England – Yearning for Wonderland

Once Upon a Time Writing Contest: Theme!

If you are here, you are wondering about the #tweetofdoom, also known as Once Upon a Time Flash Fiction Writing Contest (tag #ouatwriting on Twitter). That, or you stumbled onto my blog due to the surplus of John William Waterhouse paintings.

There are only two general types of people who visit Yearning for Wonderland: writers/those who love good writing and art thieves. For those who are the latter, please help yourself to the lovely Waterhouse sketch below (only kidding, totally ganked this from the Wikipedia page). I do encourage you art thieves to stay and read on a bit, however. Especially if you also write.

A Female Study, John William Waterhouse

So today’s post (not to completely digress) regards the super secret extra exciting announcement of the wondrous theme of the Once Upon a Time Writing Contest. *cue bombastic music with lots of cymbals clashing and soaring horns*

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Oh, you wanted to know the theme! The theme for the Once Upon a Time Writing Contest is:

UNEXPECTED FAIRY TALES

Take that as you will. Perhaps it is a fairy tale set in an unexpected place, like a gas station. Perhaps it is a fractured fairytale, a fairy tale turned on its head, a fairy tale that isn’t one till the end. There are fairy tales all around us, should we only care to look.

Given the awesome breadth of the Fairy Ring Contest, I have every confidence that our unexpected fairy tales will be equal parts lovely, charming, terrifying, inspiring, and daunting. Plus, this contest is now international and co-sponsored by the lovely British flash fiction writer, Susi Holliday (@SJIHolliday on Twitter), so you know there will be twists even I cannot foresee.


copyright Ulrika Kestere

The photos are by the talented Ulrika Kestere, described as: “a woman whose drying laundry is taken by a sudden storm, and as she travels the countryside discovers her clothing has taken an unexpected form.” You can see her work here.

More details to come, be sure to add #ouatwriting on Twitter. Ask me, if you don’t know how to do a tag search and be sure to use it when sharing about the contest.

As the theme is unexpected fairy tales, please try to honor that. You do not have to use the words “Once Upon a Time” in your story. The title is not included in the word count. If you have other questions, feel free to comment, tweet or email me. Please no erotica or slasher fiction.

So go forth, my fictionlings, and ponder this unexpected magic. I expect great things from you!

Book Review: The King’s Rose by Alisa Libby

Poor, foolish Catherine Howard: she is my favorite of Henry VIII’s queens. Much fuss is made of Madame Boleyn, but the difference between Anne B. and Catherine H. is the difference between fire and water.

Anne’s passionate and tumultuous reign managed to immolate just about everything she touched: her brother, her family name, the unfortunates who paid court, and of course herself. Catherine was under water, in way over her head before she even knew it, and was soon washed away for Henry’s final wife, Catherine Parr. Catherine’s greatest crime is that she was young, foolish and in love.

Take a young girl, raised in lax circumstances, and raise her to the highest lady in the land. Then surround her with courtiers and confessors and advisors who would rather see her fall. Add a mercurial, jealous king, old and ailing. Drama, in any setting, let alone the Tudor court where the penalty for refusing the king anything is treason.

Should you be equally enamored with this era, you will be enchanted by Alisa Libby’s novel, The King’s Rose. Written from the point of view of young Catherine, it sweeps you into Catherine’s dizzying ascent through the Tudor court.

Catherine’s primary assets are her notable beauty and willingness to be dangled in front of the king as a dazzling lure by her family, the Howard clan. She loves the magnificent gowns and jewels: “I am like a dream of me.”

Only later does she realize the true cost of all these luxuries: complete and total compliance to a king old enough to be her grandfather. Libby does a masterful job of portraying the fascinating yet creepy courtship of Catherine by Henry and the willful blindness of the court to the inappropriateness of the match.

Predictably, this glorious wealth’s appeal starts to wane as she is thrown together more often with Thomas Culpepper, a handsome courtier. The pursuit of this love affair, as crazy as it might be, seems all the more inevitable and poignant in the way it is portrayed by Libby.

Through the eyes of Catherine, you see the dread as the coils tighten, you hear the pound of distant drums; she is surrounded by people who know too much of her past, as she walks the steps to the end that history has taken her.

The King’s Rose is quite well-paced and all the little delicious period details are tossed in with effortless flair. One of the greatest challenges of historical fiction is immersing the reader in the era without distracting them with all the things they must learn to understand the people of the time.

Fans of Philippa Gregory and of the Tudor era will devour The King’s Rose. Read more at Alisa’s website.

Article first published as Book Review:The King’s Rose by Alisa Libby on Blogcritics.

Ergo, NaNoWriMo

I wish that I could blame my lack of recent posts on my new obsession with my word count on NaNoWriMo’s website. However, since it starts in November and I am still 48,332 words away from my 50,000 word goal, I can hardly blame it with conviction.

I have kept up nicely on the Facebook page. If you haven’t joined up, please do check it out. There is some content that is exclusive to Facebook and I enjoy promoting the amazing creative projects of others as much as my own.

I am pleased that I am writing, even if it is not in blog form. My project for NaNoWriMo was inspired by a dream, actually. I had the dream on the 31st of October, so the timing was impeccable. I tend to have these epic, plot-driven dreams that have no seeming parallel in my real life. In fact, the dream was so fascinating that I actually half-woke up thinking that I needed to write it all down…so I wrote it down in the dream and woke up with no notes. Figures.

Agatha Christie

I have an odd, half-superstitious fear of synopsizing, so I won’t bore you as to the content of the dream. Suffice to say it involved London in WWII, a derelict theatre, apparitions, a sprawling country estate, mesmerizing patterns, a murder of a beautiful girl and an unlikely killer. Kind of a cross between Dame Agatha Christie and Busby Berkeley.

I’d love to hear some comments from the writers who read my blog. Have you done NaNoWriMo? Did it help to have a deadline? Were you pleased with the results?

So, forgive my silence, friends and picture me scribbling away on my note cards and the backs of burger wrappers. “Write, write and maybe one day you might be read”, think I.