Welcome, fellow author Christina Lorenzen.
I can’t wait for readers to discover Christina’s modern-day story of the classic fairy-tale, Rapunzel.
Rapunzel has always been my favorite fairy tale. It’s actually not about the hair or the tower in the sky where she was held prisoner until her daring escape. While all these things do make it a one of a kind story, for me it’s the storyteller that keeps the story close to my heart. When I was a young child, my grandmother would often babysit my brother and I, and Rapunzel was our bedtime story treat. So when my publisher, Forget Me Not Romances, announced she would be doing a collection of novellas featuring contemporary twists on fairy tales, I had to write my own version of Rapunzel.
In my story, Rapunzel’s Lighthouse, I turned the classic tower into a lighthouse. My Rapunzel, Georgie Daniels, is the daughter of the deceased lighthouse keeper. Unlike Rapunzel, who is imprisoned in her tower, Georgie is self-imprisoned within the walls of the lighthouse cottage. Georgie’s mother died when she was a toddler, leaving her to be raised by her doting father. After losing her father two years ago, a man who made her feel loved and secure, she is hurt again when shortly after that her fiancé abandons her. With only occasional trips into town for supplies, Georgie chooses to remain within the safe confines of the lighthouse cottage with Kipling and Keats, her two cats. When Colby Ford, recently retired Navy commander, knocks on her door everything changes.
I had so much fun putting a modern twist on this classic story. After writing it, I pulled out my copy of Grimm’s fairy tales for a lazy day read. Before this story, I hadn’t thought about all the possibilities these fairy tales offer today’s authors. I think that no matter what genre an author writes, there is potential to reinvent these classic tales and bring them to today’s readers. My wheels are turning already turning.
About Christina:
Christina started writing as a young teen, jotting stories in wire ring composition notebooks. Her first typewriter made it faster to get all those
stories out of her head and down on paper. Her love of writing has sustained her through a myriad of jobs that included hairdresser, legal secretary, waitress and door-to-‑door saleswoman.
Luckily for her, writing proved to be successful and a lot less walking than going door to door. Rapunzel’s Lighthouse, her sixth book, is especially close to her heart, having grown up with her Nana telling her the fairy tale as a bedtime story dozens of times. She is also the author of Healing Seas, Harvest Blessings, Snow Globe Reunion, A Husband for Danna and a Wife for Humphrey. She is busy working on her next story that takes place in 1908, part of a collection of stories that Downton Abbey fans will adore. When she isn’t writing or reading, she can be found walking her dog, talking to her herd of cats and spending time with her family.
To find out about Christina’s upcoming releases, visit her website at http://christinalorenzen.com/.
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Georgie Daniels rarely leaves the cottage attached to the Salt Cliffs lighthouse, except when necessary for a trip into town for food. For the last two years, since the lighthouse was declared a historic landmark, she’s lived in the cottage out of sight and, she hopes, out of the minds of the town. With the defunct lighthouse in arrears and in disrepair, she knows it’s only a matter of time before the lighthouse will be on the auction block of the town hall’s steps. With long hair that no one has seen before, except in the fabled fairy tale Rapunzel, things were going well until new neighbor Colby Ford shows up on her doorstep.
Colby Ford didn’t intend to retire from the Navy, at least not right now. When he finds himself with an injury that pushes him into an early retirement, the possibility of opening a sailing school in the coastal town of Salt Cliffs is his only hope. Renting the Moore cottage, he needs to find the right location for his school and a place to store the boats. While in town, a conversation with a store keeper makes his curiosity about the lighthouse burn even stronger – what kind of woman lives alone in a defunct lighthouse? In need of paint for the cottage porch, he pays Georgie a visit. Feeling like he’s seen her before, that’s when it hits him – Georgie Daniels is a real life Rapunzel. And this Rapunzel wants nothing to do with being neighborly. Until she’s forced to save him during a storm.
Georgie and Colby have both had their share of disappointments and heartache. Just as Georgie is beginning to open up to him, a letter she finds threatens to shut her down again. Can their shared desperate need for a home bring them together?
I’m grabbing my copy and can’t wait to start reading! Thanks for sharing with us today, Christina.
June, thank you so much for having me here today! Hope you enjoy Rapunzel’s Lighthouse:)
I can’t wait to read this story. It’s next in my lineup. Thanks for sharing with my readers today.