My wife and I were on a road trip one time, and I started talking about ATU folktale types (What? This doesn't usually come up in conversation?) That's the Aarne-Thompson-Uther folktale index, which lists stories by their types. So there's not an original Cinderella story, for example, there are types of Cinderella stories, that exist in different cultures. The details may be different, even radically so, but the general outline is the same.
Either my wife was very tired (what I'd like to believe) or the subject wasn't as interesting as I'd hoped (but that can't be the case, right? Right?). Whichever it was, what she really wanted was to go to sleep (luckily, I was the one driving). So she said that instead of explaining folktale types, why don't I just make up a story that included ten of them? She nodded off and I came up with a story to tell her when she woke up. Which I did, and she, unsurprisingly, found the story was much more interesting than me rambling on about a subject.
The book was a direct result of that conversation - though much longer than the brief story I told, it is in essense the same tale.
The origin explains the book, really; it isn't a retelling of a specific fairy tale. I'm doing what storytellers of old would do - create something new out of a store of story motifs. There are more familiar tale types in there, like Hansel and Gretel, The Three Little Pigs, and Puss in Boots. And I've also included ones not so familiar, like All-Fur, the Three Snake Leaves, and the Two Brothers (the interested reader will find lots more!). Even beyond story types, scenes or characters were also inspired by reading classic sources. Mozzarella's name was inspired by the story Heart of Ice from Andrew Lang's Green Fairy Book (I'd say where, but the story is so much fun that I'd recommend reading it to find out). Also, Alice and Celia's evil stepmother gets her name from Giambattista Basile's version of Cinderella. In that one, Cinderella has six, count 'em, six wicked stepsisters to deal with! One of which was named Calamita. In part I picked the name because it sounds like 'calamity,' but also because it seemed like a wicked stepsister would certainly grow up to be an evil stepmother.
Because of this, for the longest time the working title was The Archetype Tale (which wasn't the final title, for obvious reasons). Along those lines, Alice and Celia's original names were Ella and Aarne Thompson (and their dad, who showed up a little more in early drafts, was named Uther). I ended up changing their names because A) there seem to be more characters named Ella in fairy tale stories than there are stories to contain them and B) I was told Aarne is actually a boy's name.
One fun thing about writing what is, basically, a new fairy tale, is that I'm not restricted by what's expected in twisted or dark retellings. The main example is that I'm not required to make a prince the bad guy. In all modern versions, the minute a prince shows up, especially if he's a handsome prince, I know he's the bad guy.
The only notable exception to this rule was Snow White and the Huntsman, where the prince is actually a great guy. I'd recommend the movie just for that, as a nice change of pace.
I'm not going to say if any princes are good or bad in The Silver Rings, though - I'll leave that up to the reader to decide.
I'll also add that this is why I dedicated the book to my wife. I would have anyway, but in this instance, she directly inspired the whole thing!