“Kell Woods’ debut takes familiar stories and tropes from the vast corpus of the Brothers Grimm and smartly weaves them into an excellent historical fantasy novel. After the Forest is poetic, evocative, and most of all, addictive… Far from the cookie-cutter characters you may expect to see, Kell Woods’ version gives them all depth and complexity… There’s some real gold here. After the Forest is high up on my list of best books of 2023. An author to watch and a powerhouse debut.”—Grimdark MAGAZINE
Ginger. Honey. Cinnamon. Flour.
Have you ever wondered what might happen to fairytale characters after they’ve grown up? In her debut novel, Kell Woods does just that. Greta (Gretel) and Hansel (Hans) have fallen on hard times thanks to Hans’s passion for gambling. With the help of a grimoire that Greta discovered during their ordeal in the forest (as children), she makes the most delicious gingerbread that no one in the village is able to resist, however, her gingerbread isn’t enough to get them out of the financial hole that Hans has gotten them into.
In this Q&A Kell shares about when her love of the historical fantasy genre began, what drew her to the story of Hansel and Gretel, and what she’s writing next.
When did your love of historical fantasy begin?
My love of old magical and faraway things began when I was very young. I loved fairy tales and fantasy stories, dressing up as a princess, and pretending to be a mermaid at the beach. I loved history, too. I remember being obsessed with Robin Hood and King Arthur – I still have my childhood books with all their adventures. I was always reading, and I would have read historical stories, but when I was eleven (too young, I know) I saw the film The Last of the Mohicans. That movie was so beautifully crafted, that all the historical details were painstakingly researched and created, and that was when the love of history really kicked off. I don’t know exactly when I realized you could mix the two – history and fantasy – together, but I suspect it was when I was in my early twenties and read Daughter of the Forest by Juliet Marillier. It’s a beautiful retelling of The Six Swans fairy tale set in Dark Ages Ireland, and it’s still one of my favorite books.
After the Forest is your first novel. What drew you to continue the story of Hansel and Gretel as adults?
I was interested in writing something that combined history and fairy tale – taking a familiar story and fleshing it out, setting it in a real-time and place. ‘Hansel and Gretel’ is so dark, so disturbing. You have these children who are abandoned by their father and stepmother (or mother, depending on the version), who wander the forest lost for three days and three nights before being kidnapped by a cannibalistic witch. (I mean, can you imagine?) Interestingly, it is the female child, Gretel, who saves the day, pushing the witch into her own oven. There was just so much for me to work with – abandonment, loss, bravery, fear. And I had a lot of questions, too. How could the woodcutter have left his children to die in the forest? Why was it Gretel who remained free in the witch’s house, and not Hansel? How would she have felt after pushing the witch into the oven? Could you ever recover from that situation, let alone live happily ever after? There was so much to explore, particularly when I started looking at the history and landscape of Germany. The seventeenth century, when the Thirty Years’ War and large-scale witch trials such as Bamberg and Würzburg took place, seemed like the perfect setting, as did the deep, old forests of the Schwarzwald.
Tell me about the research process for the book.
I did a lot of research. I approached it as I would have if I were writing straight historical fiction, so I looked at many aspects of life in seventeenth-century Germany – food, clothing, religion, society, agriculture, and war. I read books, and journal articles, and spent hours on Google Maps. I baked a lot of gingerbread. And I saved my pennies and went to the Black Forest as well. On my own, with just a backpack and a truly appalling grasp of the German language. Somehow I made it to an open-air museum, where I could walk inside seventeenth-century houses, into the woods with a local forest guide who showed me plants and trees and how they could heal and nourish, and to a bear and wolf sanctuary, where I got very close to some beautiful rescue bears and wolves. I got so many details from these experiences, and many of them have ended up in the book.
When you started writing the book, did you know how everything would turn out in the end, or did you see where the characters took you?
I was basing it on the fairy tales (the book is based on three of them, not just ‘Hansel and Gretel’) so I had a fair idea of the shape of the story. I am a planner, so I worked on the structure and the plot constantly. I knew where I wanted the book to go – but getting there was quite the ride, and there were definitely some surprises along the way.
What scene/chapter was your favorite or the most different to write?
The scenes in the Hornberg were the most difficult. Chapter 17 is my favorite – I loved writing it.
If After the Forest was turned into a feature film, who do you imagine playing the roles of Hans, Greta, Mathias, and Rob?
Hmm. As I was writing I imagined Greta to look a bit like Gemma Arterton from Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, and Mathias to look like Colin Farrell in The New World with a dash of Chris Hemsworth in Snow White and the Huntsman. Rob and Hans were purely imagined. If I had to choose now, I’d say James Norton (Hans) Ellie Bamber (Greta) Cosmo Jarvis (Mathias) and maybe Gerard Butler as Rob?
Are you working on your next novel, and if so can we get a sneak peek?
I am! I’m about to start edits on my second novel. It’s also a historical/fantasy fairy tale retelling. I can’t say much about it, but I can say it’s a re-telling of ‘The Little Mermaid’ blended with one or two French fairytales.
Pick up your copy of After the Forest.
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