Go Mad (in a good way) with Jim C. Hines’ Mermaids and Princesses

Back in May, author Jim C. Hines was among the many incredibly friendly and cool people my daughter and I met at Penguicon 7.0. (Kelsey still cracks up over a disturbingly hilarious Sesame Street-related story he told during a Humor in Science Fiction panel.) I hadn’t heard of him before the convention, but after talking to him and hearing about the set-up of his book “The Stepsister Scheme,” I immediately added it to my To-Read list.

This summer, it grabbed Kelsey’s interest, too, especially when she read the first chapter one morning, since I’d left the book lying on the kitchen table. It’s good stuff: Snow White, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty are reimagined as take-charge heroines, but the story goes well beyond just tweaking and spoofing the original fairy tales.

The first of three planned sequels, “The Mermaid’s Madness,” was released today, and Jim graciously answered a few questions for me via email in an interview for Wired‘s GeekDad.