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In this week's news: fairy tale edition

Cross-posted with World Weaver Press' "Books & Pieces" weekly news round-up segment.

A cache of 500 folk tales were discovered in Germany recently, many of which have not been a part of our previously documented understanding of the folk tradition in Europe.  From that trove, the fabulous tale of the "Turnip Princess" -- which could easily be retitled "The Tao of the Turnip" -- the likes of which we've never seen before.

This amazing bit of animation is a beautiful, bloody, Red Riding Hood becomes an interesting twisted-origin story of folk lore's favorite caped crusader.  The short film is titled simply "RED":

RED from RED on Vimeo.

The film puts me in mind of one of Roald Dahl's poems "Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf." And if you know Roald Dahl, you know the man had a wicked sense of -- well, of humor most certainly, but he also had a wicked sense of the wicked.

Moving slightly out of the realm of folklore and into the realm of myth, Amalia T. has a fascinating blog post up on the forbidden nature of love poems in ancient Norse society. Apparently, magical ensnarement of women was such a big deal that there were laws against it. Amalia rationalizes the situation, writing:

How can you be sure that a poem is just a poem, and not a spell meant to seduce your daughter and ultimately dishonor her? How can you even be sure that the person writing the poem isn't Odin, for that matter, or worse, Loki, who is also known for shape shifting, come to take advantage of your daughter/sister.

Admittedly, not being seduced by Loki is a good thing -- unless you have a bad boy complex. Dating preferences aside, it's a fabulous example of the power and magic of mere words.

Snow White and the Huntsman looks like it just might be the fantasy film of the summer. The second trailer (below) is awe inspiring. This film promises to deliver what other recent fairy tale adaptations haven't: a plot with folk lore roots that we actually want to see. Red Riding Hood last spring was ... pretty. And admittedly Amanda Seyfried's character showed a surprising amount of agency for what we'd originally pegged to be a film that was just an excuse to shoot a bunch of dramatic looking footage of a red cape against snow. And while I'll freely admit that if I was 17 years-old when that film came out, I'd own the DVD right now, the truth is Red Riding Hood didn't appeal much beyond teenagers and scholars of little red cap tales.



And even though it's hard to buy that Kristen Stewart is, or ever will be, more beautiful than Charlize Theron, the special effects are cool enough and the plot dark enough that we're willing to forgive such things. More forgiveness is found when the extended sneak peek (!) has a nice little flashback snippet of dialog between Snow White-as-girl-child and the now-dead Queen-her-mother, wherein the Queen tells her daughter that her fairness lies "in here," and then pats the girl's heart. Oh, so that's what you meant? Gotcha.

**Late addition: “Frog/Prince” a short story up on Daily Science Fiction (an online sf/f magazine) today is an marvelous little tale about what it means for a frog to become a prince or a prince to become a frog. Clever and heartbreaking. Well worth the read.

For more links to interesting articles and genre related cartoons, check out and "like" World Weaver Press' Facebook page, updated daily.

Recently Read: Dragon Bound

Yesterday I finished reading Dragon Bound by Thea Harrison and it feels like a more sophisticated paranormal romance. The hero isn't all me-big-bad-primitive, you-little-lady, me-think-for-you (which was the reason I couldn't stand Dark Prince and several other paranormal romances which I've read). This is markedly above that.

I didn't think I'd like this book given the first ten pages, and it took me a few days to get beyond the ten pages. But once I hit page 100, I finished the next 300 pages that day. It got good, dude.

But the best line of the entire book happened on page 223, when Dragos, the hero, still hasn't caught his enemy Urien after several days of when none of his generals are even able to get Urien's location for him so that they can (essentially) storm the fortress and start the war.

Dragos, at the end of his littany of what's gone wrong with his day and what his to do list still includes, wonders:

Why couldn't someone just FedEx him Urien's head?

Perhaps you found that as funny as I did. Perhaps it needs context. The context of these big, bad ass dragons and gryphons and mythical beasts who are literally as old as time itself using FedEx in their quest to kill one another.

What can I say? I was amused.

April A to Z blogging challenge

This weekend, I signed up for "Blogging from A to Z Challenge" for April -- a week away from the challenge's start and they had almost 1200 participants!

I did this in 2011 and I think there were only 400ish. Though I could be off in that number. But I'm glad the challenge is growing, it's a fun and creative idea that encourages bloggers to keep doing what they already do (blogging) and provides an easy framework to write within:

For every day of April (excepting Sundays), you write one blog post that starts with a letter of the alphabet. April 1 is A. April 2 is B. April 3 is C ... and so on.

I know some people treat it like a blog hop or campaigner challenge, trying to visit and follow every single blog on the list -- and if that's what you want to do, more power to you. But I'm really much more interested in it as a means of making myself write 26 blog posts in a month.

A few months back on Kelda Crich's blog, she got talking about choosing a theme for your A to Z challenge. I realized that a theme (and some pre-planning) might be what I need to make it through the whole month.

I ... erm ... failed last time.

So in 2012 I'll be blogging A to Z about my favorite book series. Mostly science fiction and fantasy, but with some other genres thrown in. I have a plan for every letter already! Every letter except Y, that is.

Anyone got any Y book series ideas? I've gotten creative with other letters, sometimes using the series title, sometimes a book title, the author's name, or a prevalent element or character's name.

Ad of the Week

"Absolute Greyhound," a strangely beautiful ad/music video. This is how I imagine people in the Hunger Games to dress -- at least it was how I envisioned the Capital denizens looking when I read the books. I haven't seen the film so I don't know how they were portrayed there.

In this week's news

Cross-posted from World Weaver Press as "Books & Pieces" where I'm in charge of their weekly round-up of news and factoids.

If you enjoyed Joss Whedon’s Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog there’s more Dr. Horrible in the works according to wired.com! Neil Patrick Harris and Nathan Fillion will both be returning for the sequel.

This is your brain on fiction. A New York Times article highlights recent research which shows the brain functions at a different level when reading fiction than it does when doing other types of reading. Particularly that it processes sensory details like sound and smell as if it was receiving real stimuli — all the more reason for to incorporate more and more awesome sensory details in a story!

Writer Jay Ridler gives us five reasons to love short story collections.

And speaking of short story collections, there are contests going on right now on two blogs for free copies of Susan Abel Sullivan’s first collection Cursed: Wickedly Fun Stories.  Check out Fang-tastic Books and I’m a Reader, Not a Writer to find out how to enter.

Last night, the Hunger Games movie took in an estimated $20 million just from its Midnight showing according to Publisher’s Marketplace (via). Even Weather.com's lead story is Hunger Games related this morning.

The top ten sword fight scenes  ever were  given to us by io9 this week (sci-fi and fantasy only). We have only one thing to say on the topic: My name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die.

World Weaver Press answered the question this week: Just what is “speculative” fiction, anyway? 

World Weaver Press author Susan Abel Sullivan stopped by the UK-based Becky’s Barmy Book Blog to give a fun little post about first realizing that she was a humor writer. On her own blog, Susan crafted an insightful post about her early love of monster movies.

Lastly, these little robot-dudes are so cool. And supposedly Amazon is going to have a whole warehouse full of them along with Walgreens and a few other American companies that already employ the inventory-finding bots.

Burn out

Over on Parajunkee, a fantasy/urban fantasy book review site, they were talking about burn out during a Q&A post. Specifically about feeling burned out when you're a book blogger.

Then Parajunkee said something which really struck a chord with me, and I think it can be applied to many activities, blogging included.

She writes:

Being a creative person, I tend to be two steps away from being bipolar — high on creative thoughts one minute, in a complete low point the next. When I’m high on it I’m producing like a freight train, writing, drawing, designing…when I’m in a low I find myself watching re-runs of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. It’s a common problem and it runs rampant with those of us that operate at accelerated paces. From what I’ve heard from “those knowledgable types” burn-out is your mind telling you to settle down and stop pushing yourself so hard or maybe find a less rigid pace to operate on.

She goes on to recommend ways of dealing with the burn out. But what fascinated me was that I'd never even realized that the Buffy-coma was a symptom of my burn out. (But instead of Buffy-coma, I crawl into wondrously fluffy novels where I don't have to think, and I stay there until I feel better.) I only considered myself burned out when I started swearing and throwing things . . . and I mean that metaphorically. Sorta.

How do you know when you're burned out, and then -- bigger question -- how do you deal with it?

Ad of the Week

An "ad of the week" two-for!

First the Hawk of Achill narrative from the creative advertising minds working with Jameson Irish Whiskey:



And second, some Star Wars love:



I have to say, I'd choose the R2-unit ... although the million dollars in gas would prove problematic, the R2-unit's ability to pick locks and find data faster than any known boolean search -- including what cell block the princess is in -- might make him come in handy. Just sayin.

I feel, sometimes the walls move ...

Maybe you just need to drink more coffee.

Found via.

In this week's news

A few quick sound bites for you for this Thursday afternoon ...

PayPay repeals its policies of censoring legal fiction at Smashwords. Somewhat questionable but not illegal love shall be censored no more!

Darth Vader leaves the Empire. In his terms, the Empire isn't taking Vader's interests and talents seriously anymore, nor do they have their priorities straight:  

"throttling people with your mind continues to be sidelined in the way the firm operates and thinks about making people dead."

The SF/F magazine Beneath Ceaseless Skies is giving away two copies of George R.R. Martin's tribute anthology Songs of the Dying Earth, signed by Mr. Martin. Rules to enter.

Chrystall Thoma writes about The Dangerous Task of Writing a Sequel. Lions and tigers and -- two bears? -- oh my!

And lastly, it was seventy years ago yesterday that the first human life was saved with penicillin, an antibiotic discovered accidentally by Alexander Fleming in 1928.

Censor my love

You may have heard about the PayPal imposed Smashwords censorship that went down earlier this month, where PayPal placed the muscle for credit card companies that don't want their product used to purchase erotic novels that deal with rape, incest, or bestiality, and told Smashwords it would have to pull all such titles from its catalog or risk PayPal not working with them.

People brought up the slippery slope argument: if it's "no rape-as-titillation" today, what will they censor next?! 

Many publishers already have these items on their no-no list -- erotica publishers and others. While I'm not writing this post to praise self-publishing as a bastion of moral depravity, it does commendably stand as a place where people who are not writing in the main stream can publish without rules on their content.

I'm not going to run out and buy a novel I know has incest-as-titillation, but I like knowing that the option to exercise one's free speech to reach the masses is out there and available. Traditional publishing marginalizes many acts and groups; self publishing doesn't ... until now. Slippery slope.

Among the paranormal crowd, I heard the ever popular (and important!) argument: Are all inter-species relations "bestiality"? What about werewolves and faeries and sexy aliens? 

Captain Kirk could seduce blue extraterrestrials in miniskirts, but can the hero of a Smashwords novel?

But rest easy, Smashwords has clarified that were-creatures can still get their freaky on.

And then there's the who really needs 'em? argument.

But Smashwords can't just tell PayPal to screw off. The two are incredibly intertwined.

PayPal processes credit card transactions for the online retailer (and as their online, their business is almost entirely done by credit card). Besides, PayPal is just the muscle, not the source. 

Should Smashwords get a new company to process credit cards, the credit card companies would only turn that new processor into their hired muscle.

Ad of the Week

Themed calls for submissions

Three interesting markets to make note of on this Thursday. Three markets that are riddles to me -- ones I hope you can solve by finding work to send them even if I can't.

Mistress of the Macabre, to be published by Dark Moon Books, is looking for horror stories -- the kind that actually scare you -- written by women for an all-female authored anthology. 1500-6000 words. Pays $20 + contributor's copy. Deadline: June 30. More info. 

I absolutely love the title Mistress of the Macabre -- say it aloud a few times and I'm sure you'll soon be agreeing with me. You just can't say it more than once without an attitude. So much fun.

While I write a lot of creepy little stories, I can't say I've got anything that I'd call truly scary -- mostly scary how bad the writing is. . . . But then again, how scary can I be if I'm quoting Love Actually to prove my chill factor?

Bibliotheca Fantastica, themed anthology from Dagan Books wants "stories having to do with lost, rare, weird, or imaginary books, or any aspect of book history or book culture, past, present, future, or uchronic. Any genre. Although the fantastical is not essential per se, stories should evoke a sense of the fantastic, the unknown, the weird, wonder, terror, mystery, pulp, and/or adventure, etc." Under 10,000 words. Pays $0.02/word. Deadline: March 31. More info.

Every time I look at the Bibliotheca Fantastica call for submissions I kick myself; I have a fabulous premise that fits in these guidelines but no plot with which to make it a story!

Fairy Tale Review, Yellow Issue. Fairy Tale Review is a magazine producing one issue per year featuring work which entangles itself in the folkloric. Of recent, they've been working with guest editors who shape the issue and theme of the single issue that they work on. The last issue's theme was "lost children. This year the theme and the issue title are the same thing: yellow. Poetry, fiction, essays, drama, creative nonfiction, comics, illustration. I believe this market is non-paying but I could be wrong. Deadline: May 31. More info and the editor's take on how "yellow" is a theme.

I'm completely stumped on how to take that from the abstract to fiction or poetry that relates to the folkloric. The editor's description that she's interested in writing that worships and dements yellow. We would like you to knock on yellow’s door and invite her out to play, somehow did not make a light bulb or even a pen light go on over my head.

World Weaver Press releases first title

I've been working for the past year with my friend (now-business partner) to build the necessary foundation to launch World Weaver Press, a small press focused on fantasy and science fiction in all its incarnations.

Yesterday we officially launched the company with the release of our first title CURSED: WICKEDLY FUN STORIES a collection of several short stories by Susan Abel Sullivan.

I don't know any better or more thorough way of announcing than the following, which came from yesterday's official announcement:

New York, NY (March 5, 2012) – World Weaver Press (Eileen Wiedbrauk, Editor-in-Chief) has announced the release of Cursed: Wickedly Fun Stories by Susan Abel Sullivan, their first speculative fiction collection as an independent publisher.

“Susan Abel Sullivan has written an engaging collection that appeals to both the young and young at heart,” commented Wiedbrauk. “I’m excited to be a part of bringing this collection to readers and thrilled to publish Susan as our first World Weaver Press author; she’s an asset to WWP and a writer not to be missed.”

Cursed: Wickedly Fun Stories is a speculative fiction short story collection featuring witches, werewolves, limericks that can change fate, and a sinister vine bent on murder and the destruction of Alabama. These stories draw in readers with their lighthearted tone and delight with their wickedly sly sense of humor. Cursed: Wickedly Fun Stories features pieces previously published in Andromeda Spaceways, Inflight Magazine, AlienSkin, and Beyond Centauri, as well as a never before published short.

The digital edition of Cursed: Wickedly Fun Stories can be purchased online at Amazon.com, Barnesandnoble.com, and Smashwords.com.

Susan Abel Sullivan lives in a Victorian house in northeastern Alabama with two dogs, way too many cats, and a ghost. When not writing she likes to get her groove on by teaching Zumba classes. She is a graduate of the Odyssey Writing Workshop for speculative fiction. Her short fiction and poetry have appeared in numerous online and print publications, including Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, ASIM Best of Horror: Vol II, New Myths, Writers’ Journal, and others. She is currently working on a YA novel about the supernaturally challenged. Visit her website at susanabelsullivan.weebly.com or twitter @susan_abel.

World Weaver Press is an independent publisher of science fiction and fantasy, dedicated to producing quality novels, novellas, novelettes, and collections and anthologies of short fiction. World Weaver Press seeks to publish fiction that engages the mind and ensnares the story-loving soul. Find out more at worldweaverpress.com or twitter @worldweaver_wwp.

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It's been an exhilarating and time intense endeavor, one I'm thrilled to be able to share with you today.

Read an ebook week promotion

March 4-10 is Read an E-Book Week.

In celebration, I bought confetti. The fact that you can't now see the confetti is damn stinky.

My short story "Garbage-to-Gold Spindle--On Sale Now!" is also free to download this week (discounted from it's usual price of $0.99) at Smashwords.com if you use the code REW50.

The short story is a humorous retelling of the Rumpelstiltskin tale which was previously featured in Enchanted Conversation: a fairy tale magazine.

The original reason I published this short story as its own ebook was two-fold: I wanted to teach myself how to do the technical end of ebook formatting while working on a short sample, and I wanted to give "Garbage-to-Gold Spindle--On Sale Now!" a more permanent home when Enchanted Conversation announced that they were closing as a magazine and converting their operation into a much more, ah, slim state of affairs.

Many other Smashwords titles are either discounted or free with the right coupon codes this week, so hop on over and fill up your eReader.

What I'd love to get this week (other than confetti) is a reader rating and/or review on Smashwords, Amazon.com, or BarnesandNoble.com -- all three sites have my short story for purchase but only Smashwords is selling it for free as part of ebook week.

Happy e-reading!

Ad of the Week

This is perhaps my favorite Superbowl commercial from 2012 and my favorite Priceline Negotiator commercial ever because, in some ways, it parodies itself.