Deborah Wright | ROMANCE & FAIRIES

I have been a full-time writer for 15 years and I have published seven bestselling novels, but my firm favourite still remains THE REBEL FAIRY. The novel is a modern version of "A Midsummer Night's Dream." It is set in Primrose Hill, London and focuses on four twentysomethings who become the victims of Charlie and Puck, two mischievous fairies who start to put love spells on them, weaving a web of romantic chaos. Whilst Puck is a handsome, flirtatious, quick-witted fairy, Charlie is red-haired and a size fourteen fairy. She regularly tries to go to Fairy Slimming, the fairy equivalent of Weight Watchers (though when she is only allowed to eat a tiny piece of bark with a dollop of moss on the top, she soon finds herself giving up).

I first became enchanted by fairies when I read about the Cottingley Fairy Hoax as a child. It still fascinates me to this day, for it was a hoax that lasted seventy years - arguably one of the most successful hoaxes ever. It all began from such a small confrontation - two girls, Frances and Elsie, were playing in the stream by their house. Frances fell in and was told off by her mother for having a dirty dress; she defended herself by saying that she had been ‘playing with fairies'. With mischievous vengeance, the girls decided to prove their story. They cut out fairy pictures from a book, stuck them to hatpins and took photographs.

They had no idea that a few hours of fun would lead to such mayhem. At the time, British society was shellshocked from the horrors of the First World War and spiritualism was very popular, for people were desperate to believe in an afterlife. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a keen follower of spiritualism and he published the girls' photographs in The Strand, declaring that this was proof that fairies existed. The edition sold out within 3 days. It was extremely divisive as people became either cynics or believers. Conan Doyle carried on believing in fairies right up until his death at age of 71. He often got his gardener's eight-year-old daughter to sit on the roots of an old tree whilst his gramophone blared spiritual music, hoping that she would lure fairies into the garden which he would then photograph. Sadly, they never showed...

In Victorian times, fairies were wildly popular - as Charlie says in THE REBEL FAIRY, "Back then, we didn't get out of bed for less than ten thousand petals a day...." In modern times, however, they lament the fact that they are less popular. So they decide to weave some magic around a human couple called Jack and Katie, who had been best friends for most of their lives. Jack is a laddish guy who can't settle down; Katie is divorced and determined not to fall in love ever again. The fairies do their best to bring them together - but then things start to go wrong...

When THE REBEL FAIRY was published in 2002, my publishers were quite nervous as to whether it was going to be a success. The market had been flooded with Bridget Jones spin-offs and within the women's fiction genre, nobody had mixed up magic/fantasy and romance, so it was seen as something very unusual and risky! I was so relieved when it went straight into the bestsellers and I received lots of lovely letters and emails from women who had read and loved the book, as well as some fantastic amazon reviews. NOW magazine reviewed it as ‘Deborah Wright does for the fairy world what J.K.Rowling did for wizards...' Now, 11 years on, I am still getting requests for it to be published in e-book, so I decided to put it up on the Kindle - where it should appear in the next week. If you do happen to read it or reread it, then huge thanks for buying and I hope you enjoy my fairies and the magic they weave!

THE REBEL FAIRY

Meet JACK; he's funny, good-looking, a bit of a loser ...a lot of a loser in fact, having lost his flat and car in a game of snooker. He's just fallen inexplicably in love with his exceedingly ex Ex LEILA, who can't stand the sight of him and is more than happy with her handsome City boyfriend HENRY. Henry, though, has suddenly found he's got the hots for KATIE, Leila's best friend and flatmate, who's been carrying a torch for Jack for so long, the Duracell batteries are beginning to run out ...

What's going on? Can't Cupid shoot straight anymore? It's not his fault for once, but Charlie and Puck's, a couple of badly behaved fairies who have been acting more stupid than cupid. And unless they work out how to fix things pronto, theirs is going to end up one seriously grim fairytale . .

A riotously imaginative novel, full of love, life and magic.