Newsflash!

Congratulations, Knave & Fables! I am so excited that I’ve been working all week on the new range. ^_^

The Moon Hare

I’ve only ever seen the one hare, but I was so excited I nearly crashed my car. I think that they are beautful and I really adore the imagery and mythology that surround them. In honour of this, I wrote them a story. 🙂
Once again, not edited yet. You get everything, so be warned.

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Excerpt from “The Song of Mr Rattle-Chains and the Fox”

The foxes are tricksters, one and all. The play at night, when the moon chases them across fields and under fences. They are thieves and villains, but- as the fox said with a twinkle in her eye- even the humble vixen and her small cubs must eat. And what is a chicken to men, who grow more as soon as a rooster is let loose?

Here she paused, lowering her gleaming black eyes to look at the hare. A sad and wistful look came upon her, and the hare became aware of the closeness of the night.

But then, Mr Rattle-Chains had a visit from the Queen of Foxes. Of all the men on the edge of the forest, Mr Rattle-Chains was the most loathsome. A giant, 8-ft tall, he was a man without a face. He came in the night, draped in the dread touch of cold iron, and he led five huge hounds on five long, fat chains, and he brought with him the cold of winter, and he let loose his hounds to feast upon the foxes- her mother, her brothers and her sisters, and nearly upon her. But for a small cleft in the stone of her mother’s den, just big enough for a tiny fox pup, she too would be gone.

And then, the fox was no longer a pup. Once you have looked upon death, you learn to fear it – and fear does not belong to the young.

READ MORE HERE

The Dread Twins of Disquiet

As always, you guys get the dubious honour of the freshly birthed, still squalling, mass of a story, still covered in the grisly gore of the unedited misspellings and continuation errors. Be warned, a wrote this a little bit drunk and in the wee-hours of the night, and it doesn’t pull any punches with disturbing images. (sorry).

In some ways, this story is born from the same world as “Suffocating“- but in others, they are completely different.

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“What say you of disquiet, girl?” Whispered the princess, her voice the quiet sigh of the wind even as her lips never parted. They lay, blue-black, as though dead in her too-still face, her eyes staring ever forward into the face of her brother.

“I feel it as ever. In the shadow of the highest noon, in the silence of the empty hearth. Who are you?”

“Who are we, she asks,” the boy’s lips parted in a terrible grimace. His teeth were stained dark red and his gums were swollen and livid. “We are the darkness,”

“We are the terrible,” whispered the wind.

“You are but wraiths,” claimed the Girl. 

Read “The Dread Twins of Disquiet”.

Dreaming of a Little Prince

In 2008 my computer crashed. I lost a lot of files- music, pictures, e-books and homework amongst other, more precious documents. That year I lost every piece of typed up prose I’d ever written.

It was a pretty devastating discovery. The start of my novel, the short stories from my teen years, my poetry – all gone. In some ways, it was liberating. The chaff of those early works, the burden of them, was gone. I didn’t need to obsess over them, trying to capture impossible images that my then-mind couldn’t articulate. The loss of the children’s book “Finding the Way Home” hit hardest. However, at least I still had the hard copy. The text to “the Blue Fish” was forever gone- I only had the drawings left behind.

Luckily, one or two printed documents had survived the crash. Not very edited, these manuscripts were the remains of an ancient civilisation. The a-bomb of IT-faults had wiped out the rest, but these radiation exposed few were still alive. I’ve decided to give them back some life.

Over the next few weeks, these older stories will get back their glory. I’ll be retyping them and posting them. They will all be heavily edited as I go, but I will post them still raw and dripping with grisly remains of the birthing process. These are the second “first-drafts” of the stories from my late teens, through the eyes of early 20’s me. Maybe you will like, maybe not. This particular story was a dream I had. It was very sad. The manuscript was a lot more disjointed because of the dream-world origins. This re-write hopefully clears it up a bit. If not, do let me know.

This is supposed to be a take on the prince’s half of the fairy tale. The prince traditionally comes in half way through the fairy tale, unaware of the back-story and seeing only a love worth fighting for. Unfortunately, some fairy tales are much more grim…

The bus was slow that day, making the prince drowsy. She was ensconced in the back, of course, with the sun filtered between manic children and hazed veils of shadows to dance upon her eyelashes. Perhaps that was why the prince first saw the girl. She was dancing with the sunlight, twirling gaily in its tresses amidst the pedestrians on the sidewalk. Her white dress sparkled, and her laughter sang.

That day the prince only watched and held her breath, her wistful gaze caught by the wonder outside her window. When the bus moved away she felt as though her heart was left behind, waiting at that last stop… read more