Wandering

At the end of May we spent a few days in Portsmouth and Winchester.

Portsmouth is the birthplace of Charles Dickens, and the place for his difficult childhood. With his father in debtor’s prison, he had to leave school early to go to work. Did you know Charles Dickens wrote fairy tales as well as novels and short stories? Do have a read of The Magic Fishbone — it’s such fun.

Winchester, by a strange quirk of symmetry, is the city where Jane Austen, another great nineteenth century writer, spent her last days. There’s a fabulous old bookshop in the same street as the house she stayed in, with a tradition that she bought her books there, but that was surely on an earlier visit, when she wasn’t critically ill.

It’s also where you can view King Arthur’s Round Table! I remember being disappointed by it when I was a child, expecting something bigger. This time round, I believe it was my distance perception that was at fault rather than the table. But I still think it would be quite a squeeze.

We climbed St Catherine’s Hill, too, and sat a while in the grove at the top, enjoying the shelter from the sun and the murmur of the breeze in the trees. It was probably a hillfort once, and later had a chapel at its crest. Perhaps the chapel was dedicated to St Catherine, and that’s why the hill is named after her. Or maybe it’s because the round hill reminded people of the wheel that was the instrument of torture that killed her. No-one is quite sure.

June is the month for the Essex Book Festival, and this year included a new event, where the town of Great Dunmow was turned into a bookshop! Various businesses hosted writers who could chat and sell you books direct, signed specially. I really enjoyed catching up with writers who’ve been my tutors for courses and workshops, and meeting, for the first time, Michelle Harrison, who lives in Southwest Essex. Michelle built a great career writing children’s books: I’ve really enjoyed her series that began with A Pinch of Magic, not least because her fantasy maps reuse some of the wonderful place names of South Essex, including Bread and Cheese Hill, the real-life version of which I climb each Sunday to get to my medieval church perched at the top. Michelle is branching out into adult fiction too, with Two Little Liars, a psychological thriller set in Essex, including a fictional version of Osea Island, and drawing on the witch trials of the past here. I read my copy in two days: it’s a real page-turner, and I do like the way there’s a bit of doubt left over as to whether the breaking of the witch bottle really did release something evil.

Making

I’ve stayed away from paint as a medium because I’ve been frustrated in the past with my efforts. But Angela, who runs craft workshops locally, is particularly good at encouraging people to forget preconceived ideas of the “right way to do art” so I had a go at watercolours in her enchanted cabin this month. (And I also told her that her cabin features in the novella I’m writing now.) My attempt at Persephone is very derivative as I drew heavily on pictures from a book on goddesses, but I’m happy I made a start, and I was quite pleased with my wild rose. The myth of Demeter and Persephone is a core of the same novella.

Reading

The Owl Witch by Myriam Dahman, Nicolas Digard and Júlia Sardà is a beautifully told and illustrated original fairy tale about a lonely witch and a terrifying octopus. I don’t think it’s for very little children - more for older children and adults who love fairy tales.

Pureheart by Cassandra Golds is a strange, beautiful, bittersweet book, part fairy tale, part gothic horror, using the legend of the quest for the grail in a story about intergenerational trauma and the terrible effects of going over and over the bad things that happened to you in the past. It’s also quite an old-fashioned style. It’s marketed as YA, but in the current reading climate I’d say it will appeal to the whimsical reader who doesn’t want or need loud plots, and to those who love the fever-dream that is the quest for the grail.

Lost in the Garden by Adam S Leslie has vibes of Midsommar (with far fewer bodies and far less blood) and Picnic at Hanging Rock, and the folk bit is quite subdued – as a review says, the tension is largely over the heat and the way time bends, giving it all a strange, dream-like atmosphere. It’s certainly a good one to read during a heatwave.

Writing

I’ve been rewriting big hunks of my ghost/folklore novella and doing retrospective plotting. I did in fact plan before I wrote the first draft, but when I returned to it and read it again, I knew I wanted to really expand a subplot that I hadn’t originally planned, and how to fit its story arc into the main story arc has been a challenge. Do they peak at the same time? That seems crowded. Do they peak at different times? That seems messy. And as for how or where I’m going to market it – a ghost story that’s not remotely frightening, a folklore theme with no horror, something about mothers and daughters, all set in a neglected garden nursery during lockdown… well, I’m writing the sort of book I want to read.

Other Writers

Over on Substack, if you’re at all interested in children’s literature, Jenny Kovar is well worth following. Her posts are not the sneak-in-a-bit-of-social-media-while-I-boil-the-kettle - they’re long, thoughtful and very intelligent. The latest one I’ve read is about the gorgeous illustrations of Janet and Anne Graham-Johnson, artists who I loved in childhood and who enhanced various books I’ve discovered in second-hand shops as an adult.

The Fairy Tale Bit – Satchel, Hat and Horn

Back in February, one story I read for Fairytale-A-Day was the Grimm brothers’ “Satchel, Hat and Horn.” Of all the fairy tales I’ve read (a lot) this is the one I despise the most. As fairy tale writer friend Lissa Sloan pointed out, it’s close in plot to “The Tinderbox”.

Three brothers are on the verge of starvation, so off they set to find a solution – a classic fairy tale start, with a focus on the underdog. But where the first two are content with the first treasures they find – mountains of silver and gold, certainly not to be sniffed at – the third brother isn’t interested. With no skills or strength, he happens on a magic tablecloth which spreads out a feast.

This would solve many of his problems, but instead he exchanges it for a powerful magic knapsack from a charcoal burner. The charcoal burner either thinks a good meal is better than power or is too stupid to work out how to keep both – unlike the third brother, who uses the power of the knapsack to attack the charcoal burner and retrieve the tablecloth.

The pattern happens twice more, meaning the brother basically steals a magical hat and a magical horn from two more charcoal burners, then uses all three to first mistreat his brothers and then terrorise the king into giving him both power in the kingdom and the hand of the princess. When the princess objects to his shabby hat and knapsack and tries to get rid of them, he loses his temper and blows the horn, bringing a tower crashing down and killing king and princess. Now he’s king of everything.

What on earth is this story about? A fantasy about the little guy winning, even when he’s got nothing to recommend him at all? A warning to all us girls who really want to get rid of that horrid shirt/pair of trousers/jacket our men insist on wearing? A dark fable about how someone can obtain unstoppable power? I know what I want, and that’s Part 2, The Revenge of the Charcoal Burners.

Perhaps you’re interested in my fairytale collection The Tapestry Unravels but want to browse first? You can read the first tale for free in its original home here. You can listen to another tale either read by Scott Thrower here or by me in this interview, starting at 8:41. There are also two stories of mine, not in the collection, published by Fairy Tale Magazine, free to read, here (download required), here and here.

Lynden Wade has had stories published in a range of publications, including BFS Horizons, the journal of the British Fantasy Society. Now she has published a collection of them, “The Tapestry Unravels.”

She lives in the East of England, not far from a castle ruin, but spends more time in the worlds of folklore and magic. She owns far more fairy crowns than she should at her age.

This summer I’ve had the honour of being asked to judge the fiction entries for the summer contest of The Fairy Tale Magazine, the theme being “sirens”. It’s been both marvellous and tough as I’ve read far more wonderful tales than I can choose. It’s also been very interesting working on the other side of the desk for a change - judging rather than submitting.

Like many (most?) of us writers, I have far more stories on my hard drive than in publication. This is what I learned from judging, and will take with me when I go back to submitting.

There are more wonderful stories than prizes

When a contest or magazine says they had far more wonderful work than they could publish, they probably aren’t just being nice, so accept the compliment for what it is! I’d love to choose enough stories to fill a magazine, but I had to restrict my choice to three.

Follow the guidelines

Yes, a bit obvious, this one. Here are the rules/guidelines that mattered to me when I made my choice, and the ones that might not be worth sweating about.

Word count

It’s there for a reason. There were submissions that were hundreds of words over the limit. I read every single word of the stories that had kept to the limit, but I didn’t read the ones that were well over it at all. It didn’t seem fair to the writers who’d followed the wordcount to consider those who didn’t. One or two words over? Not a problem in my opinion.

Theme

There were stories that referenced the theme, which was “sirens” but sirens weren’t an important part of the plot. Many of these were enjoyable. But they weren’t what we were seeking.

Structure

Story needs to go somewhere - there’s a problem, some striving, and a resolution, for better or for worse. It can’t stay in one place. So entries with no direction were a no-no for me.

Grammar

Now I’m a grammar fascist normally - just ask my husband! But while I noticed the odd bit of imperfect punctuation or grammar, it didn’t take me out of a good story.

Beyond the nuts and bolts of a story, there were two factors I found hugely important to me when making my choice.

Inner logic

Beautiful prose isn’t enough. Even when we’re writing about creatures that don’t exist doing impossible things, there must be an inner logic as to why the characters act and how the resolution works (within a world of magic).

Heart

In the end, the stories that lingered in my mind as I pondered my choice were the ones that stirred something in me, tugged at my heart strings, made me mourn or rejoice or nod my head and say, “Yes, that’s how it should be.” And goodness, yes, that is going to be very subjective.

Other judges might have different values. But I suspect they’re not vastly different. So I hope you can see from this summary that there is a great deal of luck involved, but there’s also much you can do to coax Lady Luck to tilt the balance in your favour.

Competition results are published here. A special edition of The Fairy Tale Magazine, publishing all the winners, will be out July 15th. I thoroughly recommend you look out for this and read it, as they are all wonderful stories.

Interested in my fairytale collection The Tapestry Unravels but unsure if you’d like my style? You can read the first tale for free in its original home here. You can listen to another tale either read by Scott Thrower here or by me in this interview, starting at 8:41. There are also two stories of mine, not in the collection, published by Fairy Tale Magazine, free to read, here (download required), here and here.

Lynden Wade has had stories published in a range of publications, including BFS Horizons, the journal of the British Fantasy Society. Now she has published a collection of them, “The Tapestry Unravels.”

She lives in the East of England, not far from a castle ruin, but spends more time in the worlds of folklore and magic. She owns far more fairy crowns than she should at her age.

We’re just coming to the end of May. The first day of the month is the start of Summer, according to folk traditions in Europe. The hedgerows and woods round me are frothy with blossom, white and cream – dishes of Elder flower, sprays of Hawthorn, wands of Wild Chervil.

Wandering

My husband gamely agreed to come with me to a local May Day fete, with stalls selling food, clothing and gifts, and Maypole dancing. Seduced by a gorgeous skirt for sale, I was buying it when the call came to join the dance, so I missed my chance to tangle my ribbon with everyone else’s – which wasn’t the object of the dance, but was definitely the theme. There followed an enactment of the battle of Winter and Summer, where Summer, represented by a Green Man, won not only the sword fight but also, in my mind, the competition for best dressed nature spirit. Next year perhaps I can bring Winter a crown of holly, and a fine scarlet cloak to swish.

Writing

This has been a glorious spring not just for the weather, but also for some wonderful writing opportunities.

The lovely founders of Flourish Arts Network, a wellness charity, invited me to run a creative writing workshop for them. I’ve always taught as my day job, and story writing is part of the private tuition I do with children, but this was my first adult workshop. Seven of us tried three different prompts and compared the results. Everyone had some fantastic ideas, although the gory imagination of some was certainly a surprise – the authors of these stories come over so sweet and nice in conversation!

I was also honoured to be asked to judge the prose entries for the annual competition of The Fairy Tale Magazine, which I’ve been fortunate enough to have had several stories accepted for. Its theme this year is Sirens, those entrancing and fatal creatures whose singing drives ships onto the rocks. There are two days left to enter, so check here and see if you have anything you’d like to submit.

The third lovely thing is that I was interviewed for the blog of The Medusa, a literary magazine. You can read the interview here. It was delightful to find that I’m placed between artist Emily McGovern, the creator of comic about medieval nuns called (surprise) Nuns and Tish Black, another fairy tale author, who founded Fairy-Tale-a-Day.

My fairy tale collection The Tapestry Unravels, meanwhile, after the initial flurry, sells one or two copies a month, which certainly doesn’t mean I should ditch the day job, but each new sale is a pleasant surprise, as is each new review. I know from experience that it takes longer than you’d think to write and post a book review online, and so I’m grateful to each person who’s given the time to do so.

Meanwhile, I’m working on my greenhouse ghost story, fiddling with the existing frame, writing new scenes and fretting about structure. The first draft was written with the barest of outlines, going with my instincts, but now I’m pondering my choices, unsure how much shaping to do based on the thousands of words of advice I’ve absorbed over the last ten years on structure.

Reading

Very short but very satisfying was The Little Matchgirl Strikes Back, by Emma Carroll. Perhaps you could call it magic realism in historical times? It’s Hans Christian Andersen’s Little Match Girl retold through an account of the matchstick factory strike at the start of the 20th Century in London. So, after the curious visions that appear when each match is struck, where the tiny girl freezes in the snow in the fairy tale, Carroll’s heroine fights back against the unjust owners who’ve continued with dangerous work practices for the staff despite evidence of the nasty consequences. She’s my ideal heroine, brave and gumptious, standing up for her family as she stirs people to strike. The illustrations by Lauren Child are fabulous, interweaving with the text.

One Hundred Subscribers!

This month saw my subscriber numbers hit 100. Yay! To celebrate, I’m offering all my subscribers a free download of my poem “Cameo” — my first publication, in fact, so many years ago, in the anthology mentioned in my interview with the Medusa journal. (For some reason, the interview says it’s a short story in a poetry anthology. Something got lost in translation, there.) You can find the link to a version with a fancy background here, or you can download a copy to print out here.

Spotify playlist for The Tapestry Unravels

A popular form of procrastination for authors is making a playlist for their book. You can find the playlist for The Tapestry Unravels here. There’s a song for each story, and I’ve double-checked it’s in the same order as the stories in the book. If you’ve read the collection, see if you can find the connection for each — some are more obvious than others. If you haven’t read it, the playlist will give you an idea of the flavour I aimed to offer.

Strange and forgotten folk customs - May

The 29th of May is traditionally Oak Apple Day, also known as Shick Shack Day or Oak and Nettle Day. This was once a public holiday in Britain, to celebrate the return of the Stuart kings to the throne and the end of the dour years of Puritan control. People wore sprigs of oak or oak apples (“shick-shack”, a plant gall) and if you didn’t, your neighbours would thrash you with nettles or pelt you with eggs. Ah, the good old days!

Why oak sprigs and apples? While fleeing his enemies, Charles Stuart Prince of Wales hid in an oak tree.

A few places still celebrate the day, according to Wikipedia.

The Fairy Tale Bit: Perrault’s “The Ridiculous Wishes”

Unlike the protagonists of many fairy tales, the man and wife in this one don’t win riches and crowns at the end, despite the way they’re granted three wishes by the god Jupiter. In fact, they have the chance to wish for a large fortune, and mess it up by squabbling. You could take issue with the wording, which implies the woman is at fault for berating her husband, but it’s quite clear from the storytelling that he’s been a complete fool with his first wish, and besides, the details are such fun, including the black pudding which comes to life. So many fairy tales in their raw form contain hideous punishments for the antagonists, sometimes far out of proportion to their crimes (the stepsisters in Cinderella, for instance, were a pair of bullies, yet they didn’t deserve to have their eyes pecked out) but here, the man and wife suffer the consequences of their own pettiness.

Interested in my fairytale collection The Tapestry Unravels but unsure if you’d like my style? You can read the first tale for free in its original home here. You can listen to another tale either read by Scott Thrower here or by me in this interview, starting at 8:41. There are also two stories of mine, not in the collection, published by Fairy Tale Magazine, free to read, here (download required), here and here.

Lynden Wade has had stories published in a range of publications, including BFS Horizons, the journal of the British Fantasy Society. Now she has published a collection of them, “The Tapestry Unravels.”

She lives in the East of England, not far from a castle ruin, but spends more time in the worlds of folklore and magic. She owns far more fairy crowns than she should at her age.

Wandering

Despite what my American friends think, I don’t actually live in a castle! – but during the Easter break we had a chance to stay in one. Technically a stately home, now a hotel, the Latimer Estate dates back to the Middle Ages. In the 18c the Cavendish family fancied a bigger house so they turned half the village out of their homes to make space for the extension. So it seems fitting that the final version of the house, which is 19c, should now be open to commoners (though we do have to pay). Our room was a functional space in a block behind the house, but the breakfast bar, evening bar and, most importantly, the library, a quiet extension of the bar, are in the house, meaning that you can descend gracefully down the wide staircase on your way to a full English, or work on your laptop with a view across the sweeping green fields and valley. If you’re wondering what books were in the library, they were mostly functional, bound sets of journals about the farming year, for instance. Maybe the staff keep the sensational Gothic first editions in the back room to read during their breaks.

Writing

I didn’t get a lot of writing done in the Latimer library, but I was able to book a writers’ desk at Chalkwell Hall locally in the Easter break. Currently owned by Metal, an arts and culture organisation, its top windows look over the former grounds, now a park for all, and the Thames Estuary. I took with me a novelette I’d written a year ago, about a neglected nursery garden, a ghost from World War II and some nature goddesses, set in that bizarre time of the first lockdown. My five hours in the converted attic gave me the chance to read it all through and make copious notes on how I want to develop it. The elation of getting that far was replaced a few days later by overwhelm, but the old adage about eating the elephant one bite at a time is appropriate, if rather odd. As is the book, because it’s a gothic house story with a happy resolution.

A novelette, if you’re wondering, is longer than a short story and shorter than a novella. I love these terms for different length of writing! If 100 words (exactly) is a drabble, can you guess what they call a 50 word story? Answer at the bottom of this post!

I’m proud to report that my story “Leaf and Stone” is published in Wildwood, the latest edition of Fairy Tale Magazine. It’s free to read, although donations are welcome to help with running costs. Brim full of poetry, stories, art and essays about wild folk of the forest round the world, it’s well worth the cost and I’m very much enjoying reading everyone else’s contributions.

And my writing desk is featured in “Fabled”, a new fairy tale magazine from Australia, along with a spread of other writers’ desks and notes about their inspiration. My author copy of this journal looks splendid – lavishly illustrated throughout – and I’m definitely going to enjoy reading this one too.

Reading

I tend to read short story collections in bursts – a few stories, then a break to read something longer, then back to the collection. This month I returned to, and finished, “The Moon Will Look Strange”, a collection of Lynda E Rucker’s work. Rucker writes the sort of horror I admire – uncanny, unsettling, the horror always hinted at, the violence always at the edge of your vision, not on the stage (no bloody body parts for me, thank you), the evil never really explained fully, leaving you wondering, unnerved, haunted. The later stories absorbed me as they immersed me in the landscape of the States, which I know so little about, and the earlier stories, inspired by Rucker’s years travelling and working abroad, evoked such intense feelings of homesickness and loneliness that they were doubly disturbing. I really don’t need any more books for my TBR but another of her collections will be added to my wish list straight away.

Another writer who skilfully wields unsettling rather than gore is Teika Marija Smits, who’s just published a story in the first of a series called Duets. Smits’ characters are often everyday mothers, grappling with the tensions between loving and caring for their children and fulfilling their creativity, between knowing nurturing children is essential and knowing our society doesn’t place a high value on that work, and I very much identify with them. In “The Unsilencing” a whole class of children is suddenly unable to speak or even to respond to anyone, leaving the doctors and the community baffled. As the years draw on, parents lose hope. But one mother is absolutely convinced that she knows who is responsible, and is determined to stand by her son. This is an unusual piece for uncanny literature in that love triumphs in the end, and I really like that too.

The Fairy Tale Bit: Unicorns I Have Loved

When I was eight, and revelling in the magic of the Chronicles of Narnia, I longed to read Peter Beagle’s The Last Unicorn, spotted in my nearest library, but my mum told me I couldn’t. I don’t know why not, perhaps because it wasn’t written for children. The Princess and the Unicorn, however, was aimed at my age group. Written by the splendidly named Marika Hanbury Tenison, beautifully illustrated in colour by Ann Evans, it tells of a tender-hearted princess and her father who want very different things from the unicorn in the forest. This is the unicorn of tradition – a noble beast in the forest, purifying the pool where the animals drink with its single horn so the water is safe for all, wild at heart but to be tamed by a maiden, and this makes it vulnerable to greedy folk who want the horn for themselves.

The television programme Fabulous Animals, presented by David Attenborough, widened my unicorn lore with fantastical details. It lives alone at the edge of the world. In Chinese tradition, it appears only to kings, and to have a voice like the sound of monastery bells. A unicorn appeared to the Genghis Khan and his men as they planned a raid and frightened them so much that they turned round and abandoned the attack.

In my early teens I encountered a more mysterious unicorn even than these, the creature that rides through the pages of Alan Garner’s Elidor. Wild and terrified, it nevertheless holds the key to saving the land of Elidor. Garner’s fantasy fuses old legends with the rather colourless world of urban England in the 1960s. Like The Owl Service, Elidor leaves much for the reader to surmise or simply to wonder about, treating his readers as intelligent and curious.

And yes, as an adult I bought my own copy of The Last Unicorn, and it lived up to every promise. The fact that I remember very little of it now speaks more of my many years than of the skill of Peter Beagle. I expect it’s time for a re-read.

Unicorns have been very popular with children for a while now, but the chunky creatures with rainbow tails, or yet the dreamy horses with horns for slightly older children seem far to tame for me. Unicorns are wild and free - they’re not simply horses with an extra appendage! In about 400BC the historian Ctesias described the unicorn as having blue eyes, a purple head, a white body and a horn that’s white at the base, red at the tip and black in the middle, another description that seems to me to be rather garish. The most appealing in my opinion is the heraldic unicorn, a slender-flanked, graceful creature with the lion of a tail and the body and beard of a goat.

Why would someone want to hunt and trap a unicorn? (Apart, that is, from giving them bragging status.) The horn, that purifying instrument for the wild creatures of the wood, could be ground down and used to protect against poisons for humans, or to cure sickness. The huntsmen of legends never seem to have considered approaching the unicorn with reverence and requesting such help. Instead, they assumed that meant capturing the unicorn by trickery or by the hunt, then removing the horn violently. There are several sets of late medieval tapestries depicting the hunt of the unicorn, beautifully rendered in bright threads, but the scene of the slain unicorn being borne back to the castle, its head lolling, is shocking. Now all the images of a young woman with a unicorn take on a darker tone – how many of these are a prelude to capture or death? The unicorn’s place is in the forest, wild and free, with the deer and the Green Man and the Wild Men and Wild Women. Thankfully, one stitcher at least knew this. If you scroll the entry for “unicorn” on Wikipedia, you’ll find a photograph of a Renaissance cushion cover showing a unicorn laying its head in the lap of a wild woman. They rest among flowers, and creatures of the wildwood continue their daily business all round them, knowing they are safe.

Answer to the question, what do you call a short story that’s exactly 50 words: a dribble!

Want to read a unicorn story, or admire unicorn art? “The Web and the Wildwood” in my collection The Tapestry Unravels features a unicorn story, with artwork by Emma Howitt. She also designed the book cover, inspired by medieval tapestries of the unicorn hunt.

Interested in my fairy tale collection The Tapestry Unravels but unsure if you’d like my style? You can read the first tale for free in its original home here. You can listen to another tale either read by Scott Thrower here or by me in this interview, starting at 8:41. There are also two stories of mine, not in the collection, published by Fairy Tale Magazine, free to read, here (download required), here and here.

Lynden Wade has had stories published in a range of publications, including BFS Horizons, the journal of the British Fantasy Society. Now she has published a collection of them, “The Tapestry Unravels.”

She lives in the East of England, not far from a castle ruin, but spends more time in the worlds of folklore and magic. She owns far more fairy crowns than she should at her age.

Last month I wrote about meeting fellow fairy tale writer Georgina Warren in real life. We had a fantastic conversation about writing, reading and the theme of her own fairy tale collection, “Tales of Virtuous Stepmothers”, which is that stepmothers can be brave, resourceful and loving. I thoroughly recommend her book, and to give you a flavour of it, I asked Georgina to take part in a Q&A. Happy reading!

1. Georgina, thank you for taking part in this Q&A. For my first question, I’d like to talk about the themes. You talk in the book’s afterword about how you developed a very positive relationship with your own stepmother. However, relationships with stepmothers in fairy tales are typically very different. You write:

“At the end of every story [that involves a stepmother] the stepmother either disappears or is punished for her actions. The problem with this format can be that readers can become convinced that all stepmothers are wicked and that they deserve punishment for being unnatural additions to the family.”

When and how did it first strike you that this was the case?

From an early age, I have read many versions of Hansel and Gretel, Cinderella and Snow White. There are picture books and chapter books with these stories in the children’s section of every library. All these retellings showed that the stepmother did not get a happy ending. Some versions of Cinderella feature the titular character having a reconciliation with her two stepsisters, but the stepmother was often omitted. As a young reader, I believed that all stepmothers are destined to be punished for their wicked deeds. But my stepmother was not a wicked villain. I started off living with my mom and older sister until I was 15 and I only saw my dad and stepmom on weekends and holidays. When I first moved in with my dad and stepmom, we had many changes to navigate. Up until the age of 15, I was home-schooled and I needed more support to catch up on academics, building relationships and developing other life skills. My stepmom took initiative and helped me find opportunities to support my growth. During the first year that the three of us were living together, we developed new traditions and fostered connections within our community. I gained perspective from my classmates, teachers, colleagues and friends from my church. Having this village of remarkable people showed that there were other blended families in the world creating their own stories that I have never seen written in any books! As I got older, I decided that it was too easy for modern writers to keep retelling the same fairy tales with different words and illustrations, but children needed more books that show good stepmothers as natural additions to the family, not as evil queens or wicked witches. I created Tales of Virtuous Stepmothers to celebrate stepmothers and their blended families, offsetting the toxic mythology in the process.

2. So, your collection features original fairy tales full of all sorts of characters, but always with a positive stepmother taking an important role. Which came first, the desire to make the case for stepmothers, or an interest in creative writing?

I have always loved stories, and I used to create my own stories and act them out with my toy figures. I spent a lot of time getting lost in local libraries and book shops. My dad and I also shared a tradition of reading stories aloud together and voicing the characters. These early experiences shaped my passion for classic literature and the performing arts. Once I got enrolled in school, I enjoyed my English Lit classes. All the teachers I had inspired me to explore stories from different angles, writing interpretive essays on the plots and reimaging the story from the perspective of one of the supporting characters. These exercises helped me develop my own creative writing voice and I observed the patterns in the stories I read and watched on film. During high school I attended drama classes and performed in musicals and that experience helped me imagine how I wanted my future characters to act in the stories I imagined. When getting an idea for a new story, I always ask the same question “What if?” From these two words, I get ideas to subvert old tropes or change a character archetype to create a more invigorating experience for my audience. I developed other fictional ideas for future stories, but I was driven to create my book for stepmothers first because I felt a sense of urgency to provide blended families with a book that will entertain and inspire them.

3. Every author is expected to describe where their inspiration sprang from! In the afterword you write, “When I look back for that moment of inspiration that caused me to write this book, I am undecided – there are so many factors.” It’s certainly my experience, too, that it’s hard to pin down the first moment of inspiration, because the idea might have grown over time, gathering new aspects from here and there. But we’d love to learn how and where some of your inspiration came from. Perhaps you could choose one or two stories and tell us more about how they were formed?

Most of the famous fairy tales that people think of are set in the medieval period (basically anywhere in Europe) and feature knights, castles, fairies, dragons and princesses. But I decided to expand my fairy tale collection to include other cultures and eras as well. My dad studied history and folklore from classic antiquity, so I created Aisimetra and the Manticore’s Eggs as an ancient Roman fairy tale with gladiators and manticores. Another story from my collection, The Dragon Mother draws elements from the legend of Romulus and Remus though it maintains the medieval setting. Upcoming fairy tales will include more stories set in other countries like Egypt, Africa and even Australia! The biggest influences in my fairy tale repertoire include the Grimm Brothers, Hans Christian Andersen, Oscar Wilde, and George MacDonald. These authors wrote in that lovely classic style which I have chosen to replicate in my own work but with a few modern additions. In each fairy tale, you will find a stepmother facing a different challenge and she must draw upon her worldly wisdom and find cunning solutions to achieve her goals or support her children in their heroic journeys.

4. What we read as we grow up is often a big part of an author’s inspiration. Apart from fairy tales, what did you grow up reading?

I got a healthy diet of classic literature from authors like Charles Dickens, Charlotte Bronte, H.G. Wells, P.L. Travers, Frances Hodgson Burnett and Ernest Hemmingway.

I always had a soft spot for the stories of Roald Dahl, C.S. Lewis (Chronicles of Narnia), Jill Murphy (The Worst Witch), J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter) and Lemony Snicket (A Series of Unfortunate Events). From this selection, I liked crafty fantasy adventure stories with heart and humor! But these books also had a bit of tragedy and terror in them so that made them more exciting. I suppose this is a consequence of growing up American with a British father, but I do believe that the British have a real knack for creating such memorable stories.

5. Another question every author gets asked is about their writing process! Are you a plotter? Do you have a particular place and time to write? Do you write by hand first, or dictate, or type?

Most of my ideas I type into a document and other times I record my ideas by hand or collect pictures for visual inspiration. I usually prefer to write indoors at home, in my local library or with my writing club. When the weather is nice, I might sit on my patio outside. Being employed full-time at the Library of Congress, I would write during my breaks. Sometimes the story grows around the character, other times the story grows from an idea from a particular scene. Sometimes I imagine the climax of the stories and then work backwards to create the chain of events that lead to that pivotal moment in the plot. One aspect of the narrative I have enjoyed is working around the marriage between the father and the stepmother. For young lovers, the wedding usually occurs as the grand finale of their story, their “happily ever after” moment. In my collection, some of my stepmothers get married at the end of their story. Other times the wedding happens at the beginning or in the middle so that the reader can follow the stepmother’s adventures before and after she joins her new family. The significance of weddings for second marriages carries a different weight compared to the first marriage. One or both individuals might have experienced a loss of their first love, and they are taking the next step together for a life of new beginnings.

6. One of the things I’m most enjoying about your collection is that I find it reminiscent of medieval courtly tales like the Lays of Marie De France, or the tales of King Arthur, partly because they combine wonders with a variety of mythical beasts. Are you a fan of such literature? And did medieval tales influence you at all?

I have read a bit of the Lays of Marie De France and the tales of King Arthur. I have always enjoyed stories with heroic quests, mysteries, mythical creatures and transformations. My stories do contain themes of chivalry and valor. Not so much between ladies and knights but I promote my own brand of chivalry as it relates to the bonds between parents and their children. I was always annoyed with the father for choosing a bad wife for his second marriage and then disappearing from the story entirely while his children suffered. In my stories the relationship between the stepmother and her husband is mutually supportive and they embody all the traits of a healthy, loving couple. The same principle applies to the bond between these parents and their children. You will find that some tales feature two widowed parents coming together to raise their children as one family. Some of these families even have a mixture of biological, foster and stepchildren growing up together. Most of these traditional chivalry tales emphasize first love between young lovers. But stepmothers face a different set of challenges when marrying a man with children. The biological mother is usually deceased so there is no discussion about how modern couples navigate loyalty bonds when the children feel conflicted about trusting a new parent. This is an issue that I hope to rectify in my next book. But there are three stories in Tales of Virtuous Stepmothers that examine the underlying conflict between the stepmother and the biological mother, presenting different resolutions in each case. Some of my stories feature mythical creatures and magic elements. Other stories do not have these fantastical elements. I took inspiration from traditional fairy tales to develop the settings and world building, but I imbue my characters with more modern sensibilities. Readers like their stories with escapism but they also want something that resonates with their modern lives. Fairy tales taught us to dream about royal weddings and fancy castles filled with treasures. But some of my characters do not need to marry a prince and get rich at the end of their stories. Some stepmothers don’t want a crown or jewels, they would rather achieve fulfilment when they get a new job or attain justice, security, prosperity or a sense of belonging with their loved ones. These stories celebrate the unsung heroism of these often misunderstood parents, supporting their children through every challenge until they gain enough confidence to go out and meet their destiny, finding that delicate balance between protection and preparation.

7. Each story is illustrated in a stained-glass style. I believe you did these yourself. Tell us a little more about the process.

In medieval times, noble families had coat of arms with different symbols to represent them and their values. Stained glass windows are commonly found in churches, and they were not designed to be transparent. They are visual representations of stories from the Bible. I was inspired to create a coat of arms illustration to serve as a royal signature for each story and incorporate stained glass as a design choice. The creation of stained-glass also works as a reference to blended families. We have different people from two separate families coming together to form a new entity while stained-glass windows are created from different pieces of coloured glass to make a tableau.

8. You have another collection planned. Are you able to tell us more? And do you have any plans for writing on a different theme?

Tales of Virtuous Stepmothers is the first instalment of a three-part treasury. I plan to reissue the stories into a full volume in the future: The Complete Tales of Virtuous Stepmothers. I also have two upcoming novels that support this collection: one pirate story and one circus story. These stories are for middle grade readers, teens and adults. Later I want to write more fiction stories for adult readers. One of these future stories features tourists and staff trying to survive a group of killer sirens at an island resort in the Pacific Ocean. In addition to writing fantasy, I want to try my hand at creating horror as well.

Thank you, Georgina.

Tales of Virtuous Stepmothers, by Georgina Warren, can be found in paperback and Kindle on Amazon, Goodreads, Barnes and Noble, Fable and The Storygraph. If you read and enjoy the collection, it would be great if you could leave a review on Amazon or Goodreads to help other readers find it.

Winter Rituals

While I’m bone-weary of British winter by the time February arrives, there are many good things to get me through those four grey, rain-soaked weeks, and Candelmas/Imbolc does indeed mark the lift of the gloom.* Snowdrops cluster in the gardens of the blessed, crocuses pop up like bright exclamation marks, and Valentine’s Day is followed swiftly by Pancake Day (Shrove Tuesday, also known as Mardi Gras) and, this year, Chinese New Year, all in the half term holiday – a chance for a city break.

*On Candlemas — while it seems overdue to be blessing candles at the start of February, apparently one reason for the candle/signs of spring connection is that this would be the time when crafters like shoemakers were able to work by daylight rather than candles. Though wouldn’t you think that blessing your candles at the start of winter would make more sense?

Newcastle - Where the New Castle is Eight Hundred Years Old

We booked four days in Newcastle on a whim – about as far north as one can get from our home. History at school had given me the vague idea that Newcastle would be all ships and iron and industry. It’s always a delight to have my expectations overturned if it’s for the better. Newcastle is massive, both across and in terms of its imposing Victorian buildings and railway viaducts, dwarfing the medieval cities of East England I’m familiar with, and while the Industrial Revolution formed its backbone and much of its layout, the quayside is being reimagined with bars and markets, shiny new buildings and yet another arching bridge. At night the wide River Tyne is daubed with reflections of all the lights.

Victoriana and Vampire Rabbits

Victorian buildings designed to impress abound in carvings of mythical and noble characters, and a seventies mural has adapted the tradition. We were glowered at by fauns, griffins, lions, a vampire rabbit and the Tyne River god himself. It’s quite likely that my demise will be caused by me staring intently at a mythical creature I’ve just noticed as I cross the road, instead of watching the traffic.

The Castle that became a Slum

The castle of the name is new in that it replaced the Norman one, and in fact dates back to the 1200s. Its gatehouse and keep are dour, austere buildings, and the stories we learned from the various displays were largely from the years after the end of its age as a fortress. King James I of England/VI of Scotland gifted it to a courtier who helped guard him when he used the privy, which apparently was a high honour. It was a money-sink, however, and the courtier was obliged to give it up. Various parts of it were leased out locally and over the next few centuries a whole mini-town grew up in the buildings and in the open area within the walls, with homes, workshops, a Presbyterian meeting houses and taverns that offered all sorts of entertainment, from games to pop-up second hand clothing sales, run by pedlars. The area grew into an overcrowded slum with a railway bridge cutting right through the middle of the grounds, Although the keep had always been useful for the city fathers, as the site of a gaol, who added turrets and fancy battlements to it at the start of the nineteenth century, the gatehouse was marked for demolition until an enthusiastic society of antiquarians campaigned and saved it.

Angelic Voices in the Cathedral

The cathedral, by contrast to the dour castle, was full of colour and beauty, including a stained glass of the Northumbrian St/King Oswald and a raven, who feature in two completely different legends. I’ll say more below, in a separate section. The choir was practising, and their voices were clear and beautiful, soaring up to those notes that make the heart quiver. The verger was inviting anyone lingering to join the evening service, and I found myself in the beautifully carved stalls with an angel for company, surrounded by carvings and tradition and music, all of it celebrating creativity and beauty and, I believe, the God whose creativity we inherit and enjoy.

A Lord Donates his Banqueting Hall

Beyond the centre, Newcastle is blessed with some beautiful and extensive parks. One of these, Jesmond Dene Park, once belonged to Lord Armstrong, who paid for a banqueting hall, a chapel and a waterfall to be built there. He entertained his workers in the banqueting hall, later donating the whole park to the city, for everyone to enjoy. And it was certainly busy on the beautiful day we strolled through it, with children counting the steps and a couple posing above the waterfall with a bunch of flowers. It was, after all, Valentine’s Day.

Fairytale-a-Day

I’ve been taking part it Fairy Tale a Day, organised by Tish Black, author of Ebony, Blood, and Snow, which rewrites fairy tale heroines into characters who fight the patriarchy. Unsurprisingly, the challenge is to read one fairy tale a day. Writing about it and sharing your thoughts on social media is an optional extra, but I’m determined to do it every day for February. It’s given me lots of food for thought as I revisit classics (oh my word, the “hero” of one of these tramples so many fellow men and women on his march to the top) or discover new tales (such as in “Wise Women”). The just-mentioned collection, subtitled Myths and Stories for the Midlife and Beyond, by Sharon Blackie and Angharad Wynne, brings together, then comments on, the tales you thought didn’t exist - the ones in which older women show courage, compassion, wisdom and ingenuity and save the day. By the end of the month I think I will have material for 28 mini essays like this one, as I share my delight in or fury at the various fairy tale protagonists I’ve encountered. It’s also been a joy to read or listen the thoughts of other participants on Instagram, including Tish Black’s sharp observations and the wry humour of Chloe from @fairytalesfolkoreandfantasy.

But I did promise you more information on St Oswald and his raven. After all, don’t you want to know why it is holding a ring?

The Raven and the Ring – horror or humour?

Well, the English version of the connection between king and raven doesn’t mention a ring, as far as I can see. After a reign that saw a Renaissance in culture and art, Oswald, King of Northumbria, was killed in battle with Penda King of Mercia who chose to display his various body parts on a pole. When Oswald’s brother came to retrieve the corpse, a raven plucked one of Oswald’s arms - the one that had been blessed by his friend St Aidan, because Oswald used it to distribute food to the poor – and carried it to a nearby ash tree, then dropped it on the ground. Thanks to the raven’s activity with the limb, the ash tree never aged and a spring burst up at its roots, where the arm had fallen. A story of birds and body horror.

Oswald’s cult spread to Germany, where a completely different story of kings and ravens developed. Here, Oswald longs for a bride, so God grants his pet raven with the ability to speak all languages. The raven offers his help, in return for a crown and royal treatment, then sets of on a quest that involves escaping from a mermaid, petitioning a king, visiting the king’s imprisoned daughter, and losing the princess’s letter and ring in the sea, only for a fish to bring both back. The letter is still legible when the raven delivers it: the princess has outlined an escape plan, which Oswald carries out, rescuing her and bringing her home as his bride.

How could two stories be so different? I have a theory. Statues of the king, the raven and the ring made it over to the Continent, but the text was lost. Undeterred, the merchant trading in the statues created a new story that wove all the elements together. It didn’t say much about Oswald’s holiness, but it had a talking, bossy, vain raven, so who was going to care?

I have absolutely no foundation for this theory. I think I’m inspired by the evolution of my favourite childhood TV programme, “Magic Roundabout”. When the BBC bought the films, they decided to dispense with the original soundtrack completely, and write a new script, which is some of the funniest dialogue I’ve ever heard. One day, though, I should explore the original French.

Other Fairy Tale Authors

Georgina Warren, who I know through a Facebook group we both belong to, has written a collection of original fairy tales that rewrite the traditional narrative of step-mothers. In “Tales of Virtuous Stepmothers” they are strong, brave and loving, facing many dangers for the sake of the children they’ve chosen to protect and cherish.

We’ve talked online about fairy tale writing, and she’s been very supportive of my own book. She was in London recently and suggested a meet up. It was great to share lunch and coffee together in the crypt cafe of St Martin in the Field, where we talked literary fantasy, fairytale tropes and self-publishing. Now I have my own, signed copy of her book. I’ll report back on the book next time, but from the first few stories I can say that they’re original, inspiring and imaginative, featuring a great range of mythical creatures.

Interested in my fairytale collection The Tapestry Unravels but unsure if you’d like my style? You can read the first tale for free in its original home here. You can listen to another tale either read by Scott Thrower here or by me in this interview, starting at 8:41. There are also two stories of mine, not in the collection, published by Fairy Tale Magazine, free to read, here (download required) and here.

Lynden Wade has had stories published in a range of publications, including BFS Horizons, the journal of the British Fantasy Society. Now she has published a collection of them, “The Tapestry Unravels.”

She lives in the East of England, not far from two castle ruins, but spends more time in the worlds of folklore and magic. She owns far more fairy crowns than she should at her age. Currently she has a situation vacant for a house elf.

I love having a camera on my phone. A few flicks of a finger and so many memories flash back at me. This year, I’ve been able to meet in real life creatives I’ve previously only known online, gone to two folk events new to me, walked the most dangerous footpath in the country and published my collection of fantasy stories. So I’m summarising 2025 in photos. Some of these events I wrote about in more detail in blog posts, so I’ll reference the month, and if you want to know more you can look each up.

In January I went wassailing with my friend Alison, to bless a local orchard. I wish I’d gone back in the summer to see how successful it was at bringing forth a good crop. https://substack.com/@queensquillsquests/p-156533578

In March we had a break in Bristol. It’s a big, vibrant city, and whilst a lot of its history is dark, built on the slave trade, there’s also lots of good food. And gargoyles! St Mary Redcliffe simply swarms with them. https://substack.com/@queensquillsquests/p-160770934

In June I joined friends to explore the Colchester Roman and Medieval Fair where we saw military displays and weaving displays, watched a mummers’ play and a puppet play and spoke with a Roman young woman and Richard Lionheart. I also walked the perilous Broomway with my husband, a group of walkers and two local guides, and wrote in a cage! My post only mentions the walk and the “cage”. https://substack.com/@queensquillsquests/p-169255817

Sadly, June was also the month when our fussy, loving, bossy cat Bluebell went downhill fast. We had to say goodbye to her. She’d turned up on our street eight years ago and while she initially chose our neighbours for her next home, our neighbours’ cats said no very firmly, and she graciously decided we were her next best choice. She deigned to share our home with Molly, a little black cat our daughter brought home later from the rescue centre, but since Molly’s passing, Bluebell had ruled our home with a firm paw.

July brought a holiday in stunning Yorkshire. Then in August we enjoyed our first visit to the Black Shuck festival in Suffolk, based round a legend about a hellhound who invaded two churches with fatal results for various members of the congregation. I got to fangirl round Eleanor Conlon and Martin Vaux, creators of the Three Ravens Podcast, which revels in the folklore of the British Isles. Do look them up – there’s a wealth of material they’ve produced in just a few years. https://substack.com/@queensquillsquests/p-172760024

In August we adopted two kittens and renamed them. Freya is named after the Viking goddess whose chariot is pulled by cats. Only a goddess could make that work. Freya is loud and friendly and loves her food. Nyx is named after a minor Greek goddess of the night and is an amazing jumper but scared of most people. They will need to put a lot of effort into their training if they’re to become successful witch’s cats.

October was the month for wonderful creative catch-ups. Carolyn is a fellow-writer in my virtual writing group, and lived on the other side of Essex. As she was due to move to Scotland, we met in real life while we had the opportunity. Teika Bellamy, or Teika Marija Smits, is a wonderful writer of speculative fiction, and lives not too far from my daughter, so it was lovely to catch up with her again, and to browse the gorgeous shop that stocks her books. Kristen Baum DeBeasi is the editor of Fairy Tale Magazine, and also the author of a chapbook of magnetic fairytale poetry, out soon. She was visiting London from the States, and we met in the Victoria and Albert under a suitably fairytale ceiling. I’ll share more once the book is available widely, but I can tell you from my advance copy that it’s fabulous. And it’s so exciting to meet someone in real life for the first time when you’ve only met online before.

In November I published my collection of fairy tales for grown ups, “The Tapestry Unravels.” Many of the stories have been published previously in anthologies and online journals, which has been a wonderful way of sharing them with the world, and of feeling validated as a writer. But online journals often fold and disappear, and anthologies can go out of print. By publishing them together, I can give them a new lease of life. https://queensquillsquests.substack.com/p/all-the-stories-hidden-in-a-cover

I hoped for a handful of buyers, knowing it’s a really niche market. In fact, I feel it’s done really well considering all the factors: the material, my lack of marketing skills, my zero-dollars publicity budget and the fact that I’m pretty unknown. To date I’ve sold 32 copies via Amazon and 12 by hand, while giving away 12 to family members and editors and writers who’ve been especially supportive of my writing journey. Even better, the support I’ve received since then from fellow writers and readers has been a real blessing. If you’re one of those who’s shared a review, or a photo online of my book with a cosy drink, or an interview, I am so grateful – you’re all wonderful! You can read my interview with the lovely Kelly Jarvis, author of the gorgeous Selkie story “Selkie Moon” here: https://kellyjarviswriter.com/f/unraveling-the-tapestry-of-folklore-with-lynden-wade or you can watch my interview with the wonderful Becky Parker

So what does 2026 hold in store? I’ve noticed that my Christmas book stack, mostly from my wish list, is closer to whimsical and cosy than previous years so I’m clearly reacting against the world outside as it burns. I haven’t plans to start a cosy fantasy novel at the moment, though. Instead, I’ve vowed to make 2026 the year of polishing. My drive is overflowing with novels, short stories and a novelette that are mostly finished but not quite polished enough to send off to magazines, editors or competitions. I’m starting up with another edit of my middle grade spooky mystery based round the legend of Black Shuck. No new projects this year, I’m telling myself! No writing courses! Do you think I can keep to my promise?

Lynden Wade has had stories published in a range of publications, including BFS Horizons, the journal of the British Fantasy Society. Now she has published a collection of them, “The Tapestry Unravels.”

She lives in the East of England, not far from two castle ruins, but spends more time in the worlds of folklore and magic. She owns far more fairy crowns than she should at her age. Currently she has a situation vacant for a house elf.

Interested in the book but unsure if you’d like my style? You can read the first tale for free in its original home here. You can listen to another tale either read by Scott Thrower here or by me in this interview, starting at 8:41. There are also two stories of mine, not in the collection, published by Fairy Tale Magazine, free to read, here (download required) and here.

What I’ve Read

Spooky includes witches too. My home is Essex in East Anglia, where the notorious witch-finder, Matthew Hopkins and his assistant John Stearne, ran their own witch hunts, leading to the accusation and hanging of possibly hundreds of people - mostly, in this case, poor, older women. Exact numbers are missing in this period of political and religious chaos as the English Civil War raged, but it was definitely a gross miscarriage of justice.

Back in June I attended a screening of a short film about the early days of the witch mania in Essex. It’s beautifully shot on the local saltings, and “tells the untold story of witches as they really were - midwives, healers, women with knowledge and power.”

This concept is intriguing - that witch trials were an ultimately successful attempt to control feminine power. Wanting to know more, I read England’s Witchcraft Trials by Willow Winsham. A blow-by-blow account of the recorded trials of people accused of witchcraft in the Hopkins era, I didn’t feel it supported the concept that this to do with the war of the sexes at all. Yes, most of the accused were women. But the testimonies were frequently from female neighbours, and from relatives too, including the little daughter of one of the victims. If you want a narrative of sisterhood, this is not it. Nor is it one about suspicion of traditional medicine either, as the accusations are largely about curses. The people condemned here seem to have fallen foul of their neighbours largely because they were unpopular and lacking in conventional social graces. Being old and poor for the most part, they also had little legal or financial power.

Of course, this book is about just one period of history in one country, so the picture might be different in another location or another time. But it was a depressing and unromantic read, speaking of how easily we fall into blaming other people when things don’t go well for us, and how easy it is for someone with no social charms to be blamed for far more than they’ve actually done.

A very different read for this season was Caitlin Gemmel’s Year of the Hermit, a collection of poetry based round the Wheel of the Year. Moving gently, inexorably, through the seasons, noting each change in the breath of the wind and the touch of the sun round her, Gemmell drops words like dew, where they cling to a twig or a leaf, glinting and reflecting back a world of trembling senses and memories.

Another glorious read was Thornhedge by T. Kingfisher, a gorgeous, tender reworking of Sleeping Beauty. Having already adored the author’s Nettle and Bone, I’m now gearing up to devour her backlist. (Except for the horror as I’m soft.)

Where I Went

Our yearly short break in Kent included, this year, a trip to Margate, to explore. It’s a fascinatingly quirky place. The seafront is very seaside gothic with its Art Deco Dreamland entertainment centre and its decaying hotels. Further in, there’s a small but vibrant artists’ quarters, a museum dedicated entirely to crabs, and a strange shell grotto with the feel of an ancient shrine. Currently no mentions of it have been found in any documents written before it was discovered in 1835, so every theory is speculation. Was it built by the Romans, or the Knights Templar? Was it an eighteenth century folly? No-one knows. We were also delighted by the reconstruction of a Georgian bathing machine, available for use if you fancy a dip in the icy sea, and a cheerful indoor market full of food choices.

“The Further Tide” by Linda E Rucker (Supernatural Tales 60) is set in Margate. About the unreliability of memory and feeling adrift in life, it shifts between past and present till you’re not sure which is which, but neither is the narrator. Nothing is really resolved at the end, leaving questions unanswered, and that seemed fitting. I’m intrigued that I loved it so much, because this seems to have the same approach to “weird fiction” as Robert Aickman, whose work just leaves me frustrated. Perhaps I related better to a modern protagonist in an era and setting I could picture clearly. Perhaps it was the close first person that made me connect with her.

Where I Wrote

It’s been so long since I wrote fresh words that I was almost thinking I’d forgotten how to do it, but I’ve been enjoying writing blind these past weeks, using pen and notebook and some word prompts. Without knowing where I was going, I wrote happily for a few pages until I hit a block when I pondered the fact that I didn’t know what my protagonist wanted in life. Still, I packed the notebook as I set off for a local craft fair. Several hours later, after several great conversations with local artists known and new to me, I settled in a nearby cafe with a lovely little haul of artwork, spread it all out for a pretty Instagram photo and realised I was looking at my protagonist’s goal. My next scene, with a beautiful and totally impractical skirt, was ready to be written.

The Fairy Tale Bit

One reason, I think, for witches coming into my orbit is that I’m in my “crone years” now and increasingly aware of how few positive images there are in fairy tales of older women. If a grey-haired woman appears in a classic fairy tale she’s usually a malevolent witch. For instance, there’s one in an English version of the Kind and Unkind Sisters tale type. The first sister does well out of working for a witch, the second sister gets beaten by the witch. But the reason the kind sister does well out of it has nothing to do with her being good to her employer or diligent with her work. She is kind to an apple tree, an oven and a cow that she meets on her way to the witch’s house, and they help her when the witch pursues her – for taking her employer’s money! The unkind sister tries to repeat her sibling’s adventures, but because she doesn’t help the tree, the oven or the cow she’s caught by the pursuing witch.

There’s very little detail about the witch - nothing about her appearance or her magic, unlike the Grimms’ tale Mother Holle which is loosely parallel.

Not does it have the the logic of the Mother Holle version. Why do the tree, the oven and the cow tell the second sister that they haven’t been helped for seven years when the kind sister aided them recently? How can the second sister steal money from the witch when the witch had complained, the first time, of the first sister taking all she had? How come the witch is back in her house to greet the second sister? Didn’t the oven trap and hold her after she tried to pursue the first sister?

But a girl who set out for adventures and give a helping hand to distressed creatures she meets on the way make a nice change from the tales of long-suffering girls being rewarded for scrubbing floors. It’s a shame that she profits from an old woman. There’s simply an assumption that because she’s a witch, it’s fine to take her money.

There are a few witches in my story collection, of course: Cunning Susie, in “A Patchwork of Puddles” works healing magic with her sewing box, whereas sarcastic Freya in “The Goose and his Girl” needs to learn to control the magic that makes her wishes come true, to disastrous effect. And a prophesying crow and a mocking dragon…

Lynden Wade has had stories published in a range of publications, including BFS Horizons, the journal of the British Fantasy Society. Now she has published a collection of them, “The Tapestry Unravels.”

She lives in the East of England, not far from two castle ruins, but spends more time in the worlds of folklore and magic. She owns far more fairy crowns than she should at her age. Currently she has a situation vacant for a house elf.

Interested in the book but unsure if you’d like my style? You can read the first tale for free in its original home here. You can listen to another tale either read by Scott Thrower here or by me in this interview, starting at 8:41. There are also two stories of mine, not in the collection, published by Fairy Tale Magazine, free to read, here (download required) and here.

It’s finally out! I feel like I’ve fought through goblin forests and climbed glass mountains to get here. My collection of stories inspired by legends, folklore and fairy tales is now available as an e-book and paperback here.

A patchwork portal, a tapestry woven full of secrets, dry leaves spun into cloth…

Escape into a world where needles flash, wheels spin, shuttles fly, and wishes and dreams are woven into enchantment, adventure and sanctuary. Twelve tales spun from legends, folklore and fairy tales.

A stained glass lion falls in love, a crow serves as oracle for a scarecrow, a witch escapes on a goose and your neighbour turns out to be the Elf King. If you ever wished unicorns could escape their hunters, that the twelve princesses could keep on dancing, or that fairy godmothers could have their own adventures, read on…

I was truly lucky to have Emma Howitt as my illustrator and cover artist. Emma read all the stories carefully, then cleverly incorporated a scene from each one into the cover.

Fancy a puzzle? Below the next two images are quotes from each story that are relevant to the particular scene portrayed. In the sketch below I’ve numbered the different scenes on the cover. Can you match up scene and quote?

They slithered in her hands like satin, but the needle glided through them. Now two more. Tiny stitches, so the water wouldn’t run out. It lay rippling across her lap as she made the last join. Knot the thread, snip! Lie the puddle patchwork on the pavement.

A Patchwork of Puddles

My Monkey jumps onto my lap and pats my arm. He wants his head scratched. I oblige. “Do you think I can help him, Monkey?” I muse. “I wish I could.”

The Web and the Wildwood

“It’s you! I’d recognise you anywhere!” The woman who’s just come into my shop jabs her finger at me.

The Emperor’s Mistake

Pylons weren’t inhabited by silver strangers! But the evidence was in front of her. She knew she wasn’t asleep. If only she was dreaming all this, and that she’d wake up and everyone would be safe in their beds.

Dancing Shoes

They rose in the air and sped over the castle walls, across the ice outside. Soon they were flying across a peninsula.

Ice Captives

When he turned, the church was filled with smoke. The roof! They’d set fire to the roof. Its wooden beams and thick thatch were as tempting as a toy to crazed looters.

Arch and Archangel

William wore his love on his sleeve, but Daniel’s was packed, like gunpowder, into the chamber of his heart, just behind his eyes.

Listen Hard

The lion knows he is only a symbol, not a person who walked the earth, touched Christ’s feet. But they are made of the same materials, he and she, gorgeous glass, the light shining through to dapple the stone floor in jewel colours.

Turn to Me

“So, Crow,” he said suddenly, “I think I have it all down in writing now.”

I had not realised he knew I was there. “Is writing what you call those scratches?”

A Prophet in his Own Country

“Two freaks without family. We should stick together. Come on!” I wrapped my arms round the Goose’s neck and swung back on, tucking my skirts out of the way.

The Goose and his Girl

A huge pan hissed within, bouncing with sausages, just in front of his nose. He stretched his muzzle in to grab one – then remembered Merlin’s warning.

Helen Rowland to the Dark Tower Came

The girl asks for a splash of milk and helps herself to three sugar lumps. I’d worry about her teeth if I wasn’t so worried about her heart.

Returning the Favour

Interested in the book but unsure if you’d like my style? You can read the first tale for free in its original home here. You can listen to another tale either read by Scott Thrower here or by me in this interview, starting at 8:41. There are also two stories of mine, not in the collection, published by Fairy Tale Magazine, free to read, here (download required) and here.

Lynden Wade has had stories published in a range of publications, including BFS Horizons, the journal of the British Fantasy Society. Now she has published a collection of them, “The Tapestry Unravels.”

She lives in the East of England, not far from two castle ruins, but spends more time in the worlds of folklore and magic. She owns far more fairy crowns than she should at her age. Currently she has a situation vacant for a house elf.

Having followed Caitlin Gemmell on Substack for quite a while, I’d been enjoying her writing, photography and poetry with its unique blend of soulful wistfulness. So I was delighted to have the chance to receive an advanced reader copy of her newest collection, based round the Wheel of the Year. It didn’t disappoint. Moving gently, inexorably, through the seasons, noting each change in the breath of the wind and the touch of the sun round her, Gemmell drops words like dew, where they cling to a twig or a leaf, glinting and reflecting back a world of trembling senses and memories. It’s rich in the sights and smells and sounds of a hermit’s life: sipping a coffee on the window seat; stepping barefoot through the garden; walking in nature and noticing tiny, exquisite details. There is a deep sense of longing running through the cycle – longing for beauty, longing for the sea, sweet-sharp memories of her childhood home – but also a move towards understanding of self:

“When I’m sixty, I…

live in a house

beyond the sea

all along and at peace

…

and the sea is the best conversationalist…”

Here are a few of my favourite lines:

“the earth loves in apples”

“I hear your spirit song, dear crow.

Sometimes, I think you sing

For me alone.”

“The rosemary

beckons me,

and I smooth my praying hands

over her stalks.”

This is a book to savour in quiet moments, on a window-seat, under a tree, beside the sea. I’d like to re-read each section in the right season, so I’m surrounded by the senses she evokes. But I suspect you could read the poems in a desert and still be transported to the leafy, gentle world she conjures.

Pre-orders are open now. Find it on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

Happy publication day to The Lion, the Fly and the Most Eligible Girl in the World! I was lucky enough to be able to read a copy ahead of its birthday.

In a dystopian future where the sandy Waste is gradually eroding land for growing crops and disease stunts people’s ability to work when they’re barely middle aged, pharmaceuticals are big business and rebels plot to overthrow the system. Pad, however, just 17 and named for the “lion’s paw” is far more invested in his dream of a place in an academy for fighters. He’s so close – only to find that Mirik, the girl he’s been seeing, is the daughter of a very powerful man who wants him removed from the picture. Soon he, Mirik and Rek, Pad’s best friend, are sucked into a world of unethical research, cruel experiments and double-dealing.

I wasn’t keen on Pad at first, though the story soon showed me that the way he looked at the world – hit first and hit hard, Mirik’s pregnancy is an inconvenience that can be dealt with quickly – was a natural response to the brutal world he lives in. And Mirik in the first few chapters was tearful and helpless. But both of these young people grow tremendously as they’re thrown into one danger after another, learning about bravery and trust and what really matters in life. And Rek, the “fly” of the title, optimistic, big-hearted, a wizard with a toolbox and a character both the pharmaceuticals and the rebels need for their separate, dubious purposes, stole my heart.

These complex, fierce-hearted characters wrapped a net around me and hauled me into their world as the fire in their bellies drove them to break out from one danger only to be confronted with more. The end really did seem to be in sight for all three when the clock told me it was time for bed, but I was too invested in the story of Pad, Mirik and Rek to listen. I’m very tired this morning as I write this, but it was totally worth it to see what happened to these three young people. Thoroughly recommended.

Where I Went

August is the month for going to festivals over here in the UK. Music festivals, usually. Or, if you want to be a bit different, festivals celebrating hellhounds.

The legend of Black Shuck is a version of a much wider phenomenon, that of a huge, shaggy hound that roams lonely byways and moors and is often a harbinger of doom. In Suffolk, Black Shuck is reported to have charged into the churches of Bungay and Blythborough one after the other, attacking parishioners as he did so, accompanied by thunder and lightning. He left behind a trail of destruction - people dead and wounded, Blythborough steeple collapsed into the nave and burn marks on its north door, made by the beast’s claws.

Blythborough seems like it has the biggest claim on the legend, but it’s a quiet village, while Bungay is a small town with more space for a festival. And that’s where the black dog has been celebrated since 2022, a great example of how a folk custom can be created even in the age of smartphones and AI.

This year, the festival ran from Friday to Sunday, with talks in the theatre by folklore experts, a parade through the town and entertainment in the meadow. My husband and I went up for the Sunday, sadly missing the parade.

We strolled round investigating the trapeze show, music and storytelling, and, of course, street food and drink. Zingaro Blue and friends were excellent, with the artists mixing up songs and story-telling. They presented us with their own slant on the Black Shuck legend in two irreconcilable versions and invited us to choose which we favoured. They have a podcast, Folk-a-Dilly Tales, which I’ll be following now. Just as excellent were the musicians in the other tent, but with my talent for timing we arrived just as the Three Ravens podcast team were finishing their set. Again the team covers legends and folklore, exploring the different counties of England for source material. Although we only heard the last bit of their set I did get to meet them, once my husband had assured me I’d got rid of all the mustard on my nose from my hotdog, and I did a bit of fangirling. Eleanor Conlon and Martin Vaux are totally charming. We also enjoyed a visitation by a Shuck puppet, wolf-sized and operated by two sisters who steered the creature round the field.

Later, we got to hear a talk about the Green Children of Woolpit, another Suffolk legend. I say legend for this and for Shuck because they’re supernatural stories rooted in place, but the records for both of them come from published sources - two chroniclers for the Green Children and a printer for Shuck. The story of the green children is mysterious and sad: a boy and girl are discovered in a pit, or cave. Their language and clothes are completely foreign to the folk of Woolpit. Stranger still, they are green. The local people look after them but the boy fades and dies. The girl gradually loses her green tinge and is married off to make sure someone controls her. Now she’s learned English she explains that she and her brother got lost following the sound of bells, and couldn’t get back to their own home, a place of eternal twilight. Our speaker went through various possibilities as to who these children might be…but none of the theories account for all the curious details of the story, and it stays a mystery.

Our last visit that evening was to the church, where a concert was being set up. There’s a fine tapestry of various significant events in the church’s history, with Black Shuck featuring on one panel.

.The town has really embraced the legend. Shop windows everywhere feature the beast in their displays.

We stayed overnight in nearby Beccles, and on our trip home searched out Blythborough Church. Sadly, the door with the scorch marks is hidden behind screens at present, because of restoration work. However, the bench ends are delightful, personifying the seasons and the Seven Deadly Sins, and winged angels decorate the roof above.

Two writers and lovers of folklore and fairy tale launched a new journal recently, The Otherworld Magazine, and were looking for stories and essays related to the Wild Hunt for their first issue. Black Shuck has links with the Wild Hunt so I wrote and sent a short article, which I’m very pleased to say has been accepted. Look out for it at the end of the month . I’m sure, with Jess and Stephanie at the helm, the magazine will be a delight.

What I read

There’s a beautiful series published by the British Library, where each one is a selection of strange/weird/ghost stories from the library collection under a different theme, lesser-known writers or tales from the 19c and 20c. It was really hard to narrow down my choice when I was faced with a whole wall of them but I narrowed it down to a ghost selection and one about strange encounters in the countryside. It’s called The Haunted Trail: Classic Tales of the Rambling Weird and it’s edited by Weird Walk, a collaboration of friends who work to “promote the magic at the heart of rambling through publishing, music and events.” I enjoyed most of the tales in this, of various strange encounters by walkers, though the Robert Aickman one left me bewildered and irritated (this will make me despised by Aickman fans, I suppose). My favourite was “Crowdy Marsh” by Sabine Baring-Gould. Not just for the author, whose fabulously unusual name pops up in so many places. An Anglican priest who lived and worked in places across the country, loving his time in Yorkshire, hating his time in Essex (outrageous!), he wrote “Onward Christian Soldiers” but also various novels and studies in folklore, including an important one on werewolves. “Crowdy Marsh” tells of a man separated from his walking companion when they loose their path on the moors. The narrator is overtaken by a wild hunt, and swept up with it, to be deposited at a cottage where three strange old women take the contents of the hunter’s bags. I love the motivation the story gives for the hunt, and the way the three women are a version of the Norse Norns, the wyrd/weird sisters.

Where I wrote

This month has been largely devoted to editing a middle grade novel that’s inspired by the legend of Black Shuck. Most of the work has been done at home but I had a peaceful hour editing in our nearest bookshop, Read-on-Sea, in Leigh-on-Sea. It’s a small, independent venture that doubles as a coffee stop, hosts a writers’ group and a book group, and puts on bookish events, from authors presenting their new books to workshops on expanding your business. It’s not very big so the selection wouldn’t compare to a high street bookstore, but you can contact them to order in a book and it will often be in the next day – no postage cost or extra fee, plus you get a free hot drink, which is tastier than the high street chain coffee. What’s not to like? (Well, actually I’d like Victoria sponge with my coffee rather than the Bakewell tarts and cookies on offer, but there’s a good reason not to serve sticky cake in a bookshop.)

I’ll be querying the novel to agents at some point, as children’s books work better through traditional press here in the UK. But meanwhile progress continues with the cover of my story collection. Here’s a snip of the design for the cover. It will be in glorious technicolour soon, but even in black and white I adore it. It’s by the very talented Emma Howitt. Follow her on Instagram to see more of her work.

What you should read

The lovely Caitlin Gemmel, on does a monthly list of recommendations, which is a beautiful, supportive thing to do, and I’m honoured that she included me. I can in all sincerity recommend her back. She writes of nature, poetry and magic, and I very much enjoyed her poetry collection True North, inspired by all of those things.

There are many Substack newsletters I’d like to recommend so I’ll mention just two more here who fit this month’s vibe and mention more next month.

— as a fan of children’s folk horror - that’s how I think of the works of Penelope Lively and Alan Garner — I very much enjoyed her article about Wild Hunts.

Letter From Somewhere

Of Wild Hunts, and trains, and stories, and ghosts

When I was a child, one of my favorite books was one titled The Wild Hunt of the Ghost Hounds by Penelope Lively (in the US—in the UK it was The Wild Hunt of Hagworthy because presumably British children were not as stupid as American children in needing the concept of a Wild Hunt spelled out to them, just as American publishers worried that no one woul…

Read more

a year ago · 11 likes · 12 comments · Lynda E. Rucker

– short eerie fiction tapping into English folklore and the modern landscape. The newsletter is a delight each time it drops into my email.

The shoreline of the Thames Estuary forms the south border of Essex, but when it reaches Shoeburyness it turns a bend, runs northeast and shatters into mud flats and marshy islands. The Ministry of Defence took over one of these, the delightfully named Foulness, but there are still two villages and various farms there, making for an uneasy alliance, big signs listing all the things you can’t do, and very limited access for visitors via one road and bridge.

Or…you can walk there, across Maplin Sands, along the ancient Broomway, the most dangerous footpath in Britain. If you look at it on an Ordnance Survey map, the Explorer series, it looks like an insane idea to even attempt it, because it’s so far offshore. I don’t exaggerate when I say I thought not just twice but about six times before booking a guided walk along it.

Our guides are a man and wife, a farming couple. She wears sensible outdoor clothes including a wide hat. He comes with a flat cap, proper waders, a wax jacket, sidebirds and moustache, and an old Essex accent – long vowels, rolling “r”s and dark “l”s. He’s a second generation Foulness Farmer (“newcomers” he said of his family), his brothers running other farms on the island, working round the Ministry of Defence and their activities.

The walk begins at Wakering Stairs. No real stairs, a low concrete path that leads into the sea. And then you keep going. The mud is shiny, streaked with green plants, and rivulets and pools of seawater linger in the dips, with coils of detritus from worms. Brent geese arrive here from Russia in the autumn, ready to winter here, and hopefully not to move over to the crops.

We splash out towards the horizon for some way, then parallel to the coast. The danger comes from attempting this walk in poor visibility, or when the tide might come in before you’re safely on land. People who’ve lost their lives here attempted it out of foolishness or because they needed to, for their livelihood.

Red Sands fort and a crowd of windmills are just visible on the horizon, like tiny, scratched sketches in blue on pale blue. It’s obvious we’re now looking out to sea rather than the estuary, as I do when I drive to work. No Kentish islands to be seen from here, nor yachts, windsurfers or oil refineries. The sky is big, puffy clouds scudding across the sun; the ground ripples brown mud and pools; the walkers in front of us trail blurred reflections from their heels, red and blue and pink clothing splashing colour onto the pastels. A bee appears from nowhere, lands in a puddle, buzzes up again only to land in another. I rescue him and he decides he’s going to stay with me, clinging to my jacket near my armpit. Perhaps he likes its purple colour?

We turn in when we spy our landing point, and the mud turns squelchy. Abandoned MoD equipment litters this shore – a pipe blooming rust and seaweed, a metal hulk rearing out of the mud like the Loch Ness Monster. We make our way between swathes of spiky grasses and muddy rivulets, and onto the concrete runner. I tell my bee he should leave me now but he’s reluctant, so two walking companions scoop him off gently with a frond of samphire and place him in a bush.

Now that we’re on firm soil, the farmers take us for a brief view of the island. They and their neighbours grow crops and tend fields of bird-friendly plants on the rich, marshy soil, and hope there’s no repeat of the terrible floods of 1953 that surged across the low-lying area. Swathes of marsh are left to wildlife, to encourage them back. The sky is wide over splashes of rapeseed, and hares and rabbits dart across the fields. Our tour completed, we’re carried across the two bridges. The security officer at the gate gives us a brief wave as we leave.

Welcome!

Welcome my the June/July newsletter! The start of this month was full of travelling and it’s taken me so long to find time to write this that I’m doing two months in one. The “Where I’ve Been” feature is, of course, above.

What I’ve Written – or is that, Where?

I think I’m going to change this to Where I’ve Written, rather than What, as that’s more interesting currently. In June I returned to the Essex Writers’ House, and used a new type of writing desk – a “wild” one. Ironically, it was in…a cage. Of sorts. It used to be a small zoo as part of the surrounding park. It’s now filled with plants, which is why it was advertised as wild. It felt very strange sitting there, especially as it was a sunny day and the park was filled with people enjoying the weather. But no-one noticed me, and eventually I relaxed and did some research for a newish idea, reading about the history of the house and park. Apparently, the zoo included various monkeys, rescued from the estuary. Sailors, to help themselves during the long months away from friends and families, would adopt monkeys as pets. But customs wouldn’t allow them to bring them in to dock. So they would place their monkeys carefully in crates and set them bobbing on the waves, in the hope that someone would rescue them. As, indeed, many did.

What I’ve Read

I’ve finally got round to reading what was probably last year’s sensation for lovers of all things faerie, Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries, by Heather Fawcett. It was darker than I imagined from its pretty cover and its blurb by India Holton – “a charmingly whimsical delight” – with a changeling driving his “parents” into misery and despair, and a very bloody fight. But Emily is a delightful character, moving from avoiding company to realising why she’s shunned it and accepting the arms of friendship, and constantly claiming her attempts to help people are based purely on academic interest. And I loved the faerie tale that concludes the book.

Faerie Tale? Fairy Tale?

The story I’ve just mentioned features fairies/faeries behaving in the folklore tradition - sometimes helpful, but always on their own terms, and easy to enrage. For that reason, old stories about fairies, often collected from oral tellings, frequently end badly for the humans who’ve had the misfortune to bump into them. However, fairy tales as we know them from writers like the Grimm Brothers and Perrault most often end well for one of the humans, helped on many occasions by someone or something supernatural. As for fairies in the current canon of Western classic fairy tales, they’re actually quite rare, and tend to be godmothers. They are unswervingly kind and giving, never asking anything in return.

This is a good example, of course, of a fairy tale trope begging to be inverted. Charles Dickens did it well with the good fairy Grandmarina in “The Magic Wishbone” – she’s bossy and flies into a rage when the king questions her commands. Looking back in the history of the fairy tale, I believe that at least one of the women writers of fairy tales in Perrault’s time featured a spiteful fairy godmother. Yet another reason to dig into that rich seam of fairy tales, those of Charlotte-Rose La Force, Marie-Catherine D’Aulnoy and other French women who met in salons in the 17th century to discuss the contes de feé (fairy tale) that they wrote.

In fact, these women invented the term “fairy tale”. Apparently, the king at the time was very suspicious of the salons, seeing them as a place to gather to discuss radical thought. So the women hid their ideas in fairy tales, trusting that the king would assume it was all whimsical nonsense.

This information about the French fairy tale salons comes from a blog reviewing the upcoming book Women of the Fairy Tale Resistance: the Forgotten Founding Mothers of the Fairy Tale and the Stories that they Spun by Jane Harrington. Thank you to Dana Stabenow for the blog post, which I learned about through Jane Harrington’s Facebook page.

It’s been a glorious spring here in eastern England, with plenty of opportunities to get about locally by bike or by foot. I’ve found it hard to settle on just one to describe, but I’ve settled for the Jacktars and Landlubbers event.

This was part of Beach of Dreams, a festival which celebrated the coast all down the east of Britain and called for us to take more care of it. A local cultural programme, T100, organised the section along the north bank of the Thames Estuary, including four days of travelling it from Shoebury to Tilbury, by foot or by water. I joined for one of the days as a decided landlubber. Alongside us sailed a flotilla of boats from a local yacht club, fighting the choppy water. And behind us trundled a land boat with a framework that was a whole story in itself. A local sewing group had made flags for an earlier event and driven the poles into the sand on the shore but that night a storm blew up, leaving the flags in shreds. Undaunted, the sewing group made new flags, then crafted the shreds into collage work for this land boat, threading in found rubbish too, to highlight the muck that pollutes the river and the shore. And then this tireless crew made new flags, some of which we carried as we walked. The cloth is dyed – again, by the sewing group – using local plants. Apparently roots are much more useful than flowers for giving good colours.

We were encouraged on our way with stops both for food and for stories, including tales of Old Leigh at its museum. Leigh-on-Sea is nowadays a pleasant suburb of Southend, only traces remaining of the old fishing village with its industries like pottery. The pottery has long since disappeared under new builds, which currently struggle with problems due to part of the site being the old pond, the Doom Pond. Legend has it that it was an old ducking pond…there’s a much more prosaic explanation for the name, but why spoil a good story with the truth?

What I read

I’ve learned how to use Borrow Box on my phone, meaning I can borrow and listen to audio books for free from my county library. Hurrah for libraries! I adored Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert, narrated by the author with warmth and humour. It’s all about the magic of writing, and how important it is to love your craft and believe it loves you too, whether you’re a beginner, published, or a veteran with only rejections to show for your efforts. I wanted to write down every other sentence to keep as a reminder. Sometimes I thought YES, sometimes NO but never YAWN. If you write, you really must read it.

Meanwhile, in books for the eyes, my favourite this month was The Wedding Hitch by Claire McCauley. I was in the mood for something different from my normal reading pattern so I opened this book that had been waiting on my Kindle.

Róisín, maker of historical costumes, has found the perfect venue for her wedding. Better still, there’s a chance to win a wedding there for free. And she’s the lucky recipient! Well, maybe not so lucky…her fiancé confesses he doesn’t want the whole marriage thing after all. But the wedding voucher is valid for a year. Can Róisín find the right man in time?

There’s plenty of comedy here, and I chuckled away. But it was also a pleasant change for the comedy to rest mostly on the situation rather than on a ditzy heroine. I know ditzy can be so relatable - I have plenty of my own cringey memories from my dating days - but some rom com heroines are so flaky that it’s impossible to believe they can hold down their jobs or even manage to get up and down the stairs without fatal consequences. Róisín may sometimes bend, but she doesn’t break, and she’s got a sensible head above her open heart. It was also a nice change to read something where it wasn’t blatantly obvious who Róisín’s choice would be. Finally, I loved Róisín’s friends, from the sweet but tyrannical little god-daughter to the hippie vegan couple, all painted boldly but always staying just short of caricature. All in all, a story that pulled me right in and carried me along to its satisfying ending, leaving me keen to read more like this.

What I wrote

A dull month for anyone to read about, as most of it was spent experimenting with ways to upload my story collection onto Kindle, and fiddling with formatting. Work has started on the cover and I’m looking forward to seeing the first sketches!

Ladybird Books as a Stepping Stone to Fairy Tales

It was a spur of the moment decision to start a series about minor characters in fairy tales, and I found I was struggling to find subjects to write about, for the simple reason that the classic tales are pared down to the essentials, so it’s arguable that none of the characters are minor, but all play a vital part and stand for something, often for something that will aid or stop the protagonist in their striving to reach their goal. Hans Christian Anderson’s stories gave me a few subjects, but the ones I haven’t yet covered are characters I’d like to save for a blog post about older women – as in, older than mother figures.

So this month I bring you some thoughts on the Ladybird series of Well-Loved Tales Series 606D. Covering a huge range of fiction and non-fiction, the British press Ladybird books taught me and my peers, children in the 60s and 70s so much: History, Science, Geography, how to identify native birds and flowers, and how to read through the Peter and Jane series. The Well-Loved series, the stories retold by Vera Southgate, the illustrations by Eric Winter and Robert Lumley, introduced us to fairy and nursery tales. With hard covers to make them last under much usage, they opened to show spread after spread with a full page illustration on each left side in jewel colours. My first, I believe, was Cinderella, a gift from my playgroup (a British 1970s version of kindergarten/preschool) when I left. I’d been given a choice of books, and I went for this one because on the cover she wore a pink dress – four year olds tend to make these surface decisions. In the Ladybird version, she goes to the ball three times, with a different outfit on each occasion. The storyteller here knew that the real interest is in a girl getting to go out and party. The prince is an extra, a ticket to a life of permanent pretty dresses and final triumph over the nasty stepsisters: it’s not really a love story at all. As I grew older, my favourite dress changed to the silver one, then the blue. These days I’m more invested in why the godmother has to dress as such a frump.

I was leaving playgroup not to go to school but to travel to Nigeria, where I was moving with my family. Four years later we were obliged to leave the country at short notice, by car, so my parents sold or gave away anything we couldn’t get in the car. Many of the books I’d read as as small child got left behind, including, I suspect, Cinderella. But the memories stayed, and I borrowed many from the school library in our new home in Ghana, and then as an adult I picked up every second-hand copy I could find. The range, within European tradition, is wide: not just princess stories, but many of the entertaining animal tales too, like The Wolf and the Seven Kids, and a few lesser-know cottagey stories like The Magic Porridge Pot.

Looking at them with an adult’s eye, I find the heroines rather insipid. Oh, the tears that well up in Cinderella’s eyes when she’s left behind! Ones that teeter in the corner of each eye, never scrunching her face into ugliness! Dear me, why does the “rescue” fairy in Sleeping Beauty look like a flower fairy? But they were a stepping stone to exploring other ways to tell these oh-so-flexible stories that can be bent into so many different shapes.

Where I Went

I spent a few days in Nottingham, once the city of the notorious Sheriff who locked swords with Robin Hood, now home to our daughter. Robin Hood seems to have settled down to everyday life: signage indicated he now runs an insurance company and also, at the weekends, a hot potato van. There was still plenty to see, though, for the seeker of stories, for instance the many figures and fabled creatures that lurk above our head in the architecture. “Always look up,” said the father of my protagonist in one of my middle grade manuscripts. “You’ll be surprised what you see.”

There was enchantment indoors, too, in the form of a mechanical clock – I adored the squirrel pushing a wheeled nest – and in a shop window clearly designed for Queen Titania and her friends.

Whilst it always seems a let-down to return home after visiting somewhere interesting, it’s good to remind ourselves of the interests on our doorstep. Our local city, Southend, isn’t very exciting if you step off the bus or train, or out of the car park – it looks just like most English high streets. But get off the main street and it’s a different story. There are so many parks that you can make a big ring round the centre using one after another, with stop–offs on the way to view a tiny museum housed in an old phone box, a 1960s fountain that interprets the traditional coat of arms of Southend, and a wealth of wall murals.

What I Read

My top read for this month was bought in Nottingham’s Waterstone’s.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

A bit of a risk to pay so much more for a fabulous cover, but it paid off. What an unsettling story! **SPOILER ALERT ** Jackson led me cunningly up a path of sympathy with a sociopath, so much so that I actually felt relieved when the sociopath got what she wanted – isolation with her beloved sister in a wrecked house. And this, even though the clues as to who the murderer is are left scattered about for us to pick up if we want. I like that there’s still room for interpretation. Is the root cause of the village’s antagonism the murder, or the father? Is Merricat born like this, or was she abused? Does Uncle Julian actually suspect who the real murderer was?

What I Wrote

I’ve been hiding from the fact that at some point I need to format my fairy tale collection. Instead, I worked on revising a middle grade manuscript of mine that’s inspired by local folklore about a supernatural black dog, a portent of death. However, I now have a cover artist, so things are progressing. Meanwhile, my story “A Way Through the Briars” was published in Fairy Tale Magazine, in its Briar and Thorn edition. It was wonderful to be in the same publication as Caitlin Gemmell, whose Substack Ink-Stained Compass I follow and enjoy. I thoroughly recommend her Substack, her poetry collection True North and the Briar and Thorn edition for its many delightful or thought-provoking pieces.

Fairy Tale Character Sketch — Sister Anne, in “Bluebeard”

With that title, she sounds like a saint or a nun, but in fact she is the sister of Bluebeard’s bride.

Looking carefully at the Perrault text, I was surprised on two counts.

Firstly, I went into my reading wondering if I would find a reason for the disparity of the names of the sisters. Anne is a European form of a Hebrew name, and in Christian tradition the name of the mother of the Virgin Mary, while Fatima is usually a Muslim name. What I actually found, however, was that Anne’s sister is not named at all by Perrault. Wikipedia helped me out here. Apparently the name is an embellishment to develop a concept that this story is set in the Middle East, perhaps because storytellers saw a parallel between Bluebeard and the Persian King Shahryār in One Hundred and One Nights, or perhaps from a feeling that a tale of such violence couldn’t possibly take part in refined France! So Bluebeard’s bride, like many a fairy tale character, is nameless. (I have a personal preference for keeping with nameless protagonists in fairy tales, rather than coming up with names for them in retellings, because I think when they are “the girl”, “the boy”, “the old soldier” etc, they stand for all the downtrodden young women, all the boys who are mocked by their family, all the people used up by society then discarded.)

My second surprise was how much of a role Anne actually has. I remembered her looking out of the window on her sister’s behalf, searching for someone to come to the rescue. But Anne plays a part from the very beginning, if you look carefully. (She isn’t named until the window scene.)

She is the elder of two sisters, daughters of a woman “of quality”, part of a larger family that includes at least two brothers. Bluebeard approaches the mother, not the daughters, and says he is open to either young woman as a bride. At first both sisters are wary, partly because of their aversion to his blue beard, and partly because of the stories circulating about his previous wives, who disappeared after marrying Bluebeard. They send him “backward and forward from one another”.

So Bluebeard ups his game and throws a house party, inviting the girls and their mother and other young people. A very good time is had by all, and the younger daughter decides Bluebeard isn’t so bad after all. We might conclude that Anne is not won over in the same way.

The story relates the marriage, and the departure of Bluebeard on “business”. He suggests to his new bride that she invites her friends over. I would assume Anne has come with the other guests, and joined in with the excited crowd that runs from room to room, admiring all the fine furniture, because the morning after the bride makes her terrible discovery and Bluebeard returns home, Anne is in the house. The bride sends her to the top of the tower to look out for their brothers, who are expected today.

The brothers arrive in the nick of time and slay Bluebeard. The bride’s fortunes have reversed, and she is now a wealthy widow. As well as using some of the money to buy her brothers commissions, she uses more to help Anne marry a young man who hasn’t much of a fortune himself, but who had loved her for a long time. We hope she loved him too. Was this the reason she resisted Bluebeard’s courtship when her sister didn’t? Or was she the more wary and sensible of the two? There’s no reason to think she saw the bloody chamber herself, but I do wonder what nightmares the women sometimes had in the following years.

Happy Spring/Autumn, depending on where you are on the globe! Here in England, daffodils nod in wide beds beside roads, primroses fill graveyards, and violets, easy to miss because they’re so small, are giving way in the woods to anemone. The birds are loud and busy. I’ve just learned about the app Merlin, that helps you identify the birds singing around you, which is lovely, if rather a drain on my data.

What I Read

Because I spent my 20s and 30s reading 19C literature, I’m only now catching up on more recent gems. I was certainly late to the party with T Kingfisher, but what a wonderful novel was Nettle and Bone by T Kingfisher. This book ticked so many boxes for me – a heroine who’s anxious and awkward but pushes on to her quest, creating things from bones; powerful crones; blessings and curses; a goblin market; mysterious saints and gods. The touches of deranged humour didn’t derail the seriousness of the plot, which kept me reading and reading until it was over and I wanted more, now!

I also found Clever Maids: The Secret History of the Grimm Fairy Tales, by Valerie Paradiz an interesting read, and demonstrates how contributions of the various women in the Grimm brothers’ lives mirrored their own circumstances, although there wasn’t as much detail about them as I’d hoped. For instance, I feel for Lotte, the only sister in a household of boys, left on her mother’s death to cook, clean and launder for all of them and be moaned about by Jacob. But I did gain more of an understanding of the extent to which the Napoleonic occupation of the Germanic countries and their neighbours affected the lives, fortunes and passions of the brothers. It was a difficult time, and perhaps, in conjunction with their Calvinism, it’s not surprising that they favoured stories that ended with harsh justice.

I’ve learned, sadly, that a love of folklore doesn’t automatically mean I’ll love folk horror novels. I’m not into naming books I didn’t love, but this month’s least favourite read prompts me to ask my readers a genuine question about folk horror as a genre. It seems to be a popular trope for the protagonist to discover that the evil they’ve been unmasking is not only rooted in society and set to repeat all down the years and into the future for eternity, but is also opening its arms to the protagonist, who in the end walks into the embrace. I’m a sponge when it comes to the moods of things I watch and read (as well as the people I love) and I find the atmosphere of triumphant evil really depressing. I want to read stories where protagonists fight hard against bad things and finally win a triumph of some sort. In a world where we often see injustice, hate, fear and stupidity hold sway, surely we need stories of hope? Can anyone explain to me what the satisfaction is of seeing evil triumph?

Where I Went

We had a short break in Bristol recently. We viewed the Clifton Suspension Bridge, a wonder of Victorian architecture across a gorge. We explored the SS Britain, another wonder of Victorian engineering, that cut the voyage to America from months to weeks by using a screw propeller instead of sail – although it rolled a great deal, so I wonder if the passengers felt the subsequent sea-sickness was worth the cut in journey time? And we visited St Mary Redcliffe, which boasts a splendid community of gargoyles running amok over its turrets and towers. There are plenty of funny faces inside, too, including figures straining to “hold up” pillars, and a bearded man looking most alarmed at being depicted on an effigy. A fellow author, Owen Knight, tells me there are green men there too, which I totally missed, sadly. Well, I shall have to go back again one day. Why the obsession with gargoyles, you may ask? I have a completed children’s novel where they play an important part. It’s resting between rounds of agent submissions at the moment.

What I Wrote

March was mostly taken up with a writing course I studied on: Curtis Brown’s Gothic and Supernatural Fiction. It’s the second Curtis Brown course I’ve taken, and they’re well run and informative – and can be quite intense! I started three new stories from scratch to fit the different homework tasks, and now have even more unfinished projects on my drive!

Meanwhile, emails went back and forth between me and my illustrator, the very gifted Emma Howitt. I am now delighted to say I have six small illustrations and one frontispiece for my story collection. Emma’s idea for the frontispiece is delightful. It shows a patchwork ( referencing the first story) where each patch hints at a different story. Readers can enjoy working out which is which. She also added a tea mug and asked me what I’d like as the picture on it, so I chose the cat we lost last year, Molly, who was the best little black cat ever. The next stage is to sort out a cover design.

A number of the stories have already appeared in online journals or in anthologies. If you follow publishing news at all, you’ll be aware that recently thousands of writers discovered that, not only had their books been uploaded onto a huge pirate website, but that Meta has used this to train their own AI, without permission from or compensation for authors. One of the anthologies I’m in is among these texts. Shame on you, Zuckerberg. If you want to support real writers (who aren’t billionaires), look out for my story collection, which I promise will be very affordable, and of course, please buy your books from proper sites or stores, or use a library.

Speaking of individual writers, if you like stories that are playfully macabre, check out my friend’s collection of short horror, Where do the Dead End Up by Priyanka Nawathe, available as a Google book. Yes, I know, it sounds inconsistent when I’ve just said I’m disturbed by folk horror. These stories are all gleefully light-hearted.

Fairytale Character Sketch

I didn’t explain this new feature well in my last newsletter. The idea is to talk about a minor character in a fairy tale and their role, rather than talk about a minor fairytale. This month, I’m choosing the old man in “Sleeping Beauty”. If you’re thinking, “What old man?” it proves my point that he doesn’t get much attention.

The version we tend to know is based on Perrault and Grimm. Their versions are similar but not identical.

In Perrault’s version of the story, we then skip forward one hundred years. There’s a new king of the country, and his son happens to be out hunting in the region where the briar-guarded castle lies. He can see the turrets above the hedge and asks around as to what hides there. (Angela Carter’s translation says he asked the local police, which makes me imagine him questioning men in blue with truncheons.) They have a host of answers – a ruin full of ghosts, a meeting point for witches, a safe place for an ogre to enjoy in peace his feast of children. (Perrault seems to have a bit of an obsession with ogres.) As I write this, I realise there’s a wealth of Sleeping Beauty spin-off stories here. However, an old man tells the prince a story he got from his own father, and relates the story of the princess sleeping for a hundred years till the destined prince wakes her.

The Grimm version covers the castle so entirely that even the flag on the roof has disappeared behind thorns, and instead of grisly theories about ogres, we learn that rumours about the sleeping princess have led to princes trying to get in, being trapped by the thorns and dying miserable deaths. Many years pass, and a prince overhears an old man talking about what lies behind the briar hedge. The old man recounts what he’s learned (from his grandfather, rather than his father) of the princess and the hundred years’ sleep and the sad fate of the princes who tried to win through to her and failed. When the prince says he plans to try the adventure, the old man tries to dissuade him, but the prince perseveres.

There’s nothing more about the old man or his relation to the story. His role is to relate the story to the prince, who would otherwise ride on by, and in Grimm to try to dissuade him. The fate of the princes before our prince, and our prince’s determination despite the old man’s protestations, heighten the drama and the sense of this prince being worthy of the adventure and the princess. I like to think of the old man dining out for years on this story, telling it in the tavern to appreciative ears.

I’m using the fact that February is only 28 days as my excuse for not getting through so many books this month. The highlight for February is The Clackity by Lora Senf, a middle grade horror. Unlike other spooky or chilling middle grade books I’ve read, this one is genuinely unsettling, with an abattoir as the portal and mass murderer in pursuit. It felt very original, to me, in its weirdness, and I loved the bird guide of the main character, Evie, a sort of moving tattoo.

What I’ve Written

At one point, it looked as if I’d never finish editing my fairytale collection. But I have finally closed the document. I have an illustrator working on illustrations – the preliminary sketches she sent me are beautiful – and a cover needs to be finalised. Then I’ll need to get to grips with formatting! I’m thinking of re-ordering the stories too, to group them into something like Maiden/Mother/Crone – or perhaps an alternative that doesn’t define women solely by where they are in the baby-making journey.

Meanwhile, and as quite a palate-cleanser, I’ve been indugling in some ghostly imaginings. I listened to a range of talks from the online UK Ghost Story Festival, which was very enjoyable and well organised. I’d recommend anyone interested in ghost stories looking it up for next year. Then I began a course with Curtis Brown on writing the gothic and supernatural – or, as course leader Kirsty Logan calls it, the nightside.

Where I’ve Been

There haven’t been many forest adventures this month, apart from my daily walk in the mud bath that our Common has recently turned into. But I have encountered a gargoyle and some dragons in my trip to London to see Shakespeare’s Cymbeline. I spotted the gargoyle on the corner of an ornate Victorian red-brick building in Cornhill, leering at the street entrance to St Peter’s Church, and a devil crouching on the top gable (numbers 54-55 if you want to look it up). A spot of searching on the internet tells me that no-one really knows why these, and other devilish figures that I missed, are there, but a popular story says they were the architect’s revenge on the vicar of the church. The dragons are splendid silver beasts that adorn Leadenhall Market, perched on top of columns that hold up the high, glassy ceiling.

Cymbeline was being performed at the Globe, but in the Sam Wannaker theatre, guaranteeing us a roof and some warmth over the winter. The historical Cymbeline, or Cunobelin, was a British ruler in the time of the Roman occupation, his territory including what’s now Essex, my home county, so this was one reason I was interested in the play. The other reason is that a section of the plot is like the fairytale Snow White – Imogen, in hiding from a death threat, has taken something which causes her to fall into such a deep sleep that her protectors think she is dead.

In fact, the plot Shakespeare wove had very little to do with historical events, and the fairytale parallel was a tiny part of a convoluted tale of disguises, parted lovers, deceit and death plots. The cast threw their all into the production, but I am inclined now to favour the theory that Shakespeare devised this play as a parody of his own previous works.

And finally, I’m going to try a new feature in these newsletters. A monthly character sketch, focussing on a lesser-known figure from the world of fairytales, folklore and legend.

The Queen in The Princess on the Pea

Fairytale mothers mostly fall into one of two camps: perfect and silent (perhaps because they died in childbirth, like Snow White’s mother) or, as stepmothers, vain, selfish and cruel (most famously, Cinderella’s). Occasionally we see a mother who doesn’t fit either of these models. The queen in “The Princess on the Pea” is an example. It’s a shame, for that reason, that there’s so little said about her. But then, the whole story is extremely short, leaving us wondering many things, from why the king is answering the city gate himself, to how such a delicate princess is going to manage the rigours of heir-producing.

When the story opens, the prince has done his bit: he’s searched high and low for a real princess, but none of them convinces. Despondent, he returns home. But one night in a fierce storm a young woman appears at the city gate insisting she is a real princess. “We’ll soon see about that,” says the queen, and devises the test we know so well: piles and piles of mattresses and eiderdowns with a solitary pea at the bottom.

Who is this queen, and why does she do it? Comparing a range of translations in my collection and online, I’ve found her referred to both as “old queen” and “Dowager”. Is she the mother of the prince or the king? If the latter, she’d count as a “crone”, which interests me in my search for positive – or at least, not evil, cackling – old women in fairy tales. The original Danish seems to refer to both king and queen as simply “old” – old king, old queen – and there’s no such thing as a king dowager, so I’d conclude that the queen is the king’s wife and the prince’s mother. Personally, I prefer to see her as the prince’s mother, taking that common attitude of questioning whether anyone is good enough to be her son’s partner! It seems, from the text, that she makes the bed herself (just as the king opens the city gates himself) rather than simply giving orders. Perhaps she feels it’s too important a task to leave to the servants.

And what gives her the idea of testing the princess this way? Was she as tender and sensitive as a young woman? Maybe she went through a similar test. If she did, I wonder if she made the one for her prospective daughter-in-law easier or harder than her own? At any rate, she seems to be satisfied with the outcome. The marriage goes ahead and the pea is put into the cabinet of curiosities, and cited by the narrator as proof of the story.

I’ve relied mostly on this version of the story for my conclusions: https://hcandersen.dk/en/vaerker/8_The-Princess-on-the-Pea/ with some additional help from Google translate. I have no knowledge of Danish myself.

And finally…

A Fairytale Recommendation

If you enjoy reading fairytale studies, Alyssa Curtyane is well worth following on Substack. Here’s a link to her latest post, on a subject not often written about — love between siblings.

World of Wonder: the wondrous world of tales

Exploring relationships between brothers and sisters in Fairy Tales

Unless you are an only child, your siblings have formed an important part of your identity. The presence of siblings, both good and bad, appear in many of our favourite fairy tales: Hansel and Gretel, The Three Brothers, Snow White and Rose Red, Six Swans/Seven Ravens…

Read more

2 years ago · 1 like · Alyssa Curtayne

Reviewing my short story collection, I can see that trees and nature are a big theme. Well, aren’t I named after a tree? I love a wander among the trees, and I’m lucky enough to live so close to a wooded common that it’s part of my view out of the window. So I’m naming my update blogs/newsletter series “At the Edge of the Woods”. It’s a nod, too, to the books “Into the Forest” and “Into the Woods”, even though they’re each on totally different topics. In the forest we find balm for our frazzled minds. In the forest we learn who we really are.

What I’ve read:

The Wood at Midwinter by Susanna Clarke

This is actually a short story. But it’s illustrated and told so beautifully that we forgive the publisher for charging us the price of a book. It’s in the vein of The Ladies of Grace Adieu, being a gentle fairy-folk-saint tale, with a wonderful pig. I agree with other readers that it ends abruptly – I thought I still had a few pages to go, and they turned out to be the notes at the end. It has a feel of, “Well, there’s no point going into detail any more – I showed you her seeing the vision, and it came true, the end” about it.

Dread Wood by Jennifer Killick

It’s hard to find convincing ways of separating modern children from their adults and their mobile phones in order to put them in real danger. But Jennifer Killick has found an ingenious way of solving this problem so she can put her four “losers” into nail-biting after nail-biting situation. I liked, too, that the main character doesn’t come from a stable, middle-class background. He sometimes goes to school hungry, and he seldom sees his parents, and the book ending doesn’t solve this problem either.

Into the Forest by Dr Qing Li

I used to get very attached to trees near my house as I grew up, and I still feel distressed when I witness one being cut down. A walk in the woods behind our home refreshes me, and a forest bathing session I went on last autumn really did relax me as promised – I think perhaps I should have waited before driving home, I was so blissed out! Our leader had told us nuggets of information about why spending time in the forest is so good for us, and I wanted to find out more, so I bought and read this book.

It’s easy to get through - large text, spaced out, lots of pictures (sumptuous photos of forests). There’s a bit about the history of how and why it became a thing in Japan, and lots of information (? – I’m no scientist) about how trees affect our different senses and hence our well-being. And because it’s not always possible for us to make regular trips into the wild, there are suggestions on how we can bring the wild into our homes. It concludes with a look into the future, with hope.

Equal Rites by Terry Pratchett

After discovering the Tiffany Aching books, I bowed to the temptation to buy another Discworld Novel, and was delighted to find it’s another that features Granny Weatherwax – the first, no less. Now I’m in my crone years, I really think there should be more books about crones. I suppose there’s an idea that crones are settled in life, unlike maidens who are looking for their role in life. If they feature in fairy or folk tales, they are witches or godmothers, preventing the hero or heroine getting what they want or helping them along the way. What about their own journeys? Like the inner journey where the children leave home, and you suddenly wonder what you’re meant to do next?

Moondial by Helen Cresswell

Helen Cresswell was a popular author when I was a child, and I had my first competition win through writing an “ending” for her Beachcombers for a contest in the Puffin Magazine. (It rather spoilt my elation when I learned only four people had entered, and so I was bound to get a prize!) It fits that vibe I like of encounters with historical ghosts that change the lives of both the ghosts and those that see them. It’s a gentle story with a rather bittersweet ending for the ghosts, set round a real stately home in midsummer, often with the sun blazing down. I did wonder why the villain, Miss Raven/Miss Vole chose to pursue Sarah down the years if she thought the child was such a burden on her.

Helen Cresswell is one of the writers in The Thorny Paradise, too (see my writeup blog of 2024), which adds to the appeal of reading this book now. She had a long writing career, and according to one of her daughters she wrote one draft and that was it. This blows my shilly-shallying mind!

The Magician’s Nephew by CS Lewis

I was thinking about portals, because I use them quite a lot in my short stories, and realised that the puddles in one of them owe a lot to the pools in The Magician’s Nephew, which act as gateways to many different worlds.

Though this was written after five other Narnia books, it’s the origin story of Narnia, including how the lamppost got into Narnia and why a wardrobe in a spare room should be the entry to a different world. CS Lewis drew on his love of E Nesbit’s works here, but adds an emotional heart that the fantasy novels of Nesbit lack, with Digory’s longing to find a cure for his mother. There’s darkness and foreboding, but there’s also so much fun as Queen Jadis, escaping from a world dying through her own curse, causes havoc in Edwardian London.

What I’ve watched

Maleficent

I thought this was sometimes rather sentimental, especially in the “perfect world” sequence in the beginning, and in the blonde perfection of the princess, but an interesting alternative to the tale, where the evil fairy has a very understandable reason for her fury. What I liked most is that an older female character is central to the story and has a character arc. But can someone tell me how she suddenly got her wings back in the final battle?

What I’ve written

At the start of the month I sent my children’s gargoyle fantasy to another clutch of agents. It’s Ross Montgomery’s Chime Seekers meets Lucy Strange’s The Marsh Sisters. Now I just have to wait for a few months and see if anyone is interested.

So back to editing meanwhile. I’m putting my short fantasy/fairy tales, some previously published, into a collection to self-publish some time this year. There are a lot of trees in it, but I was also surprised how much weaving went on. My title is The Tapestry Unravels. Can you guess what song inspired that?

I did get distracted from my editing with a call for submissions for fiction based on “Sleeping Beauty”. I reflected on the way the Grimm Brothers told it: the good fairy puts the entire court to sleep once the princess slumbers, down to the cook and kitchen boy. That’s wonderful for the princess, waking a hundred years later with a full household ready to serve her, bring her her toilette and make her favourite dinner. But what about the mothers and fathers, wives, husbands and lovers of those trapped inside, doomed to never see their loved ones again?

Where I’ve been

It was very frosty the day we walked in Epping Forest, but the sun was out and we enjoyed the gnarliness of the ancient trees. The forest was once part of a much larger forest that covered much of south Esssex. Sadly, no fungi picking is allowed, so the local witches have to get theirs from the supermarket instead. Signs also warned against selling anything here, which I thought meant the goblin market was forbidden too, but my husband said he didn’t think any self-respecting goblin would be deterred by such a ban. We explored Ambresbury Banks, the remains of an earthworks. Local legend says it was the site of the defeat and death of Queen Boudicca (Boadicea) but I wondered about the name, because it sounds like Ambrose Aurelius, warleader in post-Roman Britain, King Arthur’s uncle in legends. We had lunch at a fab pub at the end, with this Frida Kahlo cushion.

I finally managed to go to a local wassailing ceremony this year. We sang, we paraded round the orchard banging drums, we speared bread slices on twigs to attract the robins, and we drank spiced apple juice, all to bless the orchard. I plan to come back in the summer to see how well the apple trees responded!

Another delightful discovery was the remains of the gardens of Warley Place outside Brentwood. My friend drove us there and we explored what was left of a paradise designed and tenderly cared for by Ellen Ann Willmott. A ghost garden is a gentler thing than a ghost house, all moss and ferns and tumbled brick. It reminds me of the haunted greenhouse novelette sitting on my drive, waiting for an edit. In February I’m taking a course on gothic writing with Curtis Brown, which I think will give me lots of inspiration to polish it up.

Goodreads thinks I read four books this year, but I seldom post reviews there so it’s not accurate. In fact, I read 74 books. This sounds very impressive until you learn that 30 of them were MG (middle grade), which are about half the length of an adult book. But it’s research for my writing! So that’s fine. I think I’d still read them even if I wasn’t preparing to write my own, though – from the courage of Mold (Mold and the Poison Plot by Lorraine Gregory) to the kind heart of Herbert Lemon (Malamander by Thomas Taylor), the heroes and heroines have all the odds stacked against them but they fight back with pluck and good-heartedness.

A foray into Bluesky (which, just after the US election, went from tranquility to the noisiness of a hedge at dusk when all the birds have flown in to find a roost for the night) altered me to The Thorny Paradise edited by Edward Blishen, a collection of essays by children’s writers from the mid-70s, about the revolution in children’s writing. I recognised just about every author in the contents page, so it was a must-read for me, both for a piece of nostalgia and something to reflect on as I’ve been working on two children’s novels this year. Each author, of course, has their own take on the subject, but several themes ran through the book, and struck me. One was a rejection of “how-to”, interesting for me to read in a decade where “how-to” books and courses proliferate. Another was a belief that you didn’t aim to write for children particularly, but that you wrote the story you needed to tell. A third was that you should never write down to children or patronise them in any way.

By far the biggest genre I read in was fantasy, and so it’s apt that my reading discovery should be Tiffany Aching. One of my friends had referenced her so much that I found myself a copy of the first book that featured this character from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, The Wee Free Men. And then I bought the other four Tiffany Aching books, so I could see what happened next to the girl who defended her brother from a faerie with a frying pan and the tiny, fierce warriors who elected her as their “hag”.

Another reading highlight was seeing that folk horror/uncanny literature for children is back. Having delighted in the unsettling works of Alan Garner and Penelope Lively as a child, I was very pleased to see that The Whispering Hollow by Rachel Burge was published this year. It’s a delightfully creepy story, and each time I see the build-up of leaves at my front door, it reminds me of the leaves that encroach on the grandfather’s home, signs that the forest is trying to take over.

In February we took a trip across Canada, starting in Vancouver and ending in Halifax. Three weeks on public transport meant I needed to rely on my Kindle for reading matter. I enjoyed revisiting Anne of Green Gables, in preparation for our stopover on Prince Edward Island – her forays into her own world of the imagination are so wonderful – although I found the sequel disappointing. I did pick up a paperback half way across Canada – Bad Cree by Jessica Johns, a riveting horror that draws on the landscape, indigenous folklore and historical injustices of Canada. It was a fitting read for a trip that included visits to museums that charted the legends and lore of the First Nations, and the shockingly recent history of the abusive residential schools First Nations children were forced into.

One of the wonderful things about the writing group I belong to is that many of the members published books this year. They are a talented, hard-working bunch. I’ve bought and read a small section of them, which included: Fyn Carter and the Agents of Eromlos by Ian Hunter, a middle-grade science fiction with echoes of Doctor Who and Star Wars (seriously, why aren’t there more books in this genre for this age group?), The Dream Maker by Kiera Nixon, a richly imaginative piece of speculative fiction for young adults) and Slettbyrd by Jenny Moore, a tense dystopian novel for young teens about fear and prejudice in an ice-bound society.

Sadly, though, it was time for me and my husband to say goodbye to Ruth Galloway, heroine of a long-running mystery series by Elly Griffiths. We’ve devoured each book and The Last Remains concluded the series. The hunt begins for another compulsive detective series!

It’s very hard to pick out a top five/nine/whatever the trend is on social media. But these three certainly stand out, even in a year full of delightful discoveries:

Unrest by Michelle Harrison

Is Elliott’s boss faking the ghostly events in the museum? What happened to Ophelia’s boyfriend? Why is Elliott haunted, and how can he deal with it? A gripping plot and an ultimately satisfying solution. Bonus points for an Essex setting, the historic museum in mid-Essex contrasting nicely with the gloomy flat in Tilbury with the terrifying bathroom.

Content warning: this book deals with some very dark issues, including suicide.

Wylding Hall by Elizabeth Hand

While I found the multiple narrators a bit confusing, I really enjoyed the method of narrating the story as if it was a documentary looking back. It’s a horror story that’s not really horrific, with folklore and secrets and passages and mystery, and instead of dark, stormy weather it uses bright summer. It does seem to be very much inspired by Fairport Convention, except that their lead singer didn’t disappear mysteriously.

The Ladies of Grace Adieu by Susanna Clarke

This is my Number 1 for 2024.

I really should have enjoyed Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrel, with its wild mix of Regency and faerie, but I didn’t care for the hero at all. But having enjoyed Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi, I moved on to this collection of stories by her. I thought it was wonderful. I found I was pausing between stories so I didn’t finish the book too soon, and to give me time to savour each. And the illustrations by Charles Vess are a gorgeous addition. These are faerie tales, not fairy tales – the supernatural beings here are tall, powerful, capricious and morally ambiguous. No selfless fairy godmothers here! In sum, the perfect recipe of faerie folklore plus Regency vibes plus a cornucopia of wild, imaginative details and plot diversions, and dark (but not too dark) humour.

Not Bing Crosby! Or much that’s modern. My go-to music at Christmas is carols or songs with the feel of a legend, like “Good King Wenceslas”, particularly ones with links to books, of course. Here, I’m choosing four with a medieval feel.

The King who was a Duke

Wenceslas was real – Václav, really, as he was duke of the Czech kingdom of Bohemia, with his feast day being in September. A 12C chronicler tells of how he travelled barefoot in the snow with just his chamberlain to give gifts to the poor. According, however, to Good King Wenceslas (1987), above, written and illustrated by Pauline Baynes, queen of artwork for legends and fantasy, it is not Wenceslas but his page, Poidevin, who is barefoot, feeling no cold as he puts his feet in his lord’s footprints. In 1849 John Mason Neale published a version of this in Deeds of Faith: Stories for Children from Church History, then turned it into the carol “Good King Wenceslas” in 1853, adding the reference to St Stephen’s Day, or Boxing Day as we know it now. The Pauline Baynes edition includes the saint’s life and legends and the words of the carol.

The Kings who were Magicians (maybe?)

The Magi aren’t technically a legend, either, as they’re recorded in the Bible. But the brevity of the account has been a temptation over the years to add to their story. Were they kings? They seem to be wealthy. Were they simply astronomers, or were they astrologers and magicians? We don’t even know for sure that there were three, simply that they brought three gifts, rich in symbolism. (The carol “We Three Kings” spells it all out hauntingly.) I love the extra layers added over the years, brought out in paintings by the masters of the Renaissance. Each king represents a different stage of life – youth, middle age, old age – and each represents a different continent – European, Asian, African – because the Christ child came for all ages and all races. I love the names given them in later years, although there isn’t a consensus: I’m most familiar with the traditional Western names of Melchior, Caspar and Balthazar, but their names for Syrian Christians are Larvandad, Gushnasaph, and Hormisdas, for Armenians it’s Kagpha, Badadakharida and Badadilma and for Ethiopian Christians they’re known as Hor, Karsudan, and Basanater.

There are legends about their adventures after their journey to Bethlehem, and more about their bones after their deaths. For instance, the story of Babushka, the Russian woman who missed her chance to travel with them, was an intriguing discovery for me recently. I’m particularly fond of the story that Helen, mother of Constantine the Great, discovered them on her trip to the Holy Lands, because of her link with my adopted home, Essex. According to Geoffrey of Monmouth she was daughter of Coel, King of Essex, immortalised as “Old King Cole” in the nursery rhyme, and said to be the monarch after whom the city of Colchester is named. So did an Essex princess gather the bones of three ancient kings? There’s an English fairy tale about a princess simply identified as the daughter of the King of Colchester, who has a bizarre adventure that includes combing the hair of three heads in a well…If this sort of strange mishmash isn’t to your taste, there’s TS Eliot’s vivid “Journey of the Magi”:

“...the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,

Lying down in the melting snow.

There were times we regretted

The summer palaces on slopes…”

And of course the Magi feed into various Christmas traditions, from giving out gifts in Spain to the Twelfth Night celebrations of the past, before we decided we needed to get back into our offices the day after New Year.

The Courage of a King’s Nephew

Gawain and the Green Knight is straight up legend. The edition I’m illustrating here sings with colour like a medieval illuminated manuscript, but my first encounter was through Roger Lancelyn Green’s splendid King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table (1953), with the elegant woodcuts of Lotte Reiniger. Gawain’s character varies wildly across different stories about him, but his two chapters in Green’s retelling show him as courteous, thoughtful and brave. And imperfect, as this story shows. There’s lots of speculation about whether the Green Knight is the Green Man, and/or an ancient fertility god, but I’m most taken by the mortal Gawain who takes up the beheading challenge to save his uncle Arthur, even when he knows that he won’t be able to replace his head like the gigantic Green Knight does. It’s not just his bravery that appeals to me, but also his weakness, as he struggles with the temptation to get out of the pact he’s made with the giant.

Cows, Sheep and Donkeys

Finally, a folk tradition with a medieval feel, although it might not be as old as that. There’s a traditional belief that animals kneel, or even gain the power of speech, at midnight as Christmas Eve turns into Christmas Day. Thomas Hardy wrote a poem, “The Oxen” based on the former. For the latter, there are various, sometimes rather violent, folktales about what happens when a set of animals is able to talk, and plot. There’s also a carol, with words by Robert Davis, called “The Friendly Beasts”, published in 1934, in which the animals round Jesus’ manger talk of their role in his birth. There’s a theory this carol is based on a 12th C Latin song for the Feast of the Donkey, which commemorated the flight of Mary, Joseph and Jesus into Egypt.

My first encounter with the legend was through Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Armourer’s House (1951). This tender, gentle children’s novel has a different feel from her later works with their stark poetry and tragedy, although there’s a thread of sadness running through The Armourer’s House too, because Tamsyn is struggling terribly with homesickness, while the family she’s living with desperately miss their oldest son Kit, who was lost at sea. It’s set in the reign of Henry VIII but references various folktales, including the one of the animals kneeling on Christmas Eve. Its final chapter is a triumph of hope and joy as Christmas Day breaks through.

The Marketing Bit

Tapestry Unravels is the title of my forthcoming collection of stories inspired by legends, folklore and fairy tales. I’d really hoped to put a Christmas-themed story in it, but decided against including a version of the Beast Bridegroom story, one of my earliest forays into the world of reweaving old tales, because it’s not original enough. However, there are snippets I’m very fond of, and I share one here with you. My heroine, questing to find her groom, who’s turned into a goose, has encountered the Magi, one by one:

"I saw such a creature fly overhead two days ago," said Balthazar, "He was flying west.

Then the king looked into the camel's pack and brought out a nutcracker and a bag of nuts.

"I bought these on my travels," he said, "They are magical. When you crack one open, it gives you what you need just at that moment. Try one now."

The girl took the strange carved nutcracker with its green jacket and its great frightening jaws, and cracked a nut. Out of it fell a fur coat. She put it on and went on her way.

I rewrote this story over and over until I had a completely different version which will go in the collection. Originally published in From the Stories of Old (2016), it’s called “The Goose and his Girl” and while there are no nutcrackers, it does feature a frost fair.

Stay tuned for further news!