A Christmas Fairytale

I was listening to a World Service broadcast early this morning and heard a fascinating story about Eowyn Ivey, a young writer in Alaska. She works in a bookshop part time, and one day was putting a Russian fairy tale Snegurochka (The Snow Maiden) onto a shelf. Snegurochka goes with Ded Moroz (Grandfather Frost - pictured in my post on Sunday Dec 18) in Russian folklore. She opened the book, found herself drawn into the story, and was inspired to write a novel. She abandoned the project she had been working on for five years, and within a few months had completed 100 pages of her story. She met a book agent for a two minute 'pitch' slot at a writer's conference in Homer, Alaska who asked to see the book so far, and to cut a long story short now has a prospective best selling book deal http://www.eowynivey.com/snowchild.shtml. Her book is being 'trailed' with a charming short animated clip online - see http://lettersfromalaska.wordpress.com/2011/12/19/the-snow-child-book-trailer/ What a wonderful story for Christmas! I have ordered a copy of the book which comes out in the UK on Feb 16 2012.