Funny Friday

Peanuts                                                                               by Charles Schulz

Funny Friday

-- originally published October 9, 2017

Fantasy Friday

Roses and Rot by Kat Howard (Saga Press hardcover, 17 May 2016).

Imogen and Marin grew up with an abusive mother.  A woman who fit the classic fairy tale wicked stepmother stereotype, but was their real mother.

As a teen, Imogen escaped by going to boarding school, but Marin, several years younger, was stuck behind.  Imogen tried to keep in touch, but Marin never responded, so she assumed that her sister was angry with her for leaving.

Now, as adults, they've both been accepted to Melete, a prestigious privately funded artists' retreat.  Imogen is a writer; Marin, a ballet dancer.  Marin convinced Imogen to apply, hoping that spending several months together would help them to repair their relationship.

At first, Melete seems perfect.  The artists have the luxury of concentrating on their work, with few restrictions, although they do have to connect with a resident mentor on a regular basis.  

Marin and Imogen share a house with two other women.  Each has a private room and workspace, but they share the living area and kitchen.  They don't really have to worry about cooking, however, as custom meals are provided for each artist. 

The story is told in first person, from Imogen's point of view.  She's thrilled for the opportunity to have Marin to herself, where their mother cannot reach them, but is also aware that they both have work to do. 

Melete is an isolated village in New Hampshire, perfect for artists trying to concentrate on their work, but Imogen can't help feeling that there's something odd about the place.  Not only does it seem just too perfect, she occasionally sees buildings or structures out of the corner of her eye, which aren't there when she turns her head.  She keeps telling herself she's just imagining it, but can't figure out why.

In her debut novel, Kat  Howard has created an astonishing world melding dreams and reality;  drawing upon fairy tales and mythology from multiple traditions.  And, as in many classic tales, it's the women who are challenged and survive.

It's an intense, riveting story that will completely draw you in.  Make sure you set aside a large block of time to read it; you won't want to put it down.



FTC Full Disclosure:  I borrowed this book from my local library.
 

Swans

Princess of Thorns by Stacey Jay (Delacorte hardcover, 9 December 2014).

Dearest (The Woodcutter Sisters # 3)Hew by Alethea Kontis (HMH hardcover, 3 February 2015).


I serendipitously happened to pick up two books based on the swan fairytales one right after the other.  

I had remembered the story as The Seven Swans, possibly from Grimm, but a search on the Google brought up a Grimm tale called  The Six Swans,  as well as one by Hans Christian Andersen called The Wild Swans.  

Both have a similar theme:  the brothers are cursed to be swans and can only be released from the curse if their sister weaves them each a shirt of nettles, not speaking until the task is done.  

Of the two, Dearest sticks more closely to the older tales.  The protagonist of this story is Friday Woodcutter, whose talent is sewing.  After her sister Saturday conjures up an ocean (see Hero, Woodcutter Sisters #2), Friday ends up at her sister Sunday's  (see Enchanted, Woodcutter Sisters # 1) palace.  

Friday notices a young kitchen-maid frolicking with swans on the shore. When her squire Conrad tells her that the swans nest up in the tallest tower of the palace, Friday climbs the many stairs and finds seven young men sleeping on the floor. When she learns that the mute kitchen-maid Rampion is their sister and is trying to save them from a curse, she immediately does what she can to help.



In Princess of Thorns we first meet Aurora, daughter of the Sleeping Beauty.  After losing her mother at the age of seven, Aurora is raised by Fey relatives.  But when her brother Jor is captured by the ogre queen who has taken over Aurora's kingdom, now 17-year-old princess disguises herself as a boy and sets out to rescue him.

Along the way, she joins forces with Prince Niklaas, who must marry a princess before his 18th birthday to avoid the fate of his ten older brothers.  Niklaas promises "Ror" that he will help "him" raise an army to rescue his "sister" if Ror will convince her to marry him.  Because both characters are hiding things from each other, this plot is somewhat more complex.




Both books are well-written and compelling.  Both mingle multiple tales and have a suitably evil villain.  Both left me wanting more, though Jay's book gives no indication that there might be a sequel.



FTC Full Disclosure:  I borrowed these books from my local library.

Welcome guest Maia Chance!

When people ask me where I got the idea for Snow White Red-Handed, I’m not sure where to start.  I can say with certainty, however, that the entire Fairy Tale Fatal series began as a self-indulgent, irresponsible project.

Yes.  Call it Escape from Academic Drudgery.  Charge me as guilty for writing an entire novel as a way to procrastinate on my homework.

This is what happened: I’ve always been fascinated with fairy tales, so when I had the chance to pick my texts for a freshman comp class I was teaching, I decided to use fairy tales and fairy tale criticism as a way to help my students learn to write about literature.  So I had fairy tales on the brain, big time.  The next thing I knew, the fairy tale stuff had cross-pollinated in the back of my mind with the nineteenth-century American literature texts I was reading in preparation for my PhD qualifying exams.  Louisa May Alcott, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Walt Whitman . . . yeah.  How the heck does that crowd mix with fairy tales?  But the more I thought about it, the more excited I got.  I’ve always loved stories with outsider protagonists, and a Yankee girl in the Black Forest sounded like a book I wanted to read.  So I decided to write it.  Kind of for fun.  And as a way to procrastinate on grading student papers and chewing through that pesky PhD reading list.

Once I got started writing and researching Snow White Red-Handed, other things worked their way into the story.  Some of them are personal.  For instance, my heroine Ophelia Flax is a variety hall actress, and one of my great-grandmothers was a singer on the variety hall stage.

Other personal ingredients are the Baden-Baden and Heidelberg settings.  When I was in college, I spent two summers in Heidelberg working as an orchestral violinist in Heidelberg’s Castle Festival, and I traveled a couple of times to Baden-Baden on my days off.

Baden-Baden has a simply amazing thermal spa, by the way, if you aren’t averse to getting whacked on the rear after your scrubbing has been completed by a muscly attendant.  Seriously.   I was enchanted by the area, and it evidently left its mark on my imagination.  I even have a recurring dream of hiking to a castle inhabited by elves, hidden on a mountain above Heidelberg.  There is a story to that, and no, it doesn’t involve a psychotherapist.  Although maybe it should.

Another personal inspiration: I’ve always had a secret crush on the composer Johannes Brahms, and Brahms spent a lot of time in Baden-Baden.  In fact, even though the hero of Snow White Red-Handed, Professor Penrose, is British, I picture him like the young Brahms, plus spectacles. 

Okay, so I had this amazing setting that I’d always been in love with, a hero who looks like the young Brahms, and the fruitfully absurd concept of a practical Yankee variety hall actress who finds herself in the patently impractical land of German fairy tales.  Add a castle, a murder, and a cast of shifty characters, plus a hapless friend for Ophelia by the name of Prue, and off I went.

There were times, I’ll admit, when writing Snow White Red-Handed seemed like a lot more work than just doing my homework and grading my students’ papers, by golly.  The historical research was time consuming, though once I found Mark Twain’s two travelogues The Innocents Abroad and A Tramp Abroad, things got smoother.  Getting my characters’ speech to sound historical without confusing twenty-first century readers was also tricky (fingers crossed that I pulled it off).  Oh, and then there was the little issue called the mystery plot.  Tangled, indeed.

In the end, though, Snow White Red-Handed almost miraculously turned out as that book I’d wanted to read: an unexpected, frivolous, magical, adventurous, and romantic romp.  I am so delighted that Berkley Prime Crime picked up my Fairy Tale Fatal series, and I hope readers will enjoy escaping into the mysterious woods of the nineteenth century as much as I did.

The publisher has generously offered a copy of Snow White Red-Handed to one of my readers. Please comment below before midnight on November 12, 2014. Entries from the US only, please.

Teen Tuesday

Hero (The Woodcutter Sisters #2) by Alethea Kontis (HMH hardcover, 1 October 2013).

Monday's child is fair of face,
Tuesday's child is full of grace,
Wednesday's child is full of woe,
Thursday's child has far to go,
Friday's child is loving and giving,
Saturday's child works hard for a living,
And the child that is born on the Sabbath day
Is bonny and blithe, and good and gay.

.

The Woodcutter sisters are named after the days of the week, as in the nursery rhyme quoted above.  While the first book in the series, Enchanted, focused on youngest sister Sunday, the protagonist of this one is Saturday, who does work hard with her father.

Saturday silently resents that she appears to be the only Woodcutter sibling who was not granted a magical name-day gift.

Sunday's journal was a vessel for writing things that came true. Peter's carving knife could breathe life into his whittlings.  Friday's needle could sew any material known to man. Thursday's spyglass let her see into the past, present and future from wherever in the world she happened to be.

Saturday's gift was an ax.  Granted, it was useful when she worked with her father, but it was just an axe. Then it chopped down a giant beanstalk, and turned into a sword, but that wasn't even as useful as the axe it had been. Not only that, but Saturday isn't beautiful like her sisters, she's tall with broad shoulders and large hands and feet.

One day, in a fit of indignation about her misfortune, she creates an ocean in the backyard, and sets off in her sister Thursday's pirate ship.  Which is a wonderful adventure, until Saturday is kidnapped by a witch who takes her to her home at The Top of the World and enslaves her to aid in her evil plans.  Will Saturday be able to foil the witch and escape?

Hero is as charming and whimsical as Enchanted, and while it does make reference to characters and incidents in the earlier book, it's quite comprehensible on its own. Of course, if you read one, you'll immediately want to read the other.



FTC Full Disclosure:  I borrowed this book from my local library.