"Dwar7es" came from a very old idea, based on a spoof poster I once saw on the net of the David Fincher movie "Se7en", using the seven dwarves.

I wanted to show what happens after "Happily Ever After", and portray a kind of Fairytale Noir world where everyone has a job and a life, rather than just a title. For a while there was a troll in the story as well, but I decided to make it as realistic as I could, give it a human quality rather than a fantastical one. I think this helped its atmosphere as something akin to an episode of CSI told by the Brothers Grimm.

This is a theme I've been playing with a little lately, either rewriting or continuing existing tales in a different style. My story "Hooked" in Borderlands Issue 5 (due to be reprinted this year in the Brimstone Press collection Australian Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2006 Edition) retold Peter Pan, and an upcoming story deals with a world that might or might not exist after the events of Day of the Triffids. Some might say that I'm making a postmodern comment on previous works, but personally I think I'm probably just standing on the shoulders of giants and yelling "Hey, look how big I am!". Maybe I'm just out of ideas!

At any rate, "Dwar7es" is a whodunnit set some years after the events of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarves". Any subtle nuances, living or dead, are purely coincidental.

  — Martin Livings, September 2006