one Roxy Brayburn and a broken heart 1974 Dear Mama, Losing Lucas has embittered me to the world, to every couple on the beach, Elle, Santa Maria, and even you. You’ve had twenty years with Daddy. Why didn’t I get that with mine? I expected to live with Lucas and Mayhem and maybe a whole bunch of babies for the rest of my life. But then Lucas jumped off the cliffs like he was late for an appointment. You know what that means. I can’t look at Elle after what she did, and if I have to fight this battle, cleanse my Brayburn blood, I have to do it away from here, where I can’t hear the water whisper, where I can’t feel its pull on my heart, never mind my body. I been thinking, Mama, Santa Maria is just like us, like Brayburns. It seems like a good, safe place for some free love and a party on the beach, but once you peel back the first layer, you realize it’s a lie, and what’s underneath is rotting and dirty. Spoiled, like meat that’s been sitting out too long. I know what you’re thinking: I’ll be a Brayburn wherever…

Out July 7th, The Princess Will Save You is a gender-flipped damsel-in-distress tale inspired by one of my most beloved cult classics: The Princess Bride. First and foremost, this isn’t a retelling. Rather, it’s a love letter to all the things I adore about William Goldman’s spin the classic damsel-in-distress fairytale–True love! Sword fights! Mouthy pirates!–as well as an examination of the one thing about the story that I found more and more frustrating as I grew into adulthood: Buttercup’s character arc. I’m assuming the majority of the Fresh Fiction readership knows the story here, but in summation, Buttercup’s adventures in The Princess Bride go like so: Our princess starts off the story as a commoner, so sure in whom she is and what she wants: her farm boy, Westley. And even after Westley disappears, the presumed victim of the notorious Dread Pirate Roberts, she has the same fierce spark. Buttercup has been plucked from her common life to be a princess, and from the outside has everything a girl could ever want, but still she’s willing to push back. Then, when she’s kidnapped by supposed pirates, Buttercup fights back, tries to escape, and uses what she has to try…