Created by Allison Pang and Irma “Aimo” Ahmed, the story started as a webcomic and continues to be persevering with there. Check out a synopsis and artwork for every installment beneath.
Fox & Willow Book 01: Came a Harper
When Jessa, the miller’s daughter, affords easy comforts to Willow and Gideon in return for a bit of work, the runaway princess and her fox spirit companion are greater than keen to take Jessa up on it. After all, being on the street has its risks, and the respite whereas they seek for solutions to Gideon’s cursed collar is greater than welcome.
Fox & Willow Book 02: To The Sea
Continuing their journey to elevate Gideon’s curse, Willow and her fox companion have been tasked with escorting Princess Nuala to be wed to a prince from one other kingdom. But regardless of Nuala’s hopes of making a joyful union, not all is what it appears between the prince and his betrothed. When his mistress, a barefoot lady with out a tongue seems, the bonds of friendship between the 2 girls develop, whilst a storm brews on the horizon.
Fox & Willow Book 03: Blinded By the Light
With time operating out to elevate Gideon’s curse… Willow and her fox spirit companion discover themselves within the port metropolis of Tamiris, beneath the watchful eye of a smoking volcano.
Pang shared perception into the sequence:
Fox & Willow has been a really long-running work of the guts for each Aimo and me. We began it again in 2012 (though we’d been planning it for a short time earlier than then, at the least as an idea). When the 2 of us determined to work collectively, the concept was to begin with one thing small—a one-shot, maybe—however throughout the early levels the concepts grew a bit sooner and bigger than we anticipated, and Fox & Willow was born.
We each knew we needed to do one thing with transforming fairy tales, however we weren’t solely positive which of them. I’ve a very worn-out copy of Grimm’s Complete Fairy Tales that I had constantly learn and reread rising up, so I used to be acquainted with most of the frequent European tales and was trying to department out a bit of into some Asian mythology and folktales. Aimo, being from Malaysia, needed to discover extra of the European tales! We compromised by retelling European fairy tales, however with Asian protagonists and various settings.
I’m a panster by commerce after I write, so I not often define something, however for this I needed to be very cautious to not write us right into a nook that we couldn’t undo, provided that we’d be importing as we went. With that in thoughts, we determined we needed to do a unique story for every chapter that might have its personal arc, however that the 2 important characters—Willow and Gideon—would even have an overreaching arc that spanned the entire story, with parts from every story including to their very own improvement.
For probably the most half it’s been a really easy course of. We decide the tales we need to cowl—fairy tales, homicide ballads, folklore, mythology—no matter mixture we really feel like utilizing. I write a script and tweak it, and tweak it, and generally tweak it extra as Aimo’s artwork makes it take form, and I notice there’s a greater method to point out what we needed to say. She does thumbnails every week of the varied scenes/pages, and we modify from there—although to be sincere, her interpretations are often good and often don’t want a lot adjusting.
It’s much less of a plan once we give you every chapter’s idea, and extra of a “what if?” What if the mermaid ran off with the princess in The Little Mermaid? What if Rapunzel had a literal tiger mother, and the tower was truly a volcanic mountain? What if Red Riding Hood was in a poly relationship with the woodsman AND the wolf?
In all such instances, we needed to broaden upon a story that was typically neglected within the authentic telling. Women characters in fairy tales are sometimes written with restricted company, or as objects (e.g. prizes for wayward princes), missing within the capacity to alter themselves or the world round them.
And whereas there could also be myriad causes for this, it’s the shortage of element that forestalls us from actually understanding who they’re. Beyond the “what if” method, the Fox & Willow tales are extra about exploring the probabilities of these characters and the worlds they transfer by means of. But we needed to attempt to do this organically, so that every piece flows in a pure rhythm with the story unfolding simply because it must.
And, of course, there’s Willow and Gideon’s story. With every story, a chunk of their very own historical past is revealed—their motivations and points as they seek for not solely a method to launch Gideon’s curse, however for a path towards rectifying the tatters of their relationship and understanding what it means to simply accept themselves for who they are surely.
Fox & Willow may be bought on the writer’s web site, the place you too can preorder quantity 3 earlier than its September launch.
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