April 24, 2025, Reflections

All right. What am I thinking about today in terms of writing? Odds and ends, mostly.

My new collection, The Great Forest and Other Love Stories (see Publications for more information) wass published back in November 2024. I was pleased with the reviews and responses. I am eagerly awaiting the release of the print edition. A story, “In Love’s Light,” was published in January 2025 in Love is Free, a JMS Books Author charity anthology. All benefits go to the ACLU. This anthology is meant to be a celebration of queer love and thus in these uncertain times in which we find ourselves, is an act of resistance. But then, I think such stories always have been and will be, for some time to come.

Right now, I am awaiting to hear from my beloved free-lance editor, Ellen McQueen, on “Chocolate Seven,” and then, “The Smell of Good” (although that title needs some work, I think). Both are part of a collection-in-progress about shapeshifters. In addition, I am working 2 more stories about werewolves. One is an expanded version of “In Love’s Light,” and the other, the postscript or continuation/what happens next to The Werewolf and His Boy. Both need a lot of work.

I am both scared and worried about the current politics in the US and the ongoing debacle in Washington. I am also hopeful, as the number and size of the current protests increase each time. Where are we going, what lies ahead. Will Trump fall–the sooner, the better.

So, I keep writing. Writing is an act of resistance.

July 6, 2024

Shameless Self-Promotion2

Sigh. My intentions were good. I had intended to write a lot of these Shameless Self-Promotions since the last one. That didn’t happen. So let’s try again:

Today, I want to revisit my first story collection, The Wicked Stepbrother and Other Stories:

This collection began as a sabbatical project, my last one, when I was working as an English professor at the University of Mary Washington. The project was to explore the rhetoric of gay retellings of traditional Western fairy tale, and to write gay retellings. I picked because those are the ones with which I grew up. They are an essential part of the metaphoric sea in which I swim. These tales are deeply embedded in our culture, our language, and shape our thoughts and perceptions. Most people know what an ugly duckling is, or a Cinderella story, a Sleeping Beauty. I started the project by immersing myself in fairy tales and fairy tale criticism. To make things simpler, at the end of this reflection I have included the Works Cited and Consulted bibliography andOther Suggested Readings that is in the collection. I didn’t include here the essay I wrote on the rhetoric of gay retellings, but that’s in the book, too.

Anyway, this collection was a labor of love, and I am proud of it. Below is a excerpt from one of the tales. Please, I invite them all!

Finroc macFinniel Silmairë

With thanks to Sylvia Kelso and Ellen McQueen

            I look for him by the river, where I always found him, where he always found me. I call his name: Finn. I hear him humming that tune…

            “Get up.”

            Killian jerked awake. His father stood by his bed, a guard on either side.

            “Get dressed. You’re getting married,” his father snapped.

            “What? Are you joking?”

            His father made a quick, sharp gesture and the guards, their faces expressionless, stepped back and out of the bedroom, softly closing the door behind them. “My heir. A weakling man-lover. A fairy-lover,” his father said, grimacing in distaste. Yes,” he snarled, “Today. Get dressed. This woman gave us gold; I promised her a royal husband in exchange,” he said, his voice cold and hard. “Gods, if your brothers were alive, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

            Killian sat up, careful to keep his lower body covered. The erection he always had after that dream had subsided, but even so he had no desire to be naked in front of his father and hear more snide remarks about how he wasn’t like his older brothers, Alistair and Lachlan.

            He stared hard at the king, trying to remember when he was very little and had loved this man. He couldn’t.

            “If Finn were here—ˮ

            The king slapped him across the face. “Don’t mention that name in the same breath with your brothers. Get up and get dressed.”

            “Get out of here if you want me to get dressed,” Killian muttered, wiping blood off his mouth.    

            “The garden, in an hour,” his father said as he left the room.

            If he hadn’t made that promise to Finn, Killian would have left years ago. The promise hadn’t included marriage to a woman, but then, it hadn’t included his father catching him and Finn down by the river, either. He and Finn were to be together forever. Killian pushed away the lasting grief. He had to dress for his wedding.

***

            Killian first met Finroc macFinniel Silmairë when he was ten, by the river in the park behind the palace late one August afternoon. He knew Finn was a fairy. Finn looked just the way his grandmother had described the fey in her stories: the pointed ears, feline-shaped eyes, fire hair, the faint glow under his skin. Killian told no one, but his grandmother, his best friend was a fairy. Even for the king’s son, this was dangerous. People like his grandmother hid their reverence for the fey. The iron laws were strictly enforced; violations meant the death penalty. But the gifts and the offerings were still left in the stone circles.

            He told no one at all when, at seventeen, his best friend became his lover. He had felt guilty at first; it had been just after Alistair’s death. But Alistair, he knew, would want him to be happy, and Killian and Finn were happy—until Lachlan’s assassination three years later changed everything.

            The king ordered new security for the prince, including armed guards and watchers. Finn and Killian were found out one warm summer night, Lughnasadh, the air close, the shadows green and black, the cicadas trilling. After the services at the standing stones, Killian had let Finn into the palace by a forgotten back door made entirely of wood. They had gone to his apartment, thanking the gods it was a labyrinth of corridors and staircases away from the king.

            We lay together, whispering in the darkness. He told me our meeting as little boys had been arranged. The fairy queen wanted to repair the rift and ease the mutual distrust between fey and mundane. Before she could ask others to volunteer their children for this experiment, she sent her own child, her fourth son.

            Falling in love hadn’t been part of the plan. The queen had wanted Finn to stay away then, the risk was too great. She feared King Aloysius too much. He told her he couldn’t leave me.

             I promised him when I became King, I would fix things. Together we would heal the country.

            A guard had seen them go into Killian’s room together. The king, with his necromancer, caught them two nights later, down by the river.

***

            Now, the promise includes marriage with a woman. If Father’s necromancer hadn’t cursed him, then Finn wouldn’t have cursed him back—and then Father could marry this gold-producing woman himself. Even so, I still wouldn’t have Finn.

            At least the counter-curse had both made the king sterile and given the necromancer a fatal wasting disease.

             Killian sighed as he walked out into the palace gardens.

            The roses were blooming; the air was heady and sweet with fragrance. “This Caroline Rose Maclaren—she may be a miller’s daughter and kind of plain, but, I assure you, she has a special gift,” his father whispered to him as they waited for her by the palace shrine, with the priest, in his silver and white robes, standing behind them. Killian shrugged; he had no idea what to say to his father.

            “Here she is, took them long enough to get her ready,” his father snorted.

            The bride carried a bouquet of small white roses and wore a coronet made of yellow and pink roses, a white dress, and the traditional iron necklace to ward off fairy kidnappings. Killian wore the matching groom’s necklace.

            There were stories of fairies stealing a bride, a groom, if no offerings were left. Other stories told of one lover being taken out of spite. The king believed the stories.

            Her father walked with her. Killian could tell that Caroline Rose was supporting the old man, who almost fell twice crossing the garden. When he presented Caroline Rose to him, Killian could smell why: the old man was drunk. He glanced at his father. It didn’t matter. He could tell the king was overjoyed to be watching his youngest son marry.

            There was no celebration of any kind. Killian didn’t even get a chance to speak with her until that night. He had hesitated at the bedroom door, the king’s commands still echoing in his head, then he reminded himself he had promised Finn. To keep that promise he had to become king. The only way to become king was to survive whatever his father demanded of him.

            Killian found Caroline Rose sitting on the bed, dressed in a gauzy nightgown sprinkled with tiny gold stars. Her long brown hair had been unbraided and brushed until it glowed. Scarlet rose petals had been scattered on the bed and the floor.

            She looked absolutely terrified.

            “I’m scared, too,” Killian said as he sat down in an armchair.

            “You look just like King Aloysius. The same dark hair and eyes, the same eyebrows.”

            Killian shrugged. “I do look like my father. You, on the other hand, look nothing like yours.”

            “I favor my mother,” she said with a small smile.

            “My older brothers favored our mother. What is this gold Father keeps talking about?” Killian asked and smiled back.

            Caroline Rose looked down at the floor, as if the answer had been written in the wood. “I can spin straw into gold. I could, I mean—only seven times. I can’t do it anymore.”

            “Straw into gold? Really?” he asked, as he stared at her ….

Works Cited and Consulted

Bear, Joy Bethany. “Struggling Sisters and Failing Spells: Re-engendering Fairy

Tale Heroism in Peg Kerr’s The Wild Swans.” Fairy Tales Reimagined: Essays on New Retellings. Ed. Susan Reddington Bobby. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2009: 44-57. Print.

Benson, Stephen. “Introduction: Fiction and the Contemporaneity of the Fairy Tale.” Contemporary Fiction and the Fairy Tale. Ed. Stephen Benson. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1-19. Print.

Cinderella Story: Around the World” KidWorldCitizen Kid World Citizen, 2011. October 11, 2012. Accessed February 23, 2015. Online.

Coles, Robert. The Call of Stories: Teaching and the Moral Imagination. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1989. Print.

De La Rochère, Martine Hennard Dutheil. “Queering the Fairy Tale Canon:

“Emma Donoghue’s Kissing the Witch.” Fairy Tales Reimagined: Essays on New Retellings. Ed. Susan Reddington Bobby. Jefferson, NC: McFarland,

2009: 13-30. Print.

Donoghue, Emma. Kissing the Witch: Old Tales in New Skins. New York:

HarperCollins, 1997. Print.

Fone, Byrne R. S. “E.M. Forster (1879-1970).” The Columbia Anthology of Gay Literature: Readings from Western Antiquity to the Present Day,

Ed. Byrne S.F. Fone. New York: Columbia UP, 1998 350-351. Print.

Ford, Michael. “Introduction.” Happily Ever After: Erotic Fairy Tales for Men. Ed. Michael Ford. New York; Masquerade Books, 1996: 1-4. Print.

Grimm, Jakob and Wilhelm. The Complete Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Introduction by Padraic Colum. New York: Pantheon Books, 1944. Print.

Jay, Karla. “Lavender menace becomes a magical term.” The Gay & Lesbian Review 26.3 (May-June 2019): 26-29. Print.

Jones, Steven Swann. The Fairy Tale: the Magic Mirror of the Imagination. New York: Routledge, 2002. Print.

Joosen, Vanessa. Critical & Creative Perspectives on Fairy Tales: An Intertextual Dialogue between Fairy-Tale Scholarship and Postmodern Readings. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 2011. Print.

Le Guin, Ursula K. “Are they going to say this is fantasy?” Book View Café Blog. Book View Café. 2 March 2015. Accessed 10 March 2015. Online. http://bookviewcafe.com/blog.      

—. “Where Do You Get Your Ideas From?” Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places. New York: HarperCollins, 1989: 192-200. Print.

Meeker, Lloyd A. “Essential differences in a gay Hero’s Journey-Part One.” Lloyd A. Meeker. 2011. Accessed February 2015. Online. Lloydmeeker.com.

Mercer, Elliot Gordon. “’The Grave Mound’: A Queer Adaptation.” Transgressive Tales:

            Queering the Grimms. Eds. Kay Turner, Pauline Greenhill. Detroit: Wayne State

UP, 2012: 295-302. Print.

Rochelle, Warren. “Happily Ever After.” Quantum Fairy Tales 9 (Fall 2014): Unpaged Quantum Fairy Tales. Quantum Fairy Tales. Online. http://quantumfairytales.com.

Salih, Sara. Judith Butler. New York: Routledge, 2002. Print.

SurLaLune Fairy Tales Discussion Board” Archival String. SurLaLune Fairytales,com. June 2007. Accessed 18 February 2015. Online. http://www.surlalunefairytales.com.

Turner, Kay, and Pauline Greenhill. “Introduction: Once Upon a Queer Time.” Transgressive Tales: Queering the Grimms. Eds. Kay Turner,Pauline Greenhill. Detroit: Wayne State UP,2012: 1-24. Print.

Turner, Kay, and Pauline Greenhill. “Preface.” Transgressive Tales: Queering the Grimms. Eds. Kay Turner, Pauline Greenhill. Detroit: Wayne State UP,2012: vii-ix. Print.

Wakefield, Lily. “Queer Folklore was erased from history by homophobes, but one ‘fabulously gay’ fairytale has survived.” PinkNews (21 August 2020). Unpaged. Accessed August 2020. http://www.pinknews.co.uk.

Zipes, Jack. Breaking the Magic Spell: Radical Themes of Folk & Fairy Tales. Rev. expanded ed. Lexington, KY: UP of Kentucky, 1979, 2002. Print.

Suggested Other Readings

Note: This list is not meant to be comprehensive. I know there are many other sources that could be included. Rather, the readings below happen to be the ones I have at home or in my office and have accumulated over the years. This list is personal and idiosyncratic.

Anderson, Hans Christian. The Complete Fairy Tales and Stories. Transl. Erik Christian Haugaard. New York: Anchor Books/Random House, 1974, 1985. Print.

Belting, Natalie M. Cat Tales. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1959. Print.

Bernheimer, Kate, ed. XO Orpheus: Fifty New Myths. New York: Penguin Books, 2013.  Print.

Bernheimer, Kate and Carmen Gimenez, Smith, eds. My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me. New York: Penguin Books, 2010. Print.

Bobby, Susan Redington, ed. Fairy Tales Reimagined Essays on New Retellings. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2009. Print.

Cashorali, Peter. Fairy Tales: Traditional Stories Retold for Gay Men. New York: HarperCollins, 1995. Print.

___. Gay Fairy and Folk Tales: More Traditional Stories Retold for Gay Men, Boston: Faber and Faber, 1997.

Datlow, Ellen, and Terri Windling, eds. Snow White, Rose Red. New York: William Morrow, 1993. Print.

___. Black Thorn, White Rose. New York: William Morrow, 1994. Print.

___. Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears. New York: William Morrow, 1995. Print.

___. Black Swan, White Raven. New York: William Morrow, 1997. Print.

___. Silver Birch, Blood Moon. New York: William Morrow, 1999. Print.

___. Black Heart, Ivory Bones. New York: William Morrow, 2000. Print.

___. The Faery Reel: Tales from the Twilight Realm, New York: Firebird, 2006. Print.

___. The Green Man: Tales from the Mythic Forest. New York: Viking, 2002. Print.

Del Rey, Lester, and Risa Kessler, eds. Once Upon a Time: A Treasury of Modern

            Fairy Tales. New York: Ballentine Books, 1991. Print.

Duffy, Maureen, The Erotic World of Faery. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1972. Print.

Gaiman, Neal. The Sleeper and the Spindle. New York: HarperCollins, 2013. Print.

Garner, Alan. Alan Garner’s Book of British Fairy Tales. New York: Delacorte Press, 1984.Print.

Griffith, Nicola, and Stephen Pagel, eds. Bending the Landscape: Fantasy. Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 2004. Print. 

Griswold, Jerry. The Meanings of Beauty and the Beast: A Handbook. Guelph, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2004. Print.

Hearn, Michael Patrick, ed. The Victorian Fairy Tale Book. New York: Pantheon Books, 1994. Print.

Jarrell, Randall, trans. Nancy Ekholm Burkett, illus. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. New York; Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1972.

Kerven, Rosalind. English Fairy Tales and Legends. London: The National Trust, 2008. Print.

Lang, Andrew, ed. Blue Fairy Book. New York: MJF Books, 1994, first published, 1889. Print.

___. Red Fairy Book. New York: MJF Books, 1994, first published, 1890. Print.

___. Green Fairy Book. New York: Dover, 1965, first published, 1892. Print.

___. Yellow Fairy Book. New York: Dover, 1966, first published, 1894. Print.

___. Pink Fairy Book. New York: Dover, 1967, first published, 1897. Print.

___. Gray Fairy Book. New York: Dover, 1967, first published, 1900. Print.

___. Violet Fairy Book. New York: Dover, 1966, first published, 1901. Print.

___. Crimson Fairy Book. New York: Dover, 1967, first published, 1903. Print.

___. Brown Fairy Book. New York: Dover, 1965, first published, 1904. Print.

___. Orange Fairy Book. New York: Dover, 1968, first published, 1906. Print.

___. Olive Fairy Book. New York: Dover, 1968, first published, 1907. Print.

___. Lilac Fairy Book. New York: Dover, 1968, first published, 1910. Print.

Larrington, Carolyne. The Land of The Green Man: A Journey through the Supernatural Landscapes of the British Isles. London: I.B. Tauris, 2015. Print.

Lee, Lisa. Welsh Tales for the Fireside. Llandysol, Ceredigion, Wales: Gomer Press, 1998. Print.

Maitland, Sara. Gossip from the Forest: The Tangled Roots of Our Forests and Fairy Tales. London: Granta, 2012. Print.

Marcus, Leonard, ed. The Wand in the Word: Conversations with Writers of Fantasy. Cambridge,MA: Candlewick, 2006. Print.

Mayer, Marianna. Iron John. New York: Morrow, 1999. Print.

McKinley, Robin. Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty & the Beast. New York: HarperCollins, 1978. Print.

___. Deerskin. New York: Ace Books, 1993. Print.

___. Rose Daughter. New York: Ace Books, 1997. Print.

___. Spindle’s End. Newe York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2000. Print.

Mendlesohn, Farrah. Rhetorics of Fantasy. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan Press, 2008. Print.

Pullman, Philip. Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm. New York: Penguin, 2012. Print.

Purkiss, Diane. At the Bottom of the Garden: A Dark History of Fairies, Hobgoblins, and Other Troublesome Things. New York: New York University Press, 2001. Print.

Scottish Fairy Tales. London: Bracken Books, 1993. Print.

Thomsen, Brian, ed. The American Fantasy Tradition. New York: Tor, 2002. Print.

Undset, Sigrid, ed. True and Untrue & Other Norse Tales. New York: Knopf, 1967. Print.

Von Schönwerth, Franz Xaver. The Turnip Princess and Other Newly Discovered Fairy Tales. Ed. Erika Eichenseer. New York: Penguin Books, 2015. Print.

Warner, Marina. From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994. Print.

Williamson, Duncan. Tales of the Seal People: Scottish Folk Tales. Brooklyn, NY: Interlink Books, 2005. Print.

Windling, Terri, ed. The Armless Maiden and Other Tales for Childhood’s Survivors. New York: Tor, 1995. Print.

Wood, Pete Jordi. The Dog & the Sailor. Pete Jordi Wood, 2020 http://www.petejordiwood.com.

Zipes, Jack, ed. The Outspoken Princess and the Gentle Knight: A Treasury of Modern Fairy Tales. New York: Bantam Books, 1994. Print.