Re-using old myths, legends, and fairytales

Writers have always re-told myths, legends and fairytales.  Sheri Tepper had great fun with her retelling  of Sleeping Beauty.  Her Beauty is a sassy, time-travelling character who compares and contrasts the best and worst things of each time period she travels through.

Yesterday I finished reading Julie Kagawa's young adult book Talon.  The book has been much hyped, and I've read many enthusiastic reviews of it.  I was curious to see if the book lived up to them. The story is a contemporary retelling of the George and the Dragon myth, set in Southern California, and including a teen romance.  But the book is also a deeper examination of duty versus love, and shows us the evils of indoctrination.  And it's a damned good read.

Rick Riordhan has had great success with his books turning the gods of Olympus into contemporary children's stories.  And Kathy Reichs has re-worked the werewolf trope in her Virals series.  There the teenagers aren't bitten, but are infected with a virus that gives them their superpowers.

This set me thinking about using myths and legends in my own work.  I'm currently re-writing a stand-alone book that was originally a young adult adventure into the first two books of a new adult series.  My heroine Aris is human, but the creatures she spends most of her time with in the book are the alien Ur-Vai.  The Ur-Vai indulge my fantasies of what big cats would look like if they'd become the highest intelligence dominant species on a planet.

I've already decided they need a spirituality.  But what to use?  Gods, goddesses, and religions arise out of the environmental and cultural situation of the people of that faith, so their gods and goddesses should be cat-related.  I think I should delve into Egyptian cat beliefs for a start. So far, I've decided that Yull's Ussin tribe worship the Dark Huntress, a powerful dark big cat goddess.  I'm not sure what the legends concerning her are, so will need to work these out.  And as the Ur-Vai are fiercely tribal, and each tribe has their own god/goddess, I'll need to invent a few more individuals for them to worship.  

Myths, legends, and fairytales endure because they deal with universal themes and truths, and I think they'll continue to be a source of inspiration for writers for a long time to come.

Wendy Metcalfe is the author of Panthera : Death Spiral and the Panthera : Death Song, and the short story collection Otherlives.