I forgot to link some more Greenwood-related links since the last update, so we will do a full Greenwood recap today. By which I mean I shall include what I was / am trying to do with them and some pointers to some links!
I have three novellas in various stages of publishing / acceptance with the Other Side Books that are essentially fairy tale mash-ups that I tend to refer to as “Greenwood” or “Into The Greenwood” tales. The structure is a new story (despite my use of the “found tale” conceit) of about 15-20,000 words with five older fairy tales embedded as tales within tales to compare and contrast. I gave Run Along The Shelves an interview about them in the recent flush of reviews, and you can find that here: [External Link]
The first story is called The Knight’s Daughter, a sort of distaff Hamlet with a dose of Robin Hood and a starring role for a volcano (I have a story background for it here). Run Along The Shelves did a review which you can find here: [External Link]. And it’s available to purchase from Amazon here: [External Link]
The second installment of my Greenwood collection is the Isle of Ravens. This time around the environmental star is European Windstorms (more on the technical aspects from a day-job colleague here: [External Link]) and the heroes surviving these destructive storms are in a tale that could be described as The City of Ys meets Bisclavret for those with a more modern understanding of the world. Again, Run Along the Shelves has done a kind review: [External Link]. It can be purchased from Amazon here: [External Link]
ASIDE: I haven’t done a story background for this one. I pretty sure I owe you several, by now.
In draft state, the third story is currently under the working title of The Dragon Queen. There are earthquakes in North Wales and a whole Snow White by way of Lludd and Llefelys thing going on. Things may change and I can’t be sure when it will land simply as real life has a tendency to interfere with small press publishing schedules. (No offense or sleight intended to publishers, editors and my fellow writers, it’s just the way these things are given that we’re all doing this as an evening job.)
If you’re interested in a bit of a taster of either of these three Greenwood stories, I have the opening sections available here.
And, as I confessed to extending the collection somewhat last time, here’s a bit of an explanation of what’s going on with that. Basically, it’s fun to play with folk tales and this one is playing with Gawain and the Green Knight and a bit of Beowulf, although whether it remains that way or even gets published depends on how well I do. Beyond using the same conceit of a found tale and tales within the main tale to contrast, I’m not trying especially hard to match up completely with the feel of the first three, so the voice may be somewhat different – I finished the drafts of the original three a couple of years ago and there have been a number of other WIPs in between, so trying to match them consciously would be laborious. It is, however, still playing with the same ideas and the internal chronology of the whole, so people who notice such things may see some similarities to other characters or events even if names are continually changed in the Greenwood to protect the not so innocent.