Vegetables and Vexations – an interview with Laurel Decher

Please join me today in welcoming Laurel Decher, author of the Seven Kingdoms Fairy Tale series. They’re marketed for children, but we all know that plenty of adults enjoy a bit of zany. It looks like there’s plenty of zany in this series! And lots of vegetables…

Laurel Decher lives on the outskirts of a mid-sized city in Germany, between a medieval chapel on the St. James’ Way and a boundary marker tree carved with a scary face. It’s a little surprising, since she expected to live in Vermont for the rest of her life. You just never know when adventure will call!

Welcome, Laurel! It’s good to have you here. First question – what made you move from Germany to Vermont? (Or are you still wondering, yourself? 😅)

The kids decided it was Papa’s turn? I was born and lived in the U.S. and met my husband in Germany during my university studies. After twenty-six years in the U.S. together, he was offered a job in Germany and we decided to go on an adventure! You really never know. . .

What made you first start writing?

I started writing this series after a health issue in my family made me realize I couldn’t keep writing novels that took ten years each. It was time to take a risk, to try something I was sure wasn’t for me.

What did you set out to do when you began this series? And why the vegetable theme?

These books are about things I was bad at as a child—talking in front of the room, finding my way around, etc. In Vermont, I joined a Toastmasters group to learn about public speaking and was amazed at how many skills were actually learn-able. Growth mindset is the core of every book and vegetables are a natural way 😉 to think about growth. Also, I learned that Schwarzwurzel, literally “black root”, was a vegetable and I needed to make that the national vegetable of the Blackfly Kingdom, home of the self-centered and ever-optimistic Queen Ash.

Why vegetables? I’m a former epidemiologist and there are three basic things to prevent chronic disease: sunscreen, physical activity, and vegetables. 😉

Readers can tour the castles that inspired each of your seven kingdoms here. What’s your favourite castle of them all?

I love them all. Every time I take the train through that area, I think I’m going to get some writing done, but I can’t stop looking out the window at the castles and the quilted patterns of the vineyards and the color of the Rhine and the personalities of the barges. But I do love the one on a rock in the middle of the Rhine: Pfalzgrafenstein. There’s a festival once a year when the island is full of wooden boats and people in costume. It’s the best tollbooth ever.

Tell us more about your new release, and what inspired it.

In the last few years, more and more people are being forced to move to new places because of war or unrest in their home countries. I had an encounter with a mother who fled from her home that haunted me—and still does—because it made me feel that the thing you really lose is your identity, your reputation, your believe-ability. No one can speak up for you. The experience started cooking in my imagination and turned into a story about visiting giants who were standing up for a giant friend in the “foreign country” of the Seven Kingdoms. Prince William—the eleven-year-old hero—has to figure out if they are telling the truth, if he can trust them, and how he can win their trust.

The other thing that inspired this story was the amazing outpouring of support for Syrian refugees in my own village. Everyone wanted to host people. It made me feel welcome too, because I wasn’t from here, but I was allowed to welcome new people. I wanted to write about how welcoming people isn’t just the “right thing to do”, but it’s also a gift to us. Especially if you come from another place, like I do, welcoming new people makes you feel at home too.

Making Comics by Scott McCloud was another inspiration for this book, because he makes the art of making comics so accessible. It’s an amazing book! Prince William’s comic strip creates all kinds of trouble in the story, and he decides it’s safer to give up comics entirely. But his friends have lots to say about that!

And what are your plans going forward? More tales of the Seven Kingdoms?

Oh! At this exact moment, I don’t feel like I can say. There are three or four projects calling my name and I don’t know yet which one is going to win. The last time I tried to write a short story for the Seven Kingdoms, it turned into a full-length book (Trouble at the Valentine Factory), so I’m hesitant to say anything out loud. People are very welcome to sign up for the Readers List to get all the news about new stories. You get a free short story when you sign up and can, of course, unsubscribe at any time.

What’s your favourite fairy tale, outside of the Seven Kingdoms?

I just finished reading the amazing (and surprising!) novel by Tonke Dragt called The Goldsmith and the Master Thief. Her work has been newly translated into English and the translations are absolutely smooth and stumble-free. At first, I thought it was a collection of short stories, but then I realized it was a complete–and satisfying—novel.

And beyond your own books, do you have a favourite story or book that’s a riff on fairy tale tropes?

So many books! Feel free to download some handy “shopping guides” (PDFs) for the family’s next expedition to the library or bookstore.

The other recent read that I loved, loved, loved is Helen Rutter’s The Boy Who Made Everyone Laugh. You could possibly consider it a modern-day fairy tale, because the hero pulls off the impossible with the help of the wise mentor. A masterpiece of fun and humor and warmth.

Thank you so much for answering these questions, Laurel. Giant Trouble: The Mystery of the Magic Beans is out now in ebook and out in paperback May 14th.

Summary:

Fee, Fie, Foe, Fun! When the resident giant gets a case of magical food poisoning that sparks an invasion of giants, eleven-year-old Prince William cooks up a plan—with homemade chapati, chopped onions, and comic strips—to solve the mystery and campaign for peace.

Read about the series on Laurel’s website – link below:

Seven Kingdoms Fairy Tales

A Crow and a Murder

A story finally finds a home.

This year’s highlight for me has been the publication of a story that’s been seeking a home for a long time, in a respected journal.

“A Prophet in his own Country” began life as a response to a call for submissions for two anthologies from the same press. Unusually, they wanted writers to send in pairs of stories, the plots linking, one with the theme of corvids and the other with the theme of scarecrows. I needed, I think, about 15,000 words and the task took a long time. Enjoyable, though. I cooked up my story from a stash of ingredients: the rival siblings in the Grimms’ story “The Singing Bone”, the raven in Fairport Convention’s song “Crazy Man Michael” (not a traditional song, despite common belief) and the Twa Corbies of various ballads who ponder over the fate of the knight whose body they are pecking at. In my story the siblings became brothers, not sisters, fighting over one woman with fatal results, and the crow was the seer appointed to denounce the injustice, to deaf ears. “Listen Hard” was the scarecrow offering, and “A Prophet in his own Country” continued the story of the crow, its title being a reference to Jesus’ comment in the Bible that a prophet in his own land tended to be ignored.

I sent both stories off, and they were rejected. Now I had two tales made for a particular prompt, and no home for them. Some while later I read a call for another anthology, this time with a much looser requirement. They wanted horror or paranormal. My stories counted as paranormal, so I submitted the one that fitted their word count limit, and was very pleased to be accepted. The final version of the anthology was something of a surprise, because my story about love and ignorance in a village a hundred years ago was the only one that wasn’t horror. But it was great to get it out there.

The second story, divorced from the first, took longer to place. A first reader liked it for a professional magazine, but it didn’t make the second round. I sent it off to the journal of the British Fantasy Society and waited. Returning from a holiday, I checked my emails and spam. In the latter I found a response from the journal edtior, Pete Sutton, read that he felt the story had issues, and went to bed feeling disappointed. But something made me read it again in the morning, with a clearer head and eyes. Pete liked it enough to offer me someone to work on it with. No charge, just an option. I said yes please.

For several months I worked with Nadya Mercik, who also offers freelance, and we bashed away at the story as she guided me in the professional way to approach edits in Google Docs. There were issues Pete had highlighted, but there were also places where Nadya felt the story wasn’t clear. What we ended up with means the plot line in “Prophet” is changed from the one in “Listen Hard”, and they don’t quite segue any more. But that’s something I might address one day in the future, if I ever have the chance to republish.

Once Nadya and I were happy with the story, she told Pete. He said he would reserve it for the next issue of the journal. And once that was ready to go to press I got my e-copy, and later my author copy of the paperback. Look at that cover! It’s beautiful. What’s more, I get to be in the same collection as some authors I’ve admired and followed for a while – Lyndsey Croal, and my friend and former editor Teika Marija Smitts.

Someone was looking up at me in puzzlement. I could see he understood me and that he was surprised at this.
It was the curate. Since his arrival he had spent much of his time touring the village, going in and out of the cottages. The villagers greeted him with increasing respect and warmth. He was often outdoors, too, in the woods, or over the downs, ears cocked to the wind. I’d wondered if he wished he were a bird. He certainly looked a little like a crow, with his black clothes and bright eyes.
“That’s quite a story,” he said to me. “Though your language, dear bird!”
At last, someone who would listen. “A true tale, your reverence. A murder that needs avenging. I trust you will see that justice is done?”
Yes, I know. That was not what the scarecrow had asked me to do. But the man with the muddy boots was abusing the woman. And he had stolen the straw man’s child.
“Hmm, murder, eh?” murmured the curate. And to my astonishment, he smiled and shook his head.
from “A Prophet in his own Country”

The bird was right. Annie did walk out with William again. The next time they met was on a Sunday, for work had begun again on the land. William and Daniel were silently relieved that the hunger days were over for another few months. The winter had been got through with poaching and tightening of belts. But by the summer they were working from the first glimmer of light to the last, and William had enough money to ask Annie another question as they walked on the common.
“I’ll never be a rich man, Annie,” he said, stopping under an old oak tree, “but with you I’ll be a very happy man, and I’ll do all I can to make you happy too.”
“You do make me happy,” Annie said, “and I will marry you.”
He threw his arms around her and spun her, then kissed her till she couldn’t breathe.
“Ah, the oaks told me today was a good day!”
Annie laughed. “And what about that crow there on that tussock? What does he say?”
The crow flapped away with a harsh caw.
William leaned and whispered in her ear with an impish smile.
Her cheeks went pink and she pulled back, giving him a harmless slap on the arm. “He does not, you wicked man!”
from “Listen Hard”

Links

Ink Stains, Volume 9

for “Listen Hard”

BFS Horizons Issue 16

for “A Prophet in his own Country”

Nadya Mercik, editor, writer, bookseller. Nadya offers freelance editing as well as her work at the British Fantasy Society.

River Kelpies and Rebellious Fairies

An interview with Shonna Slayton, author of the River Kelpies Series and the Fairy-tale Inheritance Series

Today I’m delighted to be able to share an interview with Shonna Slayton, fairy tale author. Shonna, who, along with Ashlee Willis, founded the Fairy-tale Forum on Facebook, is the author of the Fairy-tale Inheritance Series. She’s now exploring a slightly different path with the River Kelpie Series.

Book cover of The Rise of the Kelpies, showing a horse's head, a bridge and a river.

Here’s the blurb.

A girl meant to be a pawn starts playing her own game.

Farrah’s world is upended when a river kelpie invades her remote village and kills the hidden prince she was supposed to be protecting. As a member of the secret society created during the Kelpie Wars, Farrah knows she’ll be asked to pose as the prince’s twin sister and carry out the Society’s plans to safeguard the kingdom.

So, when the palace’s attention turns to finding the missing princess, Farrah travels to the capital with hundreds of other orphans also claiming the crown. She is more interested in finding justice for the prince than she is in becoming the princess. And when tragedy strikes along the way, Farrah will have no choice but to fight for those she loves.

Rise of the Kelpies is a cozy fantasy fairy tale in which a girl trying to save her kingdom has to learn to trust. Read Rise of the Kelpies and travel to Glenmoor Kingdom, a magical place with rebellious palace fairies and dangerous river kelpies.

Thank you for agreeing to this interview, Shonna. What first attracted you to fairy tales? Is this the same thing that draws you now, or does something different appeal to you these days?

Gail Carson Levine’s Princess Tales sparked my current interest in fairy tales. I read her Ella Enchanted novel and loved it, and then followed up with her shorter Princess Tales Series. They were unexpectedly fun to read, and I suppose it was then that the idea of writing a retelling began to take shape. Going into the genre, I had no idea the depth of study that was available in fairy tale circles. To try to get up to speed, in 2019 I read through all of Grimms’ fairy tales and studied them from a writer’s point of view. At first, I questioned what I was getting into, but quickly came to enjoy Grimm for Grimm and eventually compiled all my blogs into a nonfiction book: Lessons from Grimm, How to Write a Fairy Tale. Traditional fairy tales are wonderful springboards for an author’s imagination because they leave so many open questions to explore.

That’s so true. That’s one of their appeals for me, too. So what’s your favourite fairy tale of all, and why?

Usually my favorite tale is the one I’m currently researching. Each fairy tale becomes more interesting and nuanced the more I learn about it. But favorite fairy tale of all? I’d have to go with “Cinderella” if only for the fact that she is the one who launched my author career with the novel Cinderella’s Dress. I could say that “Cinderella” changed my life.

“Cinderella” it is, then! How would you describe the way you use fairy tales in your novels? How different is the Fairy-tale Inheritance Series from the River Kelpie Series?

The Fairy-tale Inheritance Series is a pairing of a historical time period and an inherited fairy tale object. I look for something—an object, a physical trait—that can be passed down through the generations. An object is easiest, like Cinderella’s dress, but in my Little Mermaid book, the “object” was her voice. I like to keep touchpoints to the original tales, but also allow the story to expand and go in new directions. Also, the stories are set in our world, not a fairy tale world. The River Kelpie Series departs from this pattern in that I’ve only taken the bare myth of the kelpies and set the story in a fantasy world that is loosely inspired by Scotland. Then I pull in fairy tale elements like royalty and fairies to add to the myth.

That’s quite a different route to take, isn’t it? What made you write a series featuring kelpies? As folklore from Scotland and Ireland, I think of them as creatures in very watery places. You live in Arizona, don’t you? That must be very different!

Ha, ha! Yes, I currently live in a desert and dream of water! But I grew up in lush British Columbia, Canada, practically on the banks of the Columbia river. As for the idea for a kelpie novel, new ideas tend to come while writing the current book. I started thinking about them when writing The Little Mermaid’s Voice. For that novel I was researching water creatures and settled on the finfolk for the mermaid book. But kelpies had also caught my eye! It’s a bit of a risk as a fairy tale author to get too far afield from popular tales, but I thought I’d give it a try. To be honest, the kelpie book has been a lot harder to sell than a known fairy tale like “Sleeping Beauty” or “Snow White”. Some of my regular readers were happy for something new, but most just want another Fairy-tale Inheritance book!

Ah, we have to go where inspiration calls! Are there any specific traditional kelpie stories that inspired you for this series? How about fairy tale inspiration?

Huge metal sculputres of two horses' heads in Scotland. — The Kelpies, near Falmouth, Scotland. They represent the power both of the lengendary beasts and the horses of the industrial landscape of the past.

There are only a handful of traditional kelpie stories, and some kelpie stories you read online today have mingled with other water horse stories, giving kelpies powers not originally associated with them. That’s a reminder to me that myths change over the years, and it’s okay to make my kelpies different in some ways. As for fairy tale inspiration, for this book I wanted to try writing a twist. Not a reveal, but a genuine twist that makes you look back at the novel in a whole new way. Those are really hard to do. I’d like to have a twist in all the novels in this series, and it’s causing me a lot of brain gymnastics. An example of a Grimm story that has a twist is “The Beam”.

That’s intriguing. Now, in the blurb you mention rebellious palace fairies. Tell us more!

I really like the dynamic of fairies interacting with humans and each other. My fairies are not the small dragonfly-sized variety but have some height and heft to them. In the case of the palace fairies in Rise of the Kelpies, they have returned to the castle at a time when they are no longer held in high regard. In times past they were respected, but now they are treated as servants and largely ignored by those in charge. As creatures who live long lives and know the history of the land, they quietly rebel, participating in human life on the surface, but they’re very much doing their own thing to help set the kingdom to rights.

Interesting! When do you plan to launch Book 2, Reign of the Kelpies?

That’s a simple question with a complicated answer! While working on Book 2, I realized I needed to know more about past events, so I’m writing a prequel novella first. Simultaneously, I’m plotting Book 2 and Book 3 so that any “plants” that I need to bloom in Book 3 are seeded in the earlier books. And, as I mentioned, I’m trying to add a twist of some degree to each.

Now I understand what you mean about brain gymnastics! Thank you very much, Shonna, it was great to learn more about both your book series. Would you like to share an extract from Rise of the Kelpies to whet our appetites?

Extract:

As Farrah ducked behind the carriage, she heard a trio of women talking.

“I bet the real princess won’t parade herself through like this one. She’ll come dressed as a servant.” A middle-aged woman in a harvester’s hat nodded in Marnie’s direction. “Like our quiet, plain girl over there. No one would suspect who she was, and she could travel in safety. At least, that’s what I would do if I were the princess.” She laughed. “If I were thirty years younger, that is.”

The chandler’s wife, a short woman, stood on tiptoes trying to get a better look. “I can’t barely tell ’em apart. How will the officials?”

A third joined in, the postmistress looking down her long, intelligent nose. “They’ll have paperwork. A birth record. Something that proves who she is. They wouldn’t have sent her off with nothing now, would they?”

“The princess weren’t given a proper send-off when she was a wee babe, being kidnapped by the kelpies and all,” said the chandler’s wife. “She won’t have papers.”

Farrah’s lips twisted at the long-held rumor. You could be sure that if the kelpies had truly carried off the twin prince and princess, there would be no call for the heirs to return to the capital now. Being kidnapped by kelpies was only one rumor. Others included abduction by Evermoor, stillbirths being covered up, and the most distasteful was that the queen herself had killed them in a mad fit.

Farrah stepped back and continued listening to the gossip. Sometimes useful information bubbled up from the speculation.

“True, and besides, they’ll all have birth records if birth records are what they’re asked for,” said the woman wearing the hat. “And they’d all be saying the same thing. So-and-so is the true princess. The kingdom will be overrun with princesses as much as with frogs.”

“So how will them folks at the palace decide?” The chandler’s wife’s voice rose to a higher pitch, her words clipped with annoyance.

“The true princess will know things the others don’t. It might come down to who is the better student of history.” The postmistress, looking down her nose, continued to press her expertise.

“So, they’ll interview each one?” The chandler’s wife made a scoffing sound. “That’ll take months. Besides, she were hidden away when she was a wee bairn. How is she to know anything the rest of ’em don’t know?”

The first woman shrugged. “How do you expect, then?”

“The palace fairies will get involved,” said the know-it-all. “They have deep memories and keen sight. They’ll spot the girl. They’ll know her by her eyes.”

Palace fairies? This was the first Farrah had heard about them. She leaned in so she could hear the women better.

The woman in the hat scanned the crowd as if looking for a fairy in their midst. “I thought the fairies were all gone. Haven’t been seen since the prince and princess were secreted away. If the princess is still alive, they’ll be the ones to bring her back. That’s how everyone will know.”

Osario had caught up to Farrah and cast another disapproving look at her attempt to disappear.

She gave him an I-told-you-so look as he took hold of her elbow and led her away from the gossiping ladies. She hadn’t even left and already their plans showed signs of unraveling. Palace fairies? Was Osario planning on rounding up some fairies who could vouch for her?

I hope you enjoyed reading about the inspiration behind Shonna’s book series. Find out more via Goodreads or her author website, https://shonnaslayton.com/

Lynden Wade lives in England near a haunted wood and two castles. She writes about history, folklore and legends. She has had a number of pieces published in journals and anthologies or on websites: more details on her website but here’s one you can read for free.

NO AI TRAINING: Without in any way limiting the author’s [and publisher’s] exclusive rights under copyright, any use of this publication to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

Druids, damsels and dragons: a week in Wales

My parents once came back early from a holiday in Wales because it hadn’t stopped raining. For years I carried this concept in my head that Wales was beautiful and full of mythology but always wet, so it was only recently that Mr W and I agreed it would be our next holiday destination. Mountains for him, legends for me. And in fact we were very lucky with the weather, only experiencing one wet and windy day, which was rather atmospheric for waterfall exploring.

Druids and Dolmens

Bryn Celli Ddu is a Neolithic burial chamber within an earlier stone circle. Its name means “Mound in the Dark Grove” but today it sits in an enclosure in a farmer’s field. On Summer Solstice the rising sun will shine directly from one end to the other, lighting up the chamber. What sort of rituals might have taken place here we can’t tell for sure, but these places always make me think of fairy tales like Kate Crackernuts (actually collected from Orkney) in which green hills are full of dancing fairies, the older, more capricious ones, not the flower fairies of children’s books.

Bryn Celli Ddu as you approach it: you can see the remains of the stone circle round the barrow.

It wasn’t sunrise when we went, but the sun still lit up the tunnel within.

Anglesey has a strong connection with the druids. The Romans determined to break their power. On their first invasion they were met with a wall of warrior, cursing druids and screaming, torch-wielding women, and had to be exhorted by their general to press on, defeat the army and destroy their shrines and sacred groves.

Holyhead Mountain Hut Circles, also known as ‘Tŷ Mawr Hut Circles’ – a fort once frowned down on them from the higher ground.

Wise Wizards and Wounded Kings

Deep in Snowdonia is Dinas Emrys, the location of Merlin’s debut. The story of the fort that wouldn’t be built is told by Nennius: Vortigern, a British leader who is regretting inviting the Saxons into the island, is taking refuge in Wales and means to build a fort in the mountains. But each night all the materials disappear. His advisors tell him he needs to sacrifice a fatherless boy and sprinkle the boy’s blood on the site to succeed with his building plan. Such a youth is found – Ambrose, or Emrys – who challenges the advisors to instead dig deep into the foundations. There, two serpents are found, one white and one red. They are the problem, says Emrys. They fight each night, which causes everything to collapse. The red signified the Britons and the white the Saxons. Geoffrey of Monmouth’s version is more elaborate: the walls fall each night, the boy’s mother explains how she became pregnant by an unknown night-time lover, and Emrys becomes another name for Merlin. Today, the red dragon roars on the Welsh flag.

We found a few dragons on our route up, and a waterfall, but on the summit there were only rocks and wind. We sat and looked out over the valley below, ringed in mountains. From a solitary house drifted party music.

The route up Dinas Emrys wound round the rise and past a waterfall.

Llyn Llydaw is one of the Welsh lakes that claims to conceal Excalibur, hurled into it by Bedevere when King Arthur was dying. It can only be viewed by booking a parking place at the start of one of the routes to Snowdon, or climbing Snowdon yourself, so Mr W saw this and I didn’t, because I don’t like mountain climbs. But Ynys Enlli/Bardsey Island on the Llŷn Peninsula has a claim to rival Glastobury as the site of Avalon, where Arthur sailed to be healed of his wounds.

The island is rich in history, from its abbey ruins to its own kings in the 19c. You can read more here.

We drove down the Llŷn Peninsula then walked the headland until the island lay before us. It wasn’t a hot day as temperatures go, but the walk was strenuous, with steep climbs and dips, the sun shone hard on the hillside and where the path crept through ferns the fronds held in the humidity. The view was worth it though, and for a change, we didn’t puff up an incline to find a sheep already there, watching us with mild contempt.

Ynys Enlli from the end of the Llŷn Peninsula

Owls and Flowers

Alan Garner’s folk horror The Owl Service is set in North Wales, and the TV series (available on Youtube) was filmed as close as possible to the original settings. In the story three young people, thrown together by a new marriage and a move, find a set of plates decorated with flowers – or owls – which awaken an old myth that is re-enacted in every generation, that of Bloddewedd, the maiden made of flowers who was turned into an owl for conspiring with her lover to kill her husband. The myth features in the Mabinogian. It’s a harsh tale of resentment, loneliness and revenge, and no-one comes out well. Garner turns it into a story of adolescent bemusement and the claustrophobia that comes from a holiday where there’s nothing much to do. It’s one of the books I admire most from those I read as a child (it wasn’t intended as YA, but is usually seen as such now.) I highly recommend it and the TV series.

Tomen y Mur is said to be the castle where Bloddewedd, made by the magician Gwydion as a mate for the hero Lleu Llaw Gyffes, looked down on the valley and fell in love with Gronw Pebr. A small brown sign pointed us across a field, and a short walk took us through a muddle of ruined buildings to a mound. Not as high as Dinas Emrys, but what a wide view of the lands around! Even the power station didn’t spoil the quiet, barely broken by the distant bleat of sheep. Historically, it was once a Roman fort, later converted into a Norman castle.

I believe this is reconstructed Roman, with the motte behind.

Garner set his book in Llanymawddwy, a settlement that involved an hour’s drive from our cottage, along mountain passes and threading through a valley. No pub here, or Spa shop. The chapel and the church are closed up, and we only saw one person, shutting his gates for the day. The mountains round here are greener and closer than the ones round Snowdon.

The Stone of Gronw, of uncertain age, is linked with the legend. Man-sized, it has a hole at the height of a heart, and through this Blodeuwedd’s husband pierced her lover and killed him. It wasn’t marked on either of our maps, so I was going by a website about British monoliths. We parked our car by the side of the road and walked up and down the farm track, but while we could see the river it was said to stand beside, there was no way to get there. I think it might have been moved.

Thank you for reading. If you enjoy folk and fairy tales, you might also enjoy this blog post about my favourite magical stories and modern takes on them.

Flying Teapots and Handless Angels – Spring Round-up

In which I wonder about editing, angels missing a hand and strange places to find a forest.

One of the many angels in Abney Cemetery.

Quills

I asked my writing group recently what proportion of time they spent editing compared to writing. The results varied a lot, and I wasn’t surprised that our two tutors gave very different answers – they have polarised methods of working, both of which work for them. But everyone agreed that, whatever your planning method, editing stil required a big chunk of a writer’s time. Well, it’s certainly kept me occupied. And I’ve learned that, before I embark on rounds of edits for things like character or atmosphere, I must read through for continuity and plot holes, even if I think I’ve fixed them all in draft X.

The Night Crawlers, my middle grade work in progress, features gargoyles, as I’ve said before. I wouldn’t have thought of classing them as dragons until I came across a book that did so. But dragons are very much a la mode at the moment. My subconscious picked this up when I selected some stories to offer my students in my day job, tuition for primary children, because all bar one featured a dragon of some sort! They were: “The Last of the Dragons” (E Nesbit); “The Home-made Dragon” (Norman Hunter); “The Lost Five Minutes” (Joan Aiken). I’ve learned, though, to re-read stories before presenting them to children. What was acceptable in the 70s is definitely frowned on today! What was so terrible in this literature? Well, the dragon in the Norman Hunter got roasted alive. My student who chose that one for the term’s read was very unimpressed.

There’s much made in the writing world of competitions and the benefits of entering them. Almost nothing is said of submitting to anthologies. As I’ve thoroughly enjoyed submitting to them myself and having some success, I offered a talk to my online writing group. Whether it went down well I can’t tell thanks to the way displaying a powerpoint means you can’t see your audience’s faces! However, they’re now enthusiastically embarking on a group anthology, so they must have found it inspiring.

Spring also saw the launch of regular open mics in nearby Southend, promoted by a local group that supports the arts scene and hosted in an indoor climbing centre. Where else? In the cafe part, not actually half way up a wall. I put myself down to read and, as the whole event lasted three hours, turned up for the final hour only to see that I was the last booked performer and only on time to catch the last five minutes of one other creative. I’ll be making sure I arrive earlier in future. But it was rather thrilling to see my name on the poster (see photo) and also great to meet in person the Evil Sherif of Nottingham (as she was in the January panto) who was our not at all evil compere for the afternoon.

Quests

Two artist’s dates this spring. In February I visited Abney Cemetry, one of the great Victorian graveyards, all gothic script and handless angels and ivy. I do wonder where all the hands have gone, and whether there’s an underground market for them. April saw a romantic getaway to Canterbury, where my husband and I first met. We’ve been back many times –it’s just a hop across the Estuary, after all – but still the medieval walls and the slow-moving Stour and the buzz of tourists and students in the pedestrianised high street, or perhaps the copious amounts of tea drunk, sparked plenty of ideas. Which shall I write first – the flying teapot, dispensing comfort, or the garden that grows on a hat?

Carving on a house, Canterbury. She finds the passers-by very amusing.

Quotes (Best Spring Reads)

Murder at Snowfall: Fleur Hitchcock

This was the first murder mystery for children I’ve read – a simplified version of the form they take for adults but not simplistic or dumbed-down. The child characters are really fleshed out and the relationship between the two – step-siblings after both being only children for so long – grows as they start to share their misgivings.

The Orphans of St Halibut’s, Pamela’s Revenge: Sophie Wills

As funny and whacky and irreverent as the previous book about these characters, developing them further. The orphanage has just burned down and the children find themselves camping in the woods, until they discover a traintrack is planned to go straight through their camp. With some deliciously wicked villains and lots of escapes, this is a charming and utterly enjoyable yarn.

Claire de Lune: Cassandra Golds

This reminds me of Elizabeth Goudge – charming children, adults who are mostly good or well-meaning, a sprinkle of enchantment and a sweep of faith, about the friendship between a girl and a mouse who both love ballet.

True North: Caitlin Gemmell

Full of dreaminess and poetry, brimming with imagery and longing and thoughtfulness and love. I’m not much of a poetry reader but I really enjoyed the way the words and images lapped over my metaphorical feet, like the surging tide and ebbing surf on a beach.

It’s hard to see, but True North is on my Kindle. I couldn’t get it to display the cover as one image.

Queens

I’ve played around with scrapbooking, loving the opportunities to mess around with printed text, but I keep coming back to dolls. This spring I’ve finished a nature sprite, who, thanks to the direction I cut the teeshirt material, ended up a good deal taller than planned, a mother and baby, and a Greek goddess. A jewelled beetle was fun to make too. I think it might be featuring in my next short story, where a woman finds a forest growing in her fridge.

January round-up – production or procrastination?

I’ve taken some time off from my novels to revise and submit some of my fantasy short stories to journals. It’s quite time-consuming to check a magazine to see if it actually suits, read the submission guidelines carefully and put them into practice (changing my quote marks to ‘smart quotes’ in Google docs was quite a challenge!) and write the cover letter. But I managed to send off eight of my babies. They’ve started coming back now, but for three heady days ‘The Boy whose Mother was the Wind’ had moved from ‘Pending’ to ‘Being considered’ in Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores, an ezine I think is gorgeous and full of fantastic prose. It then moved to ‘Declined’ but I’d opted for receiving the reader notes, which I think is unusual for a magazine to offer. They were a useful mix of encouraging and constructive. This is the second time it’s been suggested my stories are too sweet, so maybe I need to get a bit nastier?

The magazine that took one of my publications changed its name and website recently and I thought my story had disappeared from the web, but this month I found it in the archives. I’m quite proud of this one, called ‘A Patchwork of Puddles’, and you can read it for free here.

I also spent quite a while on a proofreading job for a fellow-writer from my writing group. Look out for Breathing with Trees by MIke Lamborn (publishing date to be confirmed), which mixes legends, spirituality, ecology and family drama. If you think that can’t work, it does. Besides, it’s got talking trees, and I’m a sucker for talking trees.

Another writer I’ve spent some (virtual) time with is Lissa Sloan, whose debut novel Glass and Feathers is coming out in serial form for subscribers to the Fairy Tale Magazine. It follows Cinderella after she marries her prince, and finds her glass slipper no longer fits. You can read my interview with her here (or just scroll down to find the previous blog post).

I learned the phrase ‘Artist’s Date’ at the start of the year. Now I have the proper words to describe my need to go somewhere inspiring every now and then, even if I have an excess of notes and photos already of things I want to write about. One of this month’s artist’s dates was with/to Chawton, where Jane Austen wrote many of her novels. It’s a charming village, and while we didn’t go into her home this time, I remember how I enjoyed the simple stylishness of the surroundings, and how calming it was. Yes, I know that the reality for women of that era was far less romantic than your average romance set in that time. You could choose between the exhaustion of constant pregnancies and the ridicule aimed at ‘spinsters’. But that hasn’t stopped me planning a one-woman writer’s retreat here – there’s an AirBnb and a cafe!

The other artist’s date was very different. Another member of our writing group put on a pantomime, Robyn Hood, with an all-female cast, setting the story in our local area, and featuring a nail-biting quest to stop the evil Sheriff of Southend from stealing the pier! It was riotous, silly, and pumped with energy, and so much fun.

So what’s this about procrastinating? Well, I knew I needed at least one more round of edits on my children’s novel, The Night Crawlers. But if I did that, I’d then have to think about submitting it to agents! And that’s too nerve-wracking an idea! Which is probably the real reason I managed to do so many submissions of short stories – because I was using them to put off making progress with the novel. I need to write a proper pitch for it soon, but for now it can be summed up as “One girl against an army of gargoyles – can Annys save her friend from their clutches?”

This month’s reads include:

Miss Austen, by Gillian Hornby, follows Jane Austen’s beloved sister Cassandra as she remembers the novelist. It shows us how tough and restricting life was for women in the early nineteenth century, but in the end it’s a triumph of good, kind women looking after each other.

A Right Royal Face-off by Simon Edge interweaves imagined scenes from the life of Thomas Gainsborough the painter with a modern-day story about a third-rate antiques show that nearly fails to recognise a lost piece by the artist. It’s a fun read and the triumph of some of the characters at the end was very satisfying.

Glass and Feathers – a fairy tale interview

The classic tale of Cinderella is a blend of popular tropes and stand-out details, the best-known of which must be the glass slipper. So the first word in Lissa Sloan’s debut fairy tale novel Glass and Feathers is a clear reference to that almost magical shoe. But feathers? Where do they come in? Well, although Charles Perrault’s courtly version of this tale gives us the shoe and the pumpkin and the cosy godmother, another classic version contributes to the way the story is usually told – the Grimm version. Now Glass and Feathers is being released in serial form, so as a subscriber I can only guess that the feathers relate to the way Aschenputtel, as she’s called in the Grimm version, comes by her dresses.

*Glass and Feathers? What have birds got to do with Cinderella? Illustration by Hermann Vogell.*

I very much enjoyed the first installement, and the gorgeous artwork that accompanied it, so I caught up with Lissa to ask her some questions about the story. Lissa, thank you for agreeing to the interview. Let’s dive in with how you came to write the story. Tell us a bit about what inspired Glass and Feathers. What drew you to this tale, out of hundreds?

Thank you so much for asking me, Lynden! When my husband and I began planning our wedding, my shoes were the first thing I bought, and they did fit when I bought them. But the wedding was later than we initially intended, and when the big day was a lot closer, the shoes were suddenly too tight. My doctor explained that feet often spread out over the course of people’s lives, I had the shoes stretched, and was able to wear them. But that incident stuck with me, and years later this question popped into my mind: what would happen if even Cinderella herself didn’t fit her slippers? I answered this with a poem called Sliver. Soon, though, a poem was not enough. I knew there was more. The tale of the girl in the glass slippers who goes from rags and oppression to riches and true love is part of our cultural DNA. And when it came to telling a story of a girl who doesn’t belong and her quest for a place and a purpose, Cinderella really chose me. It was a very instinctive thing.

*A perfect fit!*
*Illustration by Edward Dalziel*

That’s so true – the rags to riches and love trope is very much part of our cultural DNA. So are many of the classic fairy tales. What first attracted you to fairy tales? And is it the same thing that attracts you now, or has it changed over the years?

I took a class in college that had Grimm’s Household Tales as one of the texts (as well as The Handmaid’s Tale), and the teacher also introduced us to Anne Sexton’s fairy tale poetry. At that point, I was hooked, but I’m sure I wouldn’t have been able to articulate why at the time. So, while I now have a better understanding of why I love fairy tales, I don’t believe the fascination has changed. Fairy tales tap into deeply buried hopes and fears; I find they have a direct link to my subconscious. Fairy tales, and stories in general, provide a vocabulary to articulate emotions I can’t understand, and retelling allows me to tell myself stories I can’t hear any other way.

That’s beautifully put. Now, why did you choose to use the Grimm version of Cinderella rather than the Perrault version for your novel?

*Arthur Rackham’s illustration for the Perrault version: a benign old woman with magical powers helps the young heroine fulful her dream.*

Elenore Abbott’s illustration for the Grimm version. I think I’m beginning to see where the feathers come in. The source of Cinderella’s dress is very different in this version from the Perrault tale.

I am sure that my first exposure to the Cinderella tale was the animated Disney (Perrault-inspired) movie when I was pretty little. It might have been the first movie I saw in a theatre, or perhaps I only had a story book version of it. One way or another, I know I thought the pink gown the mice helped her with was so much prettier than the one the fairy godmother gave her! I’m not sure when I learned the Grimm’s version; it was likely around the time I took that college class and became familiar with the Broadway musical Into the Woods. I found the Grimm’s tale much more appealing with its bloodier elements and wish granting tree. So that was the story I gravitated to when writing Glass and Feathers. The darker plot points and earthier magic gave me a jumping off point to take the story in a different direction following the happy ever after of either traditional tale. However, there was one element from Perrault I had to have: the glass slipper. While other Cinderella stories have shoes made of different materials (the Grimm’s tale Aschenputtel has golden slippers), the glass slipper is so iconic, with so much to explore contained within it, it was crucial.

That slipper again! There are hundreds of versions of Cinderella, and many tales that include that element, aren’t there? You’ve been sharing different versions of the shoe trope on social media. What is your favourite?

I’m only just beginning to dip into the wealth of Cinderella type stories from around the world, every Tuesday with the hashtag #AnotherCinderella, and it’s already been so much fun! But my favorite non-traditional tale of the Cinderella type is Allerleirauh, who flees her father’s horrifying marriage proposal and escapes in a cloak made of all kinds of fur. That’s a story I have plans to do more with soon. I also love Cap-o’-Rushes; it’s similar once the heroine flees the palace, but has a Love Like Salt/King Lear beginning that I find completely compelling.

I love Cap-o’-Rushes! It’s such a satisfying ending. So, Cinderella is one of the best-known fairy tales, partly thanks to Disney, but what’s your favourite lesser-known fairy tale?

There are so many, it’s hard to choose a favorite. But I love tales that feature Death or the Devil as mortal-type characters. One of these is Bearskin, in which a down-on-his-luck soldier makes a bargain with the Devil. I also love anything in the Search for the Lost Husband vein. A favorite from that type is Finist the Falcon.

*This Cinderella looks very confident of her status!*
*Another Arthur Rackham*

I shall have to go and look up that last one! Now I have a writer’s den question. IIf money, geography and time were no object, what would your ideal writing spot look like?

A few years ago, my family and I took a trip to the UK and spent a few days on the Southern coast in St. Margaret’s at Cliffe. If I could have a cozy cottage there with a view of the sea, a cup of tea, and a cat in my lap, I’d be in not only writer’s heaven, but heaven in general.

That sounds gorgeous! I’ve got a cat on my lap as I type this up! Last question, but a very important one. You’ve written a wide range of short stories, poetry and articles on fairy tale themes. Where can we find more of your writing?

My website, https://lissasloan.com/, has links to my stories, poems, and anthology contributions. The anthologies are all from World Weaver Press, and most of the stories and poems are at fairytalemagazine.com. This publication is near and dear to my heart, and Glass and Feathers could not have found a happier ever after than with FTM’s fairy godmother editor Kate Wolford and amazing art director, Amanda Bergloff. It’s been a delightful collaboration!

I’m also on

Twitter: @LissaSloan

Instagram: @lissa_sloan

Facebook: Lissa Sloan

…where I love to connect and talk writing, folklore, and of course, fairy tales!

Thank you, Lissa, it’s been great finding out more about the background of Glass and Feathers. If I’ve wetted your appetite for more, it’s not too late to subscribe and catch up with the heroine’s journey as she faces the challenges of life in the palace with her perfect prince. The installments come free with a subscription to the Fairy Tale Magazine, $16 for the year, which covers four jewel-like magazines brimful of stories, poems and pictures that retell or reinvent the fairy tale for lovers of the genre and all things enchanting.

Find out more about Fairy Tale Magazine here:https://www.fairytalemagazine.com/ Scroll for articles and pieces from the archive to give you a flavour of Fairy Tale Magazine.

Find out about subscriptions here:https://www.fairytalemagazine.com/

My Year in Folk and Fairy Tales

In which a small-time author writes a self-indulgent and overly long review of the past year.

A change of direction

Gargoyles abound in my writing this year

I ended 2021 on a low note, writing-wise. I’d rewritten Penny Plain, a story I get drawn back to again and again, only to loathe it when I re-read it. At the same time, I wasn’t enjoying modern historical fiction for adults. But hadn’t I been writing historical fiction for years? I had three HF novels on my hard drive and a fourth on paper in a folder. I’d had more success with short stories, a mix of fairy tale and low fantasy, but there’s something satisfying about losing oneself in the world of a longer piece. The only novel I’d drafted that wasn’t in this genre was a children’s historical fantasy.

But I’d really enjoyed the process and felt pleased with the first draft. Besides that, perhaps this was the way to combine two things I wanted to write about: the past, and magic. The seal on this decision was the fact I’d read and enjoyed a range of children’s fiction that year, including the gorgeous Ghost of Gosswater by Lucy Strange, a ghostly-gothic historical adventure for 9-12 year olds.

So this year I developed an idea that had nudged me for a while, particularly in Lockdown, those long months when we could only travel very locally, and always on our own. At night if I look out of my kitchen window I can see through a gap in the trees the lighted windows of one of the houses opposite. It probably isn’t the one called King’s Cottage – the alignment is wrong – and the one that is King’s Cottage probably has nothing to do with the tradition (likely) that King John hunted here in one of his many parks, or the tradtion (unlikely) that Maid Marion finished her life in Essex, but I like to pretend it is. And writing historical fantasy is tremendously liberating, because you can go any way you like to make a good story. So into the mix went another tradtiion that Maid Marion was the May Queen, and a few bones of a story I wrote in my late teens about the forest rebel in her latter years. The Plotstorming course from Writers’ HQ really helped me map this out, and I didn’t have the usual mid-novel crises where I wanted to tear it all up and start again. Our three-week summer holiday booking gave me a deadline to work towards and I had my first draft by mid-May.

Apparently, the genre I’ve chosen now is even harder to break into than historical fiction. It’s also the genre in which there’s been a stir this year, as children’s authors speak up about the lack of media attention for this section of literature.

My local church, which gets burned down in my new novel. Tradition links its destruction to Bad King John. Or maybe his enemies.

Castles and Unicorns

With lockdown measures put behind us this year, we had wonderful three weeks touring Scotland. We lost ourselves in coastal splendour, castles and kelpies. Searching for local traditions about the faerie, I came across an article by author Kate Macritchie that detailed the otherworldly folk of this country, from selkies to the ghillie dhu, and this enchanted me so much that I bought her first book, Fireside Fairytales, and devoured them as we continued our journey. I returned with a head full of dreams and unicorns, and struggled for a while with an urge to go back to writing short, fantastical pieces to try and use them all. To conflict me further, I returned to three encouraging rejections to some shorts I’d submitted.

Dunnottar Castle, one of many dreamy ruins

Encouraging rejections? My husband was amused and puzzled when I used this phrase to him. One editor liked my Arthurian/Victorian story but its setting was similar to another they’d accepted, so no thank you, but would I send in more? Another invited a rewrite of my tale of a house elf emigrating to New Zealand if I could be more head-on with the issue of the European-Maori conflict. A third email had slipped into my spam, and offered editorial help for a tale about a crow trying to resist his prophetic calling. These seemed like opportunities too good to be passed by.

So I sent a different story to the first press, I brainstormed the second story and took up the offer for the third.

In the end, the first press didn’t accept my second story either, but never mind. The second project was really hard. Over the years of trading critiques with others, I’ve adopted the idea that I should always be open to feedback and take it on board if it has any merit. And here was a respected journal that had taken the time to send me their thoughts. It was right to give them serious consideration. But it would have involved making my story much darker and less hopeful than I’d meant for, and would take me a long way from the tale I’d wanted to write, which addressed an inner struggle of my own. So the story was abandoned, and will sit in my hard drive for a long time, I fear. The third project, however, was different again. An editor worked with me to tighten up some story-line and clear up details. It was thorough, and the plot-line changed quite a bit, but it stayed true to what I wanted to write about, and I was very grateful for all of that. Finished, it went back to the journal editor and is, I understand, earmarked for a future issue.

Working on Feedback

Remember the historical fantasy for children that I mentioned at the start? I submitted the first chapter of that for the WriteMentor novel-in-development award, paying the extra fee for feedback from readers. I didn’t win an award, but the notes were very encouraging and helpful, from the point the adult reader made about the protagonist needing to be less passive to the child reader voting “yes” to reading further. Over the summer I used a course on Domestika on plotting a children’s fantasy, run by the very talented Ross Montgomery (Chime Seekers, Midnight Guardians) and covered a whiteboard with garish post-it notes. Even though the stick couldn’t cope with the notes being moved round (each morning I rose to another flutter of notes on the carpet) the visual element was very helpful for me. With the shape settled, I put that Plotstormers course to work again and created a big document that outlined each chapter. From September to November I worked my way through a second draft, rewriting most of the first half of the bookand tinkering with or rearranging the second. In December I rewrote the synopsis, polished the first 4 thousand words and submitted them to another competition, hitting their deadline with hours to spare. Its working title is The Night Crawlers.

Short stories and a publication!

So, two novel drafts in one year isn’t bad, is it? I also wrote seven new shorts. The encouraging rejections mentioned earlier were part of twelve submissions made this year of short stories. Total publications — one! A story that was actually accepted last year. “Returning the Favor” (US publisher so American spelling) came out in the anthology Mothers of Enchantment in March. After the princess figure dominating fairy tales for so long, the fairy godmothers, or godfathers, got twelve stories of their own, some in classic settings and some right up-to-date. My own began as a riff on a tale where three toads help out a princess, but soon I found my toad godmother had a backstory of her own that took me back to the characters of “The Twelve Swans.” After I’d got over the excitement of having my name on the front cover (I realised soon that the reason for this was that they listed the authors of the first few stories inside, and that it had nothing to do with merit!) I enjoyed the process of marketing, firing off emails to a range of fantasy writers I’ve met online over the years to ask if they would do reviews for it. So many said yes, which was wonderful. And a reviewer who’d enjoyed some anthologies I’ve contributed to in the past spotted the book on an advance review site and also reviewed it. I know nothing about her apart from the fact that she reads voraciously and doesn’t hold back if she dislikes a book, so the fact that she enjoyed my story means a lot to me. As other reviews came in, many of them giving their views on the individual stories, I saw proof of the truth that a reviewer’s opinion on a story is just that – an opinion. A story that one reviewer didn’t connect with was considered the best by another reader, and so it went on, and my contribution had its own share of readers who didn’t like it.

Writing Courses

I’ve mentioned two really useful courses already, Plotstormers by Writers HQ, and Children’s Fiction: Write Compelling Adventure Fiction, and two more merit mention. The Writers’ HQ Five Days of Flash (fiction) course was thorough and enlightening and very useful. And author Elizabeth Hopkinson’s online, live course Transformations was very enjoyable too, pushing me to explore my darker side and plan a story I don’t feel ready to share with the world just yet! She is running it again in January and you can book it here. I thoroughly recommend it.

Fantastical Reads

Elizabeth Hopkinson writes fairy tales too. This year I took part in her kickstarter for More Asexual Fairy Tales, a delicate collection of retellings of curious and fantasticals tales.

I’ve already mentioned Kate Macritchie’s Fireside Tales. Her second book, Fireside Magic, came out this winter and I devoured that too.

Other fairytale delights this year were After Ever, Little Stories for Grown Children by D Avery and Swedish Folk and Fairy Tales illustrated, enchantingly, by John Bauer.

My reviews for all of these apart from the last are on Goodreads.

Meanwhile I also discovered a stack of wonderful historical fantasy, of which the highlights, for me, are A Most Magical Girl by Karen Foxlee (Victorian witches, sharp-tooted fairies in the cemetery and trolls in the sewers), Dark Angels by Katherine Langrish (elves in the Welsh hills and a runaway sheltering in a castle), The Crowfield Curse by Pat Walsh (a hob and rumours of angels in a monastery) and The Museum of Mary Child by Cassandra Golds( a gorgeously gentle-spooky story – think Elizabeth Googe with bite.) I also loved Stephanie Burgis’s Scales and Sensibility – Regency romance with dragons – and Simon Edge’s Anyone for Edmund, a comedy about the discovery of the bones of St/King Edmund and the chaos that ensues when a politician’s aide invents a few details about the life of the saint and Edmund himself gets very angry.

Not one of my top books of the year, but what a wonderful cover!

Folkish Makes

I struggled with low-level depression at times this year, a late-striking effect of the pandemic, I think, but one thing that helped was making things. On the edge of the local Common there’s a homestead in which a woman keeps animals, home-schools her children and runs workshops where she channels her Polish ancestry and her love of the woods around. They sell out very quickly but I’ve managed to get into several this year and made various goddesses in her magical cabin that should surely work its way into one of my stories. My favourite goddess, not least because it freaks out my family, is this one that turned into my protagonist from “Returning the Favor.”

Stories by Friends and other Fellow-Writers

This year my friend Sandra Hirons published her first story, and two more. One is fantasy, based on the tradtion of a wild man of the sea in nearby Orford, but it’s behind a paywall. For free, you can read “Daddy Facetime“, a wickedly funny short. Two writers in my local writing group brought out their first books this year. Alex Delve published The Elsewhere, a paranormal thriller which I was very impressed by, and Steven Rosen published Lost in the Babylon, his memoir about enlightenment after a life of crime, which I haven’t read but has been received very well locally.

Miscellaneous

There was an abundance of art festivals this year, which was very enjoyable. It was lovely to see art by friends, and I bought my first original piece, shown here, by Helen Davis. It’s part of a series inspired partly by fairy tale folklore. I love the hidden face, who must be a tree spirit, and the collage effect using text. You can find Helen on Instagram as Helendonline, to enjoy more f her work.

A detail of my acquisition. The photo I took of the hidden face hasn’t come out well, so you’ll have to take my word for it.

I probably spend too much time on social media but I’ve enjoyed the connections I’ve made there. For instance, A Gargoyle a Day on Instagram is fun to follow. Meanwhile on Facebook I was asked to become an admin for the Fairy Tale Forum group, and have enjoyed writing posts to get the discussion going. We take new members, but if you’re interested, make sure to read and answer all the membership questions when you apply.

Summing up (did you skip to the end to read this?)

Lots of really good courses this year have helped me change direction into children’s historical fantasy, and a deadline for a competition helped me focus.

Goals for 2023?

Carry on creating.
Polish The Night Crawlers.
Review the story about Maid Marion and choose a decent title for it.
Revise a few of those short stories of mine that are lurking in my drive in need of attention.
Avoid writing new stories just to suit calls for submissions, and use that time to try and find homes for some older pieces.
Read lots and celebrate the successes of fellow-writers.

Comparative titles for the novels I want to complete in 2023

Strawberries and Scream – a visit to Strawberry Hill and an exhibition of toy theatres

An article popped up on my social media feed, about a toy theatre exhibition at Strawberry Hill, the gothic home of Hugh Walpole, prime minister and author. When a friend showed the same article to me, it nudged me to get myself over there. Toy theatre and a gothic house – Verity, protagonist in my novel about toy theatre in Victorian London, would not have forgiven me if I’d let the chance go.

The impressive entrance hall, looking up

“Gothic” today means dark and menacing. His house is anything but. Bright white on the outside, it’s a fantasy of arches and turrets. Inside, it’s a mixture of deep colours and frothy extravagance. Walpole chose medieval designs for everything – the motifs painted on the hall walls, the fireplaces modelled on tombs, the library with its bookcases based on cathedral arches. He bought 16c stained glass from the continent, where it was being sold off cheap, and arranged his roundels and fragments to balance nicely in his windows.

The fireplaces were mostly based on medieval tombs. Presumably warmer, though!

My own library is a leetle bit like this…just a leetle bit!

Walpole had fun putting all his stained glass scraps together.

Walpole, of course, wasn’t a medieval baron himself, but he filled the house with armorial hints of a martial past. He researched his ancestry and found a link to the time of the Crusaders, which surely meant his ancestors went on a crusade! – and for his family shield claimed the “Saracen head” that denotes this. The Saracen head appears throughout the house, on fireplaces and on the floor. There’s also a splendid arrangement of armour at the top of the stairs. My favourite heraldic addition, though, is the stags all the way up the bannisters, whose eyes follow you as you move up and down.

A Saracen’s head, a sign someone went on a Crusade. On the cap is a Catherine wheel. It seems unlikely the Saracens actually looked like this, but that’s a very fine beard.

The stags might be following you with your eyes as you go up the stairs, but just now, this one is intrigued by the light falling on Henry VII in the painting of St George (a digital copy).

In this part of the house, the atmosphere is more chapel-like.

Hugh Walpole wrote the first gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto. I confess to being disappointed when I read it at university, for our course on melodrama. The castle of the title is haunted by – a giant helmet! Gothic literature soon took on a more serious aspect, though, and its canon is a perfect fit for toy theatre (juvenile theatre, as it was called then), with its cardboard characters fixed in melodramatic poses of shock, outrage and heroism, and its backdrops of gloomy forests and castle ruins. Pollock’s Toy Museum has lent Strawberry Hill a wonderful selection of its paper theatres, set up for different plays, and they are displayed around the house. So for a while you can peer into the drama of gothic delights like “The Bottle Imp” (Hoffman), native romance like “Richard Lion Heart and Blondel” (enriched with a character called Mathilda who is also searching out the king while disguised as a blind minstrel), and, of course, an adaptation of The Castle of Otranto, turned rather fittingly, I’d say, into a pantomime. It’s a wonder many of these survived, when you read how the performances could be embellished with miniature explosions – red fire for heroic deeds, like the blowing up of the villainous Miller’s mill (“The Miller and his Men”) and blue for ghostly effects, like the revelation of Bluebeard’s skeleton chamber (“Blue Beard”).

Here is a selection of scenes from the exhibition.

Harlequin and the Giant Helmet; or, The Castle of Otranto, pantomime by J. R. Planché

Although serious adaptations of Walpole’s novel were made for the stage, when it was adapted for the toy theatre it was turned into a pantomime. This seems to have been a favourite treatment of toy theatre plays, involving the clown Harlequin and his comrades, and actors wearing huge papier mache heads. It reminds me of the stage adaptations of TV cartoons that are put on for pre-school children.

Rockalda, in The Flying Dutchman, melodrama by Edward Fitzball

While the toy theatre has its fair share of trembling damsels, it’s not short of more interesting women. This is Rockalda, the spirit of the deep. In Fitzball’s adaptation of “The Flying Dutchman” Vanderdeccken, protagonist of the tale, becomes her slave. I don’t know much about her, but I’ve discovered that the play script dictates “she” (acted by a man) should wear a sea-green dress trimmed with seaweed and shells, a tiara and a black veil down her back. Apparently Wagner’s opera does use some elements of the melodrama, but not, sadly, her.

The Bottle Imp, melodrama by Richard Brinsley Peake

This is an adaptation of a tale by E. T. A. Hoffman, more famous for “The Nutcracker”, which was turned into a charming ballet classic but in tale version is quite bizarre and rather scary. The story of the bottle imp is doubtless just as strange.. The Bottle Imp is claiming Albert here, crying, “You are mine!” It was rather dark in this room so I had to use my flash, and the shadows it threw added to the atmosphere rather nicely.

Der Freishütz (“The Free-Shooter), melodrama by W. Macgregor Logan

Adapted from Weber’s opera. Here, the hero prepares for a marksmanship competition by using magic bullets. This has unleashed a whole ballroom of chilling characters.

Mausoleum Toy Theatre

Jack Fawdry Tatham recently made this, as a collaboration between Pollock’s Toy Museum and the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic, Boscastle. It doesn’t seem to represent a particular story or play, but it’s very atmospheric. It’s also an example, in my mind, of how the theatre itself can compete with the characters on stage for which is the most striking.

And some details:

Fatima in Bluebeard is a bit daft, but I love her costume.

The toy theatres have all the details of a live performance, including orchestra.

The procenium arches of the toy theatres are exhuberant. This unicorn really doesn’t want to be here!

The toy theatre exhibition is on until the 14th September 2022, but it you miss the date, the house is well worth the visit on its own.

My novel about toy theatre, Penny Plain, is something I’ve been wrestling with for several decades now. I’m currently writing something for children, but I will get back to Penny at some point. Verity, my protagonist, rescues a beggar child from the streets and finds the only way to reach her is through the colour and excitment of the toy theatre. But does Lily really understand that it’s just a fiction?

Walking with the Romans

I didn’t warm much to the Romans in history at school. Too much conquest and too many straight lines. And the historical fiction I read in those days reflected thinking that was left over from the days of the British Empire. I remember a Henry Treece with a Roman scolding a Briton for being miffed at being subjugated: it was really for his own good, he was told, to bring order and civilisation to his country. Teaching history as a Primary School teacher, I thawed slightly to the Romans as we admired relics like Samian ware pottery. There are so many shards of this about, that museums often let you handle it yourself, and it’s wonderfully smooth as well as being such a gorgeous colour.

This week I felt in need for a trip to London for a bit of space and culture, so I used the first chapter in “Walking London’s History: 2,000 years in 15 walks,” by Tim Potter.

In front of a section of the Roman wall of Londinium stands a statue that might be of Trajan. Apparently it was found in a rubbish tip in Southampton, and the head doesn’t match the body. I like the figures on his breasplate.

Under All Hallows by the Tower, a Roman tombstone. The wife’s head has been lost. (Those Romans weren’t very good at keeping their heads, were they?)

Temple of Mithras, near Cannon Street Station. They turn down the lights and play a soundtrack that might reflect what happened at a secret meeting. Also, some of that Samian ware.

The Roman Stone. Maybe a milestone? Later it became the place where apprentices and their masters signed contracts. Apparently, in 1450 the rebel Jack Cade struck his sword on it to mark his claim to be Lord of the City.

Roman amphitheatre, under the Guildhall. After the Romans left, it was used as a rubbish tip. What sort of ghosts lingered among the refuse, I wonder?

More wall, maybe the corner of a fort.

Across the road, Medieval towers that continued the wall, and an oasis of calm between contrasting eras of architecture. It’s minutes away from the thundering main road. London is full of surprises.