Enchanted Conversations

Open Mic

I almost didn’t go to that Writers’ Social. I was tired, and it was quite a long drive into town. But I knew I’d enjoy it – hanging out with other writers is always a boost – and so I made myself go.

Should I do the Open Mic?, I wondered as I was driving down the highway through the twilight (I hate driving in twilight, it’s so confusing). I hadn’t prepared for it at all, just had a story in mind that I thought might work – it’s short enough.

And then a line popped into my head, I don’t remember where I heard it or who said it: “Never pass up the opportunity to read from your work.”

Okay then, I thought. What have I got to lose? So when I got there, I asked if there were any Open Mic spots left. I wasn’t really sure whether I wanted to read, I said, so just put me on the “maybe” list.

There were two others ahead of me – two lovely young Creative Writing students from the uni – and as it turned out, nobody else signed up. I was up!

And so I did my first reading at an Open Mic, at a Writer’s Gathering, among six other amazing writers. I pulled up the story on my phone, on Fairytale Magazine‘s old website, and read “Hitting the Wall” – the story of what happens when you stake everything on one particular version of a fairy tale.

It was fun! I really enjoyed reading, and I think the audience enjoyed it too. I even got a laugh or two. And even though my lighthearted, fun little story was rather different from all the serious work that came before and after, I felt okay about that. I’m unapologetic about writing fairy tales – they have things to say.

So there we are: one more new experience, another step in my journey of Telling Stories in Clay and Words.

Life, the Universe, and a Reading at an Open Mic. I’m so glad I got this chance.

I even had an author photo taken! Don’t I look literary?

(Photo credits Darlene Mulligan. Thank you, Darlene!)

And Two More Announcements!

And here are two more exciting announcements about this week’s literary releases! (Must be the season…) Neither of them are my own publications, but I had a part in both of them.

#1: The March issue of The Fairy Tale Magazine with a story by Yours Truly

Enchanted Conversation magazine has recently been reborn in a new and utterly gorgeous format as a web magazine under the name The Fairy Tale Magazine. I was honoured by having one of my stories that EC had published in 2018 included in the “Best of Enchanted Conversation” section in the March edition, which is now out. So “Red Stone, Black Crow” is now available to read in the illustrious company of 70(!) pages worth of original fairy tale stories, with stunning illustrations that Amanda Bergloff created from public domain art (mine got an Arthur Rackham image! I mean, Arthur Rackham!). Check it out – it’s well worth the price of US$5.99 for the issue, or even better, $16 for the whole year (4 issues). (Also, the mag features an ad for Martin Millerson – how cool is that, an ad for my book in a real magazine!)

The screenshot of my story. If you want to see the rest, get the magazine!

#2: Louise Bates’ Pauline Gray mysteries are now available in a beautiful omnibus edition!

My very good friend Louise, aka E.L. Bates, has just put together her excellent Pauline Gray mystery novellas into an omnibus edition. I got to beta read those stories, and then copyedit them before release, and I can wholeheartedly recommend them.

From the series description:

Welcome to Canton, NY, a small farming town nestled in the northern foothills of the Adirondack mountains. It’s the 1930s, and to an outsider’s eye, this looks like an idyllic village mostly untouched by the Great Depression that is ravaging so much of the nation. But even the most idyllic towns and villages have their dark sides. When trouble comes to Canton, the folk there rely on each other to help out. And that includes one young woman in particular …

Meet Pauline Gray. A graduate of the prestigious St. Lawrence University, she fell in love with the town while in college and has never left. A journalist by day and a secret novelist by night, Pauline’s compassion and drive for justice pull her into mysteries that are too small or too peculiar for the police. She would really prefer a quieter life, but when people need her help, she can’t turn them away.

Canton, NY, is, of course, Louise’s own home town, so the historic and geographic details in this series are absolutely spot-on. But more to the point, Pauline Gray and the people she meets are drawn with a deftness and sensitivity that makes the stories a delight to read. Go get a copy of the books – either the omnibus or the individual novellas – you won’t regret it!

And that’s Life, the Universe, and TWO new releases this week! Get yourself some good new reads!

Enchanted Conversation: “The Case of the Missing Kiss”

An article by Yours Truly just went up on Enchanted Conversation Magazine. Those of you who’ve been reading my ramblings for a while might recognize it: I wrote it in the course of my grad school research and posted it on Quillandqwerty; now EC has kindly republished it.

THE CASE OF THE MISSING KISS
I’ve been studying Frog Prince tales. You know the ones: princess meets frog, he does her a service, in return he asks for a kiss, she kisses him, and hey presto, he’s turned into a handsome prince. Right? Wrong. If you look at the Grimms’ version—tale #1 in the CHILDREN’S AND HOUSEHOLD TALES—you’re doing okay until you get to the kissing part. It’s not there. It quite simply doesn’t exist. The act that gets the prince unfroggified is one of gross violence: the princess chucks the frog against her bedroom wall (in the 1812 version, with a lovely onomatopoeic “Splat!”). That’s right, attempted murder. When he falls down from the wall—I’ve always had trouble visualising that bit—he’s a handsome prince with “friendly eyes,” and the princess happily goes to bed with him.
That’s fine, you say. There are other versions of that story that have the kiss in it, aren’t there? Well, not that I can find, at least in the old tales…
To continue reading, go here

Life, the Universe, and The Case of the Missing Kiss. The things you find out…

Yours Truly @ Enchanted Conversation: On Spindles and a Pet Peeve

I recently let off a rant about spinning wheels and one of my pet peeves, and Kate on Enchanted Conversation Magazine kindly consented to publish it. Here you go:

On Spindles and a Pet Peeve
Enchanted Conversation recently republished an older post by Elizabeth Creith, a highly informative article on flax that is aptly entitled “STRAW INTO GOLD.” As a fairly new convert to spinning, it caught my interest—and it reminded me of one of my pet peeves where “spinning and fairy tales” is concerned.

Full disclosure: I let my fascination with “Sleeping Beauty”—my favorite fairy tale—led me down the garden path into learning to spin. First it was a drop spindle, then a little castle wheel, and now I own an old Ashford Traditional, which is one of those really classic items that look exactly like what you’d expect to see when you hear “spinning wheel.” You know, a big flywheel; a treadle; a thing that whizzes around; sharp pointy bits sticking out at every angle for unwary princesses to prick their fingers on and fall into hundred-year sleeps…

Actually, no. My spinning wheel, which is one of the earliest iterations of this model of wheel, has no pointy bits on it anywhere. None. Zero. Nada. It does have the flywheel and the treadle and the thing that whizzes around, though. The latter item is called the flyer, and it contains, right in its center, the spindle. Which, on this kind of wheel, is a hollow tube. Did I mention “no pointy bits”?

So what, then, did the princess prick her finger on?

That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it.
…
Keep reading the post on Enchanted Conversation

Life, the Universe, and the Pointy Bit on Spindles. Hop on over to EC and leave a comment!

Death in a Brownstone

Brownstone - OFFENWANGER - Cover A. Bergloff

What if …

… there were seven brothers living in New York, and they took in a cousin of theirs who was having trouble with her stepmother …

… you just might end up with …

Death in a Brownstone!

… which is a fairy tale adaptation of mine that just got published in Enchanted Conversation Magazine’s August issue!

Here’s a taster:

There’s always one thing in a man’s life that he shudders to think of. If it hadn’t been for Milo, this would have been mine.

Milo is the little brother of Albert Zwergmann—him and me went to grade school together—and he was a klutz from the time he was little. He’d trip over rocks, he’d trip over the end of the teeter-totter, he’d trip over other kids’ book satchels or their legs—even the ones that weren’t stuck out on purpose—and if, by a miracle, there weren’t any of those around, he’d trip over his own big feet. During his first grade, almost every other day Albert had to pick him up out of the dirt, dust him off, wipe his nose, and send him home to Mama.

Well, Mama Zwergmann ain’t around anymore, and Milo is no longer a little klutz on the playground. Matter of fact, he’s six feet two and has broader shoulders than even Rufus, who’s the biggest of all the Zwergmann brothers. But he’s still a klutz—except when he gets his hands on some precious stones. Then all of a sudden he’s the most skilled of the lot. For almost a dozen years now, he’s done all the original design work for the business, and Zwergmann’s Jewelers has become a byword for the rings, bracelets, and fancy cuff links they put on the market.

Albert’s still the one who has to pick people up out of the dirt, though. That’s how they ended up with her—Whitney, I mean. She was their cousin. One day, Albert tells me, there she was, sitting on their front room sofa, looking like something the cat dragged in…

To keep reading, head on over to Enchanted Conversation Magazine!

“Beast”: A Fairy Tale Flash Fiction

BEAST
The snow kept falling thicker and thicker. Whirling, blowing, biting, cutting. Clinging to his whiskers, to his eyelashes, to the hair on the side of his face. His nose and cheeks had grown numb, his fingers so cold he could no longer bend them. When he tried to raise them to his face to brush the snow out of his beard, they felt like hard claws on the end of big, clumsy, fur-covered paws; claws that had no feeling in them and could not move to his will.
He tried to climb up the side of the ravine, reached for a snow-covered branch. Could not close his hands on it—where were his thumbs? He staggered on his clumsy legs, then dropped down onto all fours.
Like an animal.
A beast…
Keep reading this story on Enchanted Conversation Magazine

I wrote this last November during NaNoWriMo, when I was doing a retelling of “Snow White and Rose Red“. It was sort of a prologue to the story, the moment when the “prince” turns into a “bear” – except in my adaptation, he’s not a real bear, just a very hairy guy (and he’s not a prince either, being an ordinary 21st century Canadian). But then it occurred to me that this could work as a standalone Flash Fiction, a regular adaptation of the regular fairy tale, so I sent it to Amanda at Enchanted Conversation. And here it is.

You can decide for yourself if you want to take the transformation as an actual guy-turned-into-bear thing, or keep it metaphorical. I’m not entirely sure yet which one I prefer.

Baby à la Sauce Robert

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Sauce Robert, Julia Child says in Mastering the Art of French Cooking, is a brown mustard sauce with lots of onions and white wine, and is served with roast or braised pork, boiled beef, broiled chicken, hot meat leftovers or hamburgers. Obviously, Julia Child hadn’t read “Sleeping Beauty”, or she would have added “roast or broiled baby” to that list of acceptable meats. Well, at least the ogress thinks that Sauce Robert would go well with cooked toddler; her chef disagrees.

What? You didn’t know about the ogress and the broiled baby? What version of “Sleeping Beauty” were you looking at? Oh, probably the same one I’m familiar with—lovely, tender Grimms’. That’s right, when it comes to “Sleeping Beauty”, the Grimms were the sweet, child-friendly storytellers; Charles Perrault’s version is a whole lot more grim…

Go here to my post on Enchanted Conversation magazine to find out more about the Sauce Robert version of Sleeping Beauty and get my recipe for White Sauce (I’ve never done Sauce Robert).

Enchanted Conversation Artist Spotlight: Eveline Wallace

ArtistSpotlight-JUNE2018-EvelineWallace

One of the features of Enchanted Conversation Magazine is a monthly “Artist Spotlight”, an article that highlights the work of an artist who does work on the fairy tale/folklore/mythology theme.

For June’s Artist Spotlight, I got to interview my favourite artist: Eveline Wallace! That’s right, her of my “Peace Angel” painting. I went over to her house, interviewed her, and took pictures of her paintings; then she fed me lunch and we had a great visit. Win-win all around.

Hop on over to Enchanted Conversation and check out the interview and Eveline’s great paintings – she’s amazing:

JUNE ARTIST SPOTLIGHT – Meet Eveline Wallace

If you’re interested in being a featured artist for Artist Spotlight, go here and scroll to the bottom for submission requirements.

Rapunzel, Let Down Your … Salad?

Another “Fairy Tale Food” post by Yours Truly on Enchanted Conversation today!

FairyTaleFoodRapunzel-OFFENWANGER-CoverABergloff

“Once upon a time, there was a pregnant woman. In her neighbour’s garden, there was a planting of beautiful rapunzels. The woman had an irresistible craving for these rapunzels and told her husband that if she could not have any, she would die…”

Of course, we all know what happens—the husband steals rapunzels for his wife; the neighbour, who happens to be a sorceress, catches him; when the child is born the sorceress takes her as payment for the rapunzels; she imprisons the girl in a tower and calls her “Rapunzel” … and so on and so forth with the long hair and the prince and the happily ever after.

I loved that story as a child. I had only one little problem: What on earth, I wondered, are rapunzels? And why are they so amazing that a mother would give up her child for a handful of them?

Back then, I didn’t let it bother me—I just skipped on ahead to the satisfying conclusion where the prince gets back his eyesight when Rapunzel cries on him, and all is well. But once I grew up and the world became so much smaller thanks to Google, I made up for my childhood ignorance. And here is what I found out: Rapunzels are a salad vegetable…

To find out more about rapunzels (rampion) and learn how I make salads (with flowers, no less), go here.

Magic Listening Machines, or: Why I Love Fairy Tales

Today on Enchanted Conversations by Yours Truly:
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Magic Listening Machines or WHY I LOVE FAIRY TALES

I did not hear my first fairy tales at the knee of my grandmother. Nor did someone read them to me as bedtime stories out of a venerable fat hardcover copy of Grimms’ Children’s and Household Tales. No—I got my introduction to the Land of Faerie through the record player. That’s right, children: Once upon a time, in a world far away from that of today, stories were told by a magic machine. Flat black discs with thin grooves engraved on them were placed upon a platter, a magic wand was laid on top, an enchanted lever was pressed, and suddenly the strains of music and the voice of a storyteller filled the room—though of the musicians and the tale teller there was no sight to be seen.

Oh, we did of course have paper books of the stories, as well. I still have on my bookshelf our first copies of Andersen, Hauff, and the Arabian Nights, all of which I enjoyed reading. But some of my favorites were, and still are, the Grimms’ tales I got from those vinyl records: “Snow White and Rose Red,” “The Wolf and the Seven Little Goats,” “Puss in Boots”…

The other day, I was listening to audio versions of fairy tales again. By now, the magic machine I use is so small that it fits in my back pocket, and it can do all sorts of other magical things (such as making phone calls)…

To keep reading, go here