after some information for Of Beast and Beauty!

Of Beast and Beauty

Stacey Jay

Series: None

Release: July 23rd, 2013

Publisher: Delacorte Press

Purchase: Amazon | BD | B&N

In the domed city of Yuan, the blind Princess Isra, a Smooth Skin, is raised to be a human sacrifice whose death will ensure her city’s vitality. In the desert outside Yuan, Gem, a mutant beast, fights to save his people, the Monstrous, from starvation. Neither dreams that together, they could return balance to both their worlds.

Isra wants to help the city’s Banished people, second-class citizens despised for possessing Monstrous traits. But after she enlists the aid of her prisoner, Gem, who has been captured while trying to steal Yuan’s enchanted roses, she begins to care for him, and to question everything she has been brought up to believe.

As secrets are revealed and Isra’s sight, which vanished during her childhood, returned, Isra will have to choose between duty to her people and the beast she has come to love.

Another world, very like ours… 

(If Earth were sentient, could talk, and mutate creatures as it saw fit.)

What would Earth say if it could speak human language? It’s something I’ve always wondered. 

I have imagined it would be something like:

“Humans suck.”

Or possibly:

“Quit sucking, humans!”

Or maybe:

“For the love of all that is holy, if you humans don’t stop sucking, I will open my crust and you will all plummet into the molten heat of my core!”

Giving a voice to the planet in my off-planet, fantasy retelling of Beauty and the Beast was one of my favorite parts of creating this new world. 

From the beginning, I wanted to set Of Beast and Beauty on another world, to underline my thesis that you can take humanity out of its element, but you can’t take ‘the suck’ out of humanity. Even in this foreign place, where humans have sought refuge after causing Earth to become uninhabitable, they all too soon begin repeating the same old mistakes. 

But this time, the planet joins the conversation in a different way. 

In this version of the story, the planet plays the role of the enchantress who curses the selfish prince in the Beauty and the Beast tale, transforming him into a beast. Initially, the planet asks its new human inhabitants to change their destructive ways, but eventually it resorts to cursing the humans, in hopes that cruelty will persuade them where kindness has not. 

Instead, the planet is transformed by the darker parts of human nature, and a wonderful opportunity for transformation is lost. Beauty and the Beast has always been a transformation story: A beast is transformed by kindness, a creature learns to love when it is loved for the first time, and a boy and a girl find a Happy Ever After. I wanted Isra and Gem, my Beauty and Beast, to have their own individual transformations—and a love story worthy of my favorite fairy tale—but I also wanted to take the story a step further, to show how powerful love can be when we take the strength we gain from our partners and turn it out into the world. 

It’s in those moments that magic happens, and when I imagine our world sighing:

“That’s better.”

Or perhaps:

“I knew you could turn it around.”

Or maybe:

“The only thing more impressive than humanity’s capacity for destruction, is its capacity for love and kindness.”

Thanks for having me to the blog, Blythe, and I hope my readers enjoy Of Beast and Beauty.

***

Giveaway

As part of the Of Beast and Beauty blog tour, Rockstar Book Tours has generously offered up ten finished copies of Of Beast and Beauty to ten lucky winners. Good luck! Note: This giveaway is US ONLY.

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Stacey Jay is a recovering workaholic (or at least working hard at recovering) with two small children, and a passion for playing pretend for a living. She’s been a full time mom-writer since 2005 and can't think of anything she'd rather be doing. Her former careers include theatre performer, professional dancer, poorly paid C-movie actress, bartender, waiter, math tutor, and yoga instructor.

In her very limited spare time, Stacey enjoys cooking elaborate dinners and eating them very slowly, dressing up in costumes with her sons, and drinking wine with her husband. She loves to hear from readers and personally answers every single email she receives.