The Snow Queen

 

The Snow Queen is a story told in seven parts, which we’ll be breaking down over the next several weeks. But first, an introduction: 

The Snow Queen was written by Hans Christian Andersen, published in 1844. Andersen has produced many classic, beloved stories - The Little Mermaid, Thumbelina, The Princess and the Pea, The Little Matchgirl, The Steadfast Tin Soldier. Some happy, some funny, some tragic. Of all his stories, The Snow Queen has always held a special place in my heart. It’s a story about faith. About friendship. About growing up. But mostly, it’s a story about love. 

It’s a beautiful story, and one we’ll be spending a lot of time with over the next few months. We will be coving one of the seven sections for each of the next seven weeks, and then moving on to other Snow Queen and Shards of Glass related content.

Shards of Glass

 

“When Gerda's neighbor and childhood friend disappears into the Mississippi, she refuses to believe he's dead. A spontaneous rescue mission leads her to a strange new land, full of fairies, trolls, and talking flowers. To find her friend, she must travel through this land, to a palace at the top of the world. But reaching the palace is only the beginning-she has to get him home again, too.”

My second novel, Shards of Glass, will be released on September 26, with preorders opening in early August. Shard of Glass is a retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen. Starting in not-quite-modern Minnesota, it follows seventeen-year-old Gerda as she chases after an old friend given up for dead by everyone else.

This is just a quick intro post - we’ll be talking more about both Shards of Glass and The Snow Queen over the course of the summer. Patrons will have access to most posts one week early.

New Project Announcement: Silence

I’ve discovered, through trial and error over the last few years, that it’s a lot easier to actually get writing projects done when I have people waiting to read them. Especially when I’m sharing the projects as I write them. And I don’t have a writing group or anything right now, and I never really know what to do with my Patreon, so I’m going to try doing this: 

I’m writing a story right now called Silence. I hope it will be novel-length, but I never really know until I get there. It’s about a mermaid. I would not call it a retelling of The Little Mermaid, but honestly, YMMV on that. Starting next week, I’ll be posting a chapter of this story on Patreon every week. (With possible occasional skipped weeks for holidays, real life interference, etc.)

Silence will be available for everyone, Patrons or not. Patrons will have access to each chapter five days early, and will also have access to occasional bonus content consisting of deleted scenes, outlines, previews, posts about inspiration, posts about the history of this story-type, etc.—basically whatever I feel like, TBH.

One important thing to note here: it’s much easier to stay motivated to write if I’m sharing as I go, but that only works if I know people are reading. So if you’re here, please engage with the posts. Like them or comment—it can be something simple like a heart or a smiley face, or something longer, and I’ll try to respond to any comments, but please keep any criticism constructive and polite. Remember, this is a rough draft that I’m sharing as I write it, and it will go through plenty of editing before standard publication is an option. I’m happy to hear about any issues you notice with the story, so I can make the next draft better, but remember to be nice! (Also, feel free to point out any grammar or spelling issues.)

You do not have to be a Patron to read Silence, but you do need to be a Patron for access to the bonus content. If you are not a Patron, do please consider following my page, which is free!

Chapters will post for Patrons on Sundays and for non-Patrons the following Friday. Bonus content will post whenever I feel like it. A proper summary/back cover blurb/whatever is coming soon. Unfortunately the layout of Patreon is not super convenient for posting writing (I would love it if I could set things up to feel a little more AO3, a little less LiveJournal), so I’ll try to set up some sort of master-post where you can access each chapter easily, but I’m not sure yet if that’ll work.

My Patreon is here.

Future Plans (I Don’t Have Any!)

So we were supposed to have a new blog yesterday, and we didn’t. Sorry. It’s been a chaotic few weeks, releasing a book and doing nanowrimo at the same time, while trying to sort out major home renovations, and I didn’t realize until this morning that I’d never written a blog. I have several plans for upcoming blogs, but none I can throw together right now. So we’re just gonna talk a little.

I have a Patreon page. (Which this will be cross-posted on, so if you’re reading this on Patreon thinking, well, obviously, that’s why.) it’s not much of a Patreon page. Blogs go up a little earlier there, and there are monthly updates and occasional previews, writing snippets, photos of cover-design-in-progress, etc.

So I know I need to do more with my Patreon, and really I just need to produce more content in general. Because you can’t actually build a career as an author just by writing books - you have to give people a reason to be interested in your books, when you’re not working with a mainstream publisher and are your own media manager.

But media management is hard.

So I’d like to know what you’d like to see - more or more specific fairy tale rant/essay things? Videos? More specific talk about writing projects? I just don’t really know what to do with myself a lot of the time, so I’d love to hear what kind of content you would like to consume in the new year.

The Black Bull of Norroway

 So despite having "Norway" in the title, this is a Scottish fairy tale. It does, however, have a lot in common with one of the best known Norwegian fairy tales around. Which is why I decided to talk about it today.

Our heroine is the youngest of three sisters, as our heroines often are. They all go to a washerwoman for a sort of mystical matchmaking session, and the oldest two go off with some men in nice carriages who come by her door, while our girl sees a black bull riding past, and because this is a weird sort of matchmaking gig, she gets dropped on the bull's back, and off they go.

They have a long journey, during which she eats out of his right ear and drinks out of his left, until they arrive at a castle, where apparently the bull's older brother lives. She's given a magic apple, and then they move onto another castle, where another brother lives, and give her a pear. In a third brother's castle she gets a magic plum. Then they ride on to a glen, and the bull leaves her there, with instructions not to move at all, while he goes to fight the Old One.

The bull tells her that if everything turns blue he's won, and if everything turns red, the Old One has. So she sits by herself in the glen, waiting, which isn't my idea of a good honeymoon, until everything turns blue. She's really excited, though I'm not sure why - it hasn't exactly been a fantastic marriage so far. Anyway, she's excited, so she moves around a little (just, like, uncrossing her legs), against the bull's express orders, and consequently, he's unable to find her again.

Our girl wanders long and far in search of him - again, not clear on the why. She doesn't owe him anything and we haven't seen them bonding in any way. Why not just go home?

But she wanders. She comes eventually to a glass hill, too slippery to climb, and meets a smith who promises to make her special glass-climbing cleats if she works for him for seven years. And she agrees, which, again, no clue why - she hasn't been given any indication that her missing bull is up the hill. And she walked around the entire base searching for a way up, so she could have just kept going.

After seven years she climbs the hill in her special shoes, and meets another washerwoman. This one is apparently a little less magical, and not a fantastic person.

She tells our girl about a knight who will marry whoever washes his dirty clothes. Which is where we really start getting "East of the Sun, West of the Moon" vibes - it's the return of the magic laundry. The washerwoman can't wash the clothes. Her daughter can't wash the clothes. But our girl falls madly in love with this knight - um, honey, what about the bull you've been doing all this work to find? - and she's able to wash his clothes, through the purity of her love or something, idk.

The washerwoman lies to the knight and tells him that her daughter washed the clothes, a wedding date is set, and our girl is devastated. She gets out her magic apple, finds a bunch of jewels inside, and gives them all to the washerwoman's daughter in exchange for a night with the knight before their wedding. The washerwoman drugs him, so he sleeps straight through her speech about the seven years of hard work she's put into bringing about their reunion, and, okay, when and how, exactly, did she figure out that her bull and the knight were the same person? Because this is literally the first time it's come up in the text. I mean, it was obvious to us, but it shouldn't have been obvious to her, right?

I'm so confused.

Things move forward predictably from here - she makes the same deal with the pear and the plum, eventually someone tells the knight about all the noise someone's making in his bedroom at night, and he doesn't take the drugged drink on the final night. He's reunited with our girl, and they burn the washerwoman and her daughter (details on this move not provided) and live happily ever after.

This story...this story is just...wow.

I have so many unanswered questions. There are so many plotholes. This is such a mess.

Why are we choosing husbands based on who (or what) walks past a washerwoman's door first? Why does the bull have to fight an Old One? What does that even mean? Why can't he find her again if she moves at all, and for how many hours or days was she expected to hold completely still? Why did he have to leave her in the middle of nowhere, instead of one of the THREE castles we just visited?

Why did she feel the need to go after him instead of just going home? Why was she so determined to climb the glass hill, when she's fully capable of walking around it, and we have no evidence that the bull is even up there? If shoes that can climb that hill are worth seven years of labor, why are the washerwoman and her daughter just chilling up there? They can't possibly be getting a lot of business.

How did the knight get up there? Why is his clothing magically dirty? Is it from his fight with the Old One? Has our girl actually met him as the knight, or just heard about him? How does she know who he is? When does she figure out who he is? Why are we, the audience, not kept up to date about this discovery?

I just - it's a mess. I give up.

The Book Is Here!

So the book came out yesterday, and I'm super excited. We've had several preorders, and some of you have gotten your copies already.

As of yesterday, the ebook is available to purchase directly from the Wax Heart site, which is a great option as it's the exact same file you'd get from Amazon/Barnes and Noble/wherever, but 100% of the cost goes directly to me.

I've been working on this book for a long time, and I hope you all enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. The 13 stories are a mix of retellings and original fairy tales (well, as original as a fairy tale - or any story - can ever be). I've carried some of these characters in my heart for a decade or more, and it feels so weird to finally be sending them out into the world. I hope they do well out there.

Anyway! The Shoemaker Prince is available directly from Wax Heart Press, as well as from Barnes and Noble, Amazon, and pretty much wherever books are sold. (Or the websites of wherever books are sold, at least.) Buy your copy today!

The Impossible Enchantment

(This month I am reposting relevant blogs in preparation for the release of my upcoming short story collection - every blog shared is about a fairy tale that inspired one of the stories. 

Last time we finally finished our long search for “The Impossible Enchantment.” So today I thought it would be fun to go through the whole story, as the version I told from memory a couple weeks ago, before finally tracking down the source, was lacking in several details, and outright wrong in others. Which, well, in my defense I hadn’t read it in about fifteen years.

Once a king fell in love with a beautiful but unkind woman. When they had been married for some time, the woman offended a fairy, and as punishment was taken into her service. When a few months had passed, the woman gave birth to a daughter; the fairy sent her home to her husband, and kept the child to raise as her own.

When the queen of the fairies discovered how kindly her subject treated the daughter of the woman who had offended her, and by extension the entire fairy race, she became very angry. She sent the girl to live trapped in a palace by the sea, with only one servant for company. There, she said, the girl would stay until she held in her arms a man she loved, who loved her as well.

When the girl had been at the palace for some time, a merman took a liking to her, and began to bring her gifts. He was very ugly, and the girl wanted nothing to do with him, though she did accept his gifts. One day the merman brought with him his sister, who, unlike her brother, spoke the girl’s language. The two quickly became friends, though the girl still wanted nothing to do with her aquatic suitor.

She told the mermaid of her plight, and one day the mermaid brought to see her a fairy of her own race. The girl asked the sea fairy to break her enchantment and free her from the palace, but alas, the fairy had no power on land. She encouraged the girl to accept the merman’s suit, for she would then turn the girl into a mermaid as well, and she could live quite happily with them in the sea.

The girl began to consider this seriously. Her servant was alarmed by this turn of events. It occurred to her that the girl had lived in this place for many years now, and may not remember what a proper, human suitor ought to look like. Surely, if she were reminded, she would not consent to marry someone so ugly as the merman.

The servant, who was a painter, created for the girl a portrait of a very handsome man, and the girl agreed that, if human men looked like this, surely she could not settle for an ugly merman instead.

There was, meanwhile, a prince on a ship sailing not far from the island, who happened to catch a glimpse of the girl in his telescope. He fell instantly in love, and with the help of a fairy he knew, sent a message by pigeon, asking for her hand in marriage.

The girl replied that she could not possibly agree to marriage without first seeing what he looked like, and so he sent a portrait by pigeon as well. The girl was delighted to see that the prince strongly resembled the painting made by her servant, and agreed promptly to the marriage.

The difficulty, then, was how to reach the girl, for the enchantment around the palace was too strong for the ship to pass through.

While the prince pondered this difficulty, the girl explained to the mermaids, both her friend and the fairy, that she could not possibly marry someone so ugly as the merman. They were greatly upset by this, and planned to tear down the foundation of the palace and drown her.

The prince arranged for his own fairy to turn him into a hummingbird, and flew to the enchanted palace. The mermaids had by this time made good progress at destroying it, and the girl and her servant were very afraid. But as soon as the prince turned from a hummingbird back into a man, and he and the girl embraced, the terms of the fairy queen’s curse were met, and the girl was free. She, her servant, and the prince were all transported instantly back to the fairy who had raised her. 

This fairy took the girl back to her father; her wicked mother had by this time died, and the old king was overjoyed to have family again. And so the girl and the prince were married, and all lived happily ever after.

 

(Order The Shoemaker Prince to read a story inspired by this fairy tale, and 13 more!)