A couple of months ago, Adrienne Monson, author of the vampire series The Blood Inheritance Trilogy, came to me with an intriguing idea. Would I be interested in joining four other authors in creating a series of reimagined fairy tales to be published as boxed sets? Each of us would tell the same fractured fairy tale in a different genre. The first challenge was Beauty and the Beast.

It sounded like fun, and a 20,000 word novella was something that fit into my writing schedule. The other authors had selected their genres, and someone was already writing an under the ocean-based tale. Off the top of my head, I offered to tackle something sci-fi based.

But now I had a problem: over the next two years, I’d be investing a significant amount of writing time to creating five novellas based on traditional Western fairy tales, something that might not interest the main audience I’m trying to connect with — people with a passion for Hawaiian history and island culture. Fragmenting my audience didn’t seem like a good idea.

And that’s when it hit me.

So often, when it comes to Polynesian culture, our focus is on preserving and interpreting the past in ways that enrich the present. What about the future? What would some of the world’s greatest explorers and ocean voyageurs do with the universe as their ocean and planets as their islands? How do traditional Hawaiian values and ways of communal living translate to all the practical challenges of living on a space station?

Why not Hawaiians in space? Beauty as Nani, from the planet of Hawaiki. But the Beast will blow your mind.

Futuristic Polynesian twists on Western fairy tales. It’s going to be a thing.

The Fairy Tale Five present: Fractured Beauty, available June 1, 2017, and published by Tork Media. Stay tuned.