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| The Winter by Vladimir Kireev |
Starting today, Timeless Tales is accepting short stories for their summer issue. 
Issue 4 of New Fairy Tales Magazine is now available HERE for downloading!
The PDFs are gorgeously presented and a true pleasure to browse and read. Personally, I'm hoping that one day all the issues will be available in hard copy form. They would be an awesome collection to keep and display.
And about that competition, through which you also help a child at Derian House Children's Hospice (the charity New Fairy Tales supports): by simply making a donation to the extremely worthwhile charity, Derian House, lucky UK readers will be in the running to win a creature from the Curiosity Cabinet called the "New Fairy Tale Nymph". But international (including US) donators have an awesome opportunity too. Oona Patterson's papercut fairy tale book "Ream" (this has been on my 'MUST get' list ever since I first saw example pages). You need to go HERE and follow the instructions to be sure you donate in the correct manner to be entered.
As always, story or art submissions for the next issue are welcome from anyone but please check the guidelines HERE before doing so. The next deadline is April 15, 2010.
Announced through Tor.com, Night Shade Books has put out the call, looking for people's favorite fairy tales and retellings to put into a 'reprint anthology', titled "Happily Ever After" - and you can have a say in what goes into the new collection!
Night Shade Book's editor for the new collection, John Klima, is aware of (and loves) the (totally awesome) fairy tale series by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, some of which I'm including images of in this post (I'm not sure if that includes the newer YA collections) but says if you want to see any of those stories reprinted, don't hesitate to recommend them. The only requirement for any stories put forward is that they've been published in some format before.
Here's the blurb:While I’m not doing a submission reading period like Jeff and Ann VanderMeer, I am looking for help in finding science fiction and fantasy versions of fairy tales. Following the lead of John Joseph Adams, I’ve created a story recommendation website for Happily Ever After. There, people can let me know about their favorite science fiction/fantasy fairy tales. My definition of fairy tale is pretty open. That is, you don’t need to stick to just Grimm Brothers or Hans Christian Andersen stories.
Now, I’ve got the excellent Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling anthologies, but don’t hesitate to recommend stories out of them. Also, don’t worry if someone else has already recommended your favorite story; recommend it again. The only rule is that I’m looking for reprints so the story has to have appeared somewhere else. People who recommend a story that ends up in the anthology will get thanked in the book.
Typically I'm thinking of your standard European fairy tales (e.g., Cinderella, Snow White, Rumpelstilskin, The Little Mermaid, Hansel and Gretel, and so on) but I would love to get recommendations on lesser-known fairy tales, as well as fairy tales from other countries/continents. I will need English-language material, however.
Mr. Klima says writers can even recommend their own work, provided it's been published before.
How cool is that? Here's the really cool part: the website where you can submit your picks! Even if you're shy about putting in your two cents, I recommend checking out the growing list. You may discover versions you're not familiar with and rediscover old favorites (which you can re-recommend).
You have until the end of December to add your suggestions to the database.
The fairy tale suggestions database is HERE.
The fabulous all-things-eclectic blog, SuperPunch, is having a December giveaway any artist can enter, and the art theme is Sci-Fi Fairy Tales.The art theme for December is SciFi Fairy Tales - - give a fairy tale, fable, or myth a scifi update, like the one James Jean gave to the story of Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf (Edit FTNH: shown at head of post). To enter, simply email me your illustration by 12:00 p.m. California time on January 1, 2010. The best design will win a $100 Threadless store credit. And I will also give a $25 store credit to one randomly chosen participant. You may send as many entries as you'd like, and this contest is open regardless of where you live. No nudity, please.You can find more details about John Struan, who runs Super Punch, HERE in the sidebar, including his email address.
Interested in rewriting a fairy tale?How did Belle tame the wild Beast? Did the carriage turn into a pumpkin….or did Cinderella? And just what was going on with Snow White and those Dwarves?
I’m very pleased to announce an open call for submissions for a new, yet-to-be titled Summer 2010 anthology. I’m open to any genre, M/F, M/M, or multiples thereof. I’m looking for your super-hot take on the fairy tales we grew up with and… there must be a Happily Ever After.
The anthology will include novellas from 20,000 to 25,000 words in length and will be released individually as ebooks in August 2010 and in print in Spring 2011.
Submissions are open to all authors, published with Samhain or aspiring to be published with Samhain. All submissions must be new material, previously published submissions will not be considered. Additionally, manuscripts previously submitted, whether individually or for past anthologies, will not be considered either. Please be aware that manuscripts submitted to this anthology cannot be resubmitted at a later date unless by invitation from an editor. Please note, we are not accepting multiple submissions for this anthology. If you already have a manuscript under consideration with Samhain and would also like to send in a submission to this anthology, please query editor@samhainpublishing.com first.
To submit a manuscript for consideration, please include:
The full manuscript (of 20,000 to 25,000 words) with a comprehensive 2-5 page synopsis. Please include a letter of introduction/query letter. Full manuscripts are required for this as it’s a special project. As well, when you send your manuscript, please be sure to use the naming convention FairyTales_Title_MS or FairyTales_Title_Synopsis. This will ensure that your submission doesn’t get missed in the many submissions we receive, and makes it easy for me to find in my ebook reader.
Submissions are open until February 1st, 2010 and final decision will be made by February 15th, 2010. Please send your submission to editor@samhainpublishing.com and include Red Hot Fairy Tales Anthology in the subject line. Questions and queries can be addressed to Laurie M. Rauch (laurie@samhainpublishing.com)Other submission information as well as details on royalties and contracts can be found HERE. My take on 'hot' here is sexy as well as new and fresh but you may wish to check up on that definition. They're also currently looking for Steampunk Romance pieces too (information on that is on the same page). I wonder which anthology is more likely to publish a steampunk romance fairy tale? ;)
Let's get right to the questions - Claire has lots of interesting things to say about new fairy tales versus old!
FAIRY TALE NEWS HOUND: Hi Claire! Thank you for agreeing to answer a few questions for Once Upon A Blog. Your magazine focuses on new and original fairy tales as opposed to retellings. Can you explain how 'new fairy tales' are different from writing a piece of fantasy?
CLAIRE: For me, part of it is the form, like the traditional tales a new fairy tale is usually written in short story format (although of course there are fairy tale novels and I think it's in those in particular that the lines can become quite blurred between fairy tale and fantasy) and like a traditional tale events usually follow a certain pattern - for example things happening in threes. A new fairy tale will also draw upon the wealth of motifs that we have inherited from both the oral and literary traditions; new fairy tales can’t exist in isolation, they are created in conversation with the tales that have come before.
When writing fantasy you are free to create any kind of world you’d like for your story but following the traditions of the form new fairy tales usually take place in our world (even if it is a ‘once upon a time’ version of it), or in faerie, or at a meeting point between the two. Also, in fantasy that's based in our world characters may express surprise at the fantastical events they become embroiled in but in a fairy tale nobody ever questions the fantastical, anything can happen and nobody bats an eyelid.
FTNH: You obviously love fairy tales of all kinds. What was the inspiration for the magazine/how did its initial creation come about? Why did you decide to focus on original/new fairy tale only?
CLAIRE: I'd been re-reading Andersen's tales and I was inspired to have a go at writing fairy tales. At the time I didn’t really think about the divide between original tales and retellings, as I got more drawn in to the genre I re-read the Grimms, Oscar Wilde and George MacDonald - again not differentiating, I just loved the stories. It was only as I started to do more research and reading that I began to appreciate that there are two distinct types of literary tale. Although I love both I was particularly intrigued by the new tales and a lot of the online and print magazines that existed seemed to focus mainly on retellings so I decided to create an online space for new tales. The name New Fairy Tales seemed like a good choice and I later discovered that this is the same name Andersen used for several of his collections, Nye Eventyr in the Danish.
FTNH: How is writing a 'new' fairy tale different from writing a retelling? (apart from the lack of story template)
CLAIRE: Apart from the lack of story template I think there's actually a lot of common ground between the two. Whether you're writing a new fairy tale or a retelling you have to start from a love of the old stories, you have to be immersed in the form and motifs and you have to have the desire to create something new; for a retelling this will be a new version- your version of a tale, for a new fairy tale it will come from a different starting point but it will still be influenced by all the other tales you've read.
I suppose one of the main differences I've seen, in terms of what's submitted to the magazine and the retellings I read elsewhere, is that a lot of writers base new fairy tales in the realm of 'once upon a time', whereas writers of retellings often seem to feel freer to use contemporary, or strikingly different settings; they know a reader will recognise the characters and the plot, which they can then follow or subvert, and the story will still be read as a fairy tale. I think new fairy tale writers feel they have to try harder to make something feel like a fairy tale for it to be classed as such and so I get sent a lot of tales which carefully emulate the old tales. I do enjoy these but I would also like to see more new fairy tales in contemporary settings and/or addressing current issues; in the way Andersen used the form to address aspects of 19th Century society; and Kurt Schwitters, the Weimar and Nazi periods in Germany.
FTNH: Hans Christian Andersen is often considered the father of the literary (or original) fairy tale. Who are some of your favorite original FT writers (historical and/or contemporary)?
CLAIRE: Along with Andersen, Wilde and MacDonald I love to read A.S. Byatt – her ‘The Story of the Eldest Princess’ from The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye is one of my all time favourites. I’m also a big fan of the work of our (the UK’s) current poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy. Her fairy tale books are marketed as being for children but true to the form they contain some deliciously dark elements and should be equally savoured by adults. I’ve also recently read and enjoyed Jane Yolen’s Tales of Wonder and I’ve got a long list of other books by her I want to read!
FTNH: Regarding 'old' fairy tales (not just the European classic canon but ones from all over the world throughout the ages) - which ones are your favorites and why?
CLAIRE: It’s always so hard to choose, but two of my favourites were collected in England; the first is ‘Mossycoat’, a gypsy tale that contains similarities to ‘Cinderella’ and ‘Catskin’. It was collected in 1915 from a town in Lancashire called Oswaldtwistle, which is near where I grew up. The tale’s written in dialect and it’s got a brilliant energy to it. A girl’s mother spins her a wishing coat from moss and golden thread and she uses it to get to a big house where she goes to work as a servant and keeps getting whacked on the head with a skimmer. I quite like the fact that Mossycoat isn’t a perfect heroine; on her mother’s advice she takes advantage of a hawker’s affections in order to get fine clothes and shoes. The text isn’t available online but it is contained in The Virago Book of Fairy Tales, edited by Angela Carter (Ed. FTNH: This book is titled the 'The Old Wives' Fairy Tale Book' in the US).
I also love ‘The Buried Moon’, which can be found in Joseph Jacobs’ More English Fairy Tales, it’s slightly mythic and it’s packed with beautiful and eerie images - like the moon being buried in the dirt by bogles and other creeping evil things - it’s a great atmospheric read.
In terms of my reading to this point I do feel I have been guilty of concentrating on European tales - I think part of it is feeling overwhelmed - there are so many tales out there to read, where do you start? For me the answer has been to start with the tales that I grew up with and then to work my way outwards, it might be impossible to read them all but I'm hoping to make a good sized dent!
Thank you so much for chatting with the Fairy Tale News Hound today. We 're looking forward to the next issue!
Writing an original fairy tale is a fun challenge. If you're interested in submitting to New Fairy Tales, please check the submission guidelines HERE. Submissions to New Fairy Tales are open to everyone, though you should be aware the standard is high and inclusion is not guaranteed. The deadline for the Winter issue is looming : OCTOBER 20TH!
Please note: New Fairy Tales is a supporter of Derian House Children's Hospice a center for the care and support of children with life threatening diseases and terminal illnesses and encourage you to show your support for the magazine by sending donations to them. You can read more about the hospice HERE.
I'd like to draw your attention to a fairly new blog I've linked to called "The Fairy Tale Cupboard". It's run by Claire Massey, the Editor of New Fairy Tales magazine, and is a wonderful treat to read.
Who Has Come To Sing Us Carols?Age: Not as sprightly as he looks; there's no dating the oral story but the first recorded mention of him is in a burlesque version of the tale in an early eighteenth century chapbook...And from Red's:
Relationship status: Two unlikely love interests, the first is the wolf, as seen in "Little Red-Cap"...
Gathering Together in Silence...
StarNew Fairy Tales is an online magazine dedicated to publishing new fairy tales that are suitable for all ages. We are passionate about fairy tales, about good writing and beautiful illustrations and about raising money for an important cause.
This magazine specializes in, not retellings of fairy tales but newly written fairy tales. Based in the UK the magazine nevertheless has contributors from all over the world. I highly recommend you take a look at the lovely presentation (and variety) of art and read the quality stories in each issue so far. You will not be disappointed!
From their first issue:
We don't believe the fairy tale canon is complete or that we should only retell old stories. We believe there are many new tales out there waiting to be written and read and loved.
...we aim to provide a home for original fairy tales and fairy tale art on the web.
While this magazine has a high standard of excellence for any writing and art to be included in the issues, submissions are open to anyone and Claire Massey encourages anyone interested to try. Submissions for the current issue close on October 20th (details are HERE).
Regarding accepted works please note the magazine is run on a voluntary basis and unfortunately can't pay contributors but they do ask readers and listeners to consider making a donation to support Derian House Children's Hospice*, "as a way of valuing the work of the writers and illustrators whose work we feature and of helping to raising money for a good cause."
This is a truly unique magazine and one I'm so excited to see available. Even better, their issues will now be available twice a year, which means more stories and art for us and more opportunities for fairy tale artists and writers to have their work published in a noteworthy collection.
NOTE from the website regarding the charity they support: We support Derian House Children's Hospice, which is based in North West England.They provide specialist care and support for children with a terminal or life threatening illness. There is suprisingly little help from central government for a children’s hospice such as Derian House. With less than 10% of their funding coming from official sources, the reality is that they are open 52 weeks a year and receive statutory funding for just nine of those.
The September 2009 issue (#8) of fairy tale journal "Cabinet des Fées" is now live online.Cabinet des Fées is an online journal begun in 2005 as a result of our love of fairy tales in all of their manifestations. We’ve seen two issues in print with a third on the way, but now are online only. Scheherezade’s Bequest is our tri-annual offering of fiction and poetry. We keep our editorials and announcements, plus other news we come across that we think our readers might appreciate in Our Grim(m)oire, where you’ll find Storytellers, live readings of the fantastic in literature. We also present essays from and interviews with respected authors, editors, scholars and other assorted personalities in the fields of fairy tales, folklore and myth.
Here's the content line-up for this issue:
Fiction and Poetry:
Rapunzel Considers the Desert by Jeannine Hall GaileyThey also have two journals in print and available for purchase (a third is currently in the works). Click on the covers to be taken to more information and purchase options.
Submissions of fiction, poetry, articles and art are now open to anyone over 18 but, as with all professional publications, please be sure to read the guidelines before submitting any work. Please note that an editor will have final say of any accepted pieces and there is no guarantee of publication for submissions.
You can find information on what the desired submissions are HERE on the right of the page and submission guidelines HERE, and don't forget to check out the submission tips!
