Just before writing this months Folk Tales Corner I was out putting up posters for the Underworld Journeys show in my local village of Morchard Bishop and would like to thank our blacksmiths for such a well kept notice board. There are all sorts of smiths scattered through mythology. They are oft credited with magic powers (even
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It’s July, many of you will be going on holiday, whether you are sat around a camp fire, spending evenings in tavernas or relaxing on a Mediterranean beach with delicious bread and olives, wine and good company you could find the ideal space for a story. Some years ago, on tour with Pressgang in Italy I told the first
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Well, actually, no. You don’t. There really is no point at all in going round randomly kissing amphibians in the hope that they will become lovestruck royalty, and even less in killing them. All else aside, they have to be able to talk or the chances of them being a magical creature are slim, and even
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I’ve been rebuilding my bookshelves and sorting the massive collection of storybooks back into categories. It’s amazing how many of them feature the same stories, only slightly different. Some vary only in the voice in which they are told; some may be a name change here or there; sometimes the same story is in rhyme; in
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I’ve been telling the tale of St. George for nearly twenty years now, it’s a rollicking tale! I always give George a nice big dragon to fight (and like any storyteller, it keeps getting bigger) partly because that is half the story and partly because, well, George makes such a meal of it. Despite the full complement of helpful
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“These bewitching poems and stories, always sensuous, sometimes sad, unwind a fevered world of magic and longing and young women who chance the uncanny and gain wisdom beyond their years.”
–Mike Allen, editor of Mythic Delirium
“The Winter Triptych is a gorgeous labyrinth of words, a vivid dream-world of ghosts, ruined towers, mad queens, and revenge biding its time. Its language is as rich as plum-cake, but it presents the reader with a challenge as well, parts that fit together like puzzle-pieces to form a story familiar and yet not, darker and stranger than the fairytale we remember.”
–-Theodora Goss, author of In the Forest of Forgetting
“Stunningly delicious! Cruel, beautiful and irresistible are C.S.E. Cooney’s characters and prose. Just when you thought fantasy had devolved into endless repetition, Jack o’ the Hills blows us all over the next hill and into the kingdom beyond. C.S.E. Cooney is a rare and exciting new talent. Whatever she offers us next, I’ll waiting in line to read.”
– Ellen Kushner, author of Thomas the Rhymer