"Glitches" - A Prequel & Introduction to Marissa Meyer's Cyborg Cinderella

"Glitches" by Goni Montes*

 [Excerpt]

CINDER

by Marissa Meyer

Chapter 1

THE SCREW THROUGH CINDER'S ANKLE HAD RUSTED, THE engraved cross marks worn to a mangled circle. Her knuckles ached from forcing the screwdriver into the joint as she struggled to loosen the screw one gritting twist after another. By the time it was extracted far enough for her to wrench free with her prosthetic steel hand, the hairline threads had been stripped clean.

Tossing the screwdriver onto the table, Cinder gripped her heel and yanked the foot from its socket. A spark singed her fingertips and she jerked away, leaving the foot to dangle from a tangle of red and yellow wires.

She slumped back with a relieved groan. A sense of release hovered at the end of those wires--freedom. Having loathed the too-small foot for four years, she swore to never put the piece of junk back on again. She just hoped Iko would be back soon with its replacement.

(keep reading...)

  And so begins the story of Cinder, debut author Marissa Meyer's Cyborg Cinderella. News and reviews about this book are sweeping the web with the much anticipated release happening on January 3rd, 2012.

But it turns out we now have the opportunity to find out just how Cinder got to where she was before Chapter one even starts.  

Tor.com is offering an exclusive prequel you can read online right now.

(Click HERE.)

Meet Cinder, gifted mechanic and cyborg. She's a second-class citizen with a mysterious past, reviled by her stepmother and blamed for her stepsister's illness. In "Glitches," we see the results of that illness play out, and the emotional toll that it takes on Cinder. Something that may, or may not, be a glitch....

Need more, now the prequel (and 1st chapter excerpt) has whet your appetite for this unusual Cinderella? You can read and/or download Chapters 1-5 HERE.

And of course, here's the book you should be putting on pre-order if you possibly can (click image):

 And since I adore seeing various versions of cover art for different countries as it gives you a different slant on the story, here is the one for Spain:

Ms Meyer has just posted her current (and still growing) tour schedule HERE, with this delightful little note: 

Note: Attending ladies, there's a grassroots movement to get as many girls wearing red shoes as possible, so break out those sexy red pumps!

Heidi over at the SurLaLune Fairy Tales Blog has had the opportunity to read an ARC and gives you more info there (hint: she REALLY liked it!) BUT she's also in the middle of a Favorite Fairy Tale Things Wish List competition with an ARC of Cinder as one of the prizes. Go enter! [Plus I want to see what you guys are craving in your fairy tale Christmas stockings this year. ;) ]

* For the art-process inclined (like me) you may enjoy seeing the artist's idea sketches and work in progress for the illustration above for the short story. Click HERE to see Goni Montes' blog posting with all the goodies.

The Serious Whimsy Of Beatrice Billard

 

Many of these works are a few years old now but the beautiful layering of the mysterious and the slight edge to these whimsical fairy tale paintings by Beatrice Billard never gets old.

Her portfolio included title and description so I thought those the best images to include. Her portfolio and blog have many many more beautiful and fantastic pieces so be sure to go check her out.

Endicott Studio did a short post on her in 2007 which gives us a little more information than is on her website. Check it out to see her artistic influences - you'll find yourself recognizing their influences but also marvel at how she's still made the art very much her own.

Many of these would be lovely as prints for a stairway or perhaps as a frieze for a little girl's room. Either way I'd love to find a set of cards with these tales so I could own a quality set of prints.

Although she has some work for sale in various places I haven't found any recent online activity by her for a couple of years. Hopefully that just means she's hard at work producing more beautiful pieces.

NBC's Grimm Gets Goldfever

Golden Eagle by Sue Warner

After Once's addition of King Midas, and his gold-creating fingers, Grimm has let leak their own gold-focused episode in the works.

TVLine got the exclusive on the news that (Lost's Titus) Welliver... will be playing Farley Holt in NBC’s supernatural procedural Grimm. Mr. Holt is described as a creature with the ability to morph into a steinadler, which according to google, is a golden eagle. Whether or not he’s a bad guy remains to be seen. We know from the reformed big-bad-wolf Monroe that not all of the creatures frequently hunted by Nick and the other Grimms are living an evil lifestyle.

Gold doesn’t just refer to the bird, either. TVLine says Welliver’s character will explain to Nick “the history behind a cache of gold coins that seem to exert an uncanny hold over whoever takes possession of them.” (The precious!)  

You can read the full article with extra info HERE.

Which fairy tale will this be based on? Any guesses*?

One idea is below - but it's a total guess. I'd be surprised if it is Snow White and Rose Red. Happily surprised, of course, but still surprised. :)

by Felicia Cano

* Other than Rumpelstiltskin, which doesn't have a gold eagle The Two Brothers springs to mind but that's such a long and complex tale. Another option - and it does have an eagle - is Snow White and Rose Red (with the ungrateful dwarf and his jewel and coin hoards.

Two New Episodes of NBCs Grimm Airing This Week

While both Once and Grimm took a break over Thanksgiving, Once has been back with a vengeance and we've already had six episodes and much drama and speculation grabbing people's imaginations over the town of Storybrooke and the parallel world of Fairy Tale (and ratings). To top that off, another episode less than a week away.

Grimm, on the other hand, is still in limbo back at episode four and has lost a lot of ratings ground with so much time off. In fact, with all the media buzz about Once's twists and turns and interviews with Producers and casting sneak peeks, Grimm has quietly slipped out of the spotlight with barely a new post to keep it in our minds.

However: :)

NBC is going to try and make up for that by airing two brand new episodes on consecutive nights - this Thursday and Friday.

The epiosdes are:
Thursday: Danse Macabre (loosely based on The Pied Piper)
Friday: The Three Bad Wolves (loosely based on The Three Little Pigs)

Here's a two episode teaser clip advertising the special two night event:



There are more clips and interviews HERE, including discussion of the production and effects (The Pied Piper episode is DEFINITELY NOT for kids with all the gruesome visuals) and Grimm's reformed Blutbad musing on music, history and his relationship with Detective Nick Burkhardt.

Yay for lots of new fairy tale  content this week! We'll see if a double dose of Grimm is enough to put them back on people's must-watch lists.

Bluebeard Illustration Roundup

Bluebeard by littlecrow (Ashley Vercekaites)

Bluebeard has been on my mind since the last Grimm episode on NBC so I thought I'd share what I found around the web (many of them led back to deviantArt accounts).

I always enjoy seeing different artist interpretations of a fairy tale. Every now and then you'll see something that makes you think about the tale in a slightly different way - and that's fantastic.  Many of these do that. Others I included just because the look is so different.

Please do click on the image above at the head of the post and see it full size. It's simply beautiful and I couldn't make it big enough here to do it justice.

Links to the artist's site, or where I found them, are below each image.

Bluebeard's Gallery by hogret

Bluebeard by biffno

Bluebeard by BleedingArt21

Bluebeard Colors by charkxl

Bluebeard by Benjamin Lacombe*

Bluebeard by Thierry Dedieu

Le Barbe Bleu by ZhdaNN

Barbe-bleue by ThornBulle

Bluebeard by Yulia Valeeva

Bluebeard conceptual cover by Franco Spagnolo

Bluebeard's Last Wife by hogret

 *Benjamin Lacombe is one of my favorite artists ever and I have two special posts in the making, waiting for the day I will finish them and post them!

Is ABC's "Once Upon A Time" Going To Run Out Of Fairy Tales?

Oof! I just realized all the content up today was rather dark and serious so I'm throwing this one post in as a bonus. :)

 This might seem like an absurd title for a blog entry here but this is what many fans of ABC's Once Upon A Time appear to be worrying about.

Considering Once Upon A Time is planning to stick around for a long time (think multiple seasons - the producers have ideas for at least three right now) are there enough fairy tales and fairy tale creatures to keep the series going?

We know Red Riding Hood will need to tell her story soon and there's been a lot of leaks about Beauty and her Beast/Gaston appearing soon (note: slight spoiler at the link). In Mr. Gold's pawn shop on Sunday night's airing we saw Aladdin's lamp and a tea set that looked rather Alice-like. There are calls on fan boards for appearances by Aladdin and Mulan but after that, what??! (Not my punctuation. :D )

E! Online grilled Jane Espenson (a producer and writer on the show) for details:

There will be fairy tales that branch out of the central European folklore: "I wouldn't be surprised to see fairy tales from other traditions coming in as well," consulting producer Jane Espenson teases. "So keep your eye out for some stuff that's maybe not quite so Swiss looking." 

 In addition to Hansel and Gretel, this certainly opens the doors for Greek mythology, Middle Eastern folktales, perhaps enough material for 50 seasons and two movies? We can only hope.

Regulars of this fairy tale blog and others are already very aware that this is one aspect fans should not worry about. For starters there are over 200 tales in the Grimm collections alone. That doesn't even exhaust the European options. This is one aspect of NBCs Grimm that is really solid - Grimm's producers are well educated in worldwide fairy tales (as are the actors, as it's mentioned in a lot of their interviews) and have planned to explore different tales and various folkloric creatures from all over the world since the beginning.

 

 

 To Once's credit they have already gone beyond the Disney vault and included Rumpelstiltskin, Red Riding Hood and King Midas so there are plenty of indications that they're already looking around.

Of course there are still quite a few of the Disney canon characters yet to appear (don't forget Disney's live action films too!) and there's a good chance they throw in some characters Disney has had gathering dust in their ideas box too (Snow Queen anyone?). It still makes me want to anonymously gift the Once producers with all the Andrew Lang color fairy books though.

Source for graphics HERE. It's a fantastic almost-daily Tumblr blog dedicated to all things Once Upon A Time but I can't quite bring myself to type the blogs title. :/ I DO recommend you visit though. Some truly gorgeous stuff here.

A Touch Of Reality To Classic Scenes Makes People Think Twice About Fairy Tales

 

Photographer Matt Hoyle uses a mix of computer graphics and photography for his art with memorable results.

Under his hand, adding a realistic touch to classic fairy tale scenes highlights the creep factor in many of these. Are we really OK with Snow White falling unconscious in the hands of seven men? They may be little but they're obviously very much men. (You can see his full gallery HERE which also shows other examples of his work.)

At a time when the dark side of fairy tales in very much in vogue, images like these are making parents think twice about reading fairy tales to their kids. (You may remember this New York Times article from 2009 HERE which cited a list of tales parents no longer read to kids. There's also a new one, prompted by art book publisher Taschen who released a fairy tale collection in October this year of stories and beautiful illustrations, HERE.) While I don't advocate showing creepy images to children, I think the stories and the dark possibilities make it doubly important for these tales to be told to little ones.

 

I learned a lot from Snow White as a child (especially what NOT to do) and the story remains one of my favorites as I age and begin to better understand how women age. Rapunzel, who once showed me there are worlds beyond your tower now reminds me not to be overprotective as a parent. Donkeyskin showed me (and still shows me) I can change my expected destiny if I'm pro active about it. Beauty and the Beast showed me the importance of courtesy and manners as a child and now reminds me to be patient (and remain courteous) in relationships. Red Riding Hood showed me I could be smart as a child when the odds were against me, if I kept my head and now reminds me to be more understanding and protective of precocious young girl-women, among other things.

There are many more lessons I've taken over the years from the tales quoted above, not all of them necessarily related to the ones cited here. Suffice it to say, no matter what age or where I am in life, the tales never stop speaking to me. My most resonant lesson remains the same though: there is a path through the woods, no matter what the woods look like and no matter the manner of creatures who step into your path. I'm so grateful for fairy tales and how real they can be. :)

Krampus Show at Curly Tail Fine Art

It would seem that people are exploring the darker side of many things these days - not just fairy tales but folktales too. Santa's dark partner, who is all but forgotten these days, is creeping back onto the scene.

In the last couple of years art shows revolving around Krampus, short story collections including Krampus characters and Krampus art dolls have become more and more prolific.

As you can imagine, from the subject matter, there are quite a few disturbing images but I guess that's the point.  While I think it's good to remember a dark side (especially to anything so "glitzed" and commercialized as the Christmas/Yule season) I'm not convinced going straight to horrific visuals for the most "demonic aspect" (and I'm not just talking about the Krampus-creature's appearance) is the way to go.

Chris Buzelli

I say "demonic aspect" because the darker side of Christmas to me is shown in plenty of sobering light by the light Dicken's Christmas ghosts and in The Little Match Girl's dying sparks. In real life, Christmas darkness is in the lines of homeless people waiting patiently to receive their charity-handout Christmas dinners and in the candles shining alone in curtained windows for all those family members lost too soon or fighting overseas during the season. But the stories and real-life scenes have a hope in them despite their darkness and that's something I see missing from a lot of the Krampus representations.

Dan Crowley

If you're familiar with the mythology and folklore you know that Krampus isn't specifically evil but instead performs  a necessary function - one that can be negotiated with to some extent if you understand his rules. (One region's form of him leaves coal in the stockings of naughty children, for example, a tradition that remains, though simplified, in our Christmas mythology today.) There's even a "Krampus Day" that's still celebrated in Alpine countries on December 5th. It's sort of like  Christmas version of Halloween but without the cute kids dressing up and OD-ing on candy.

Mark Garro

I must admit, even for someone who loves all things urban fantasy and adores Halloween above all other times of the year, all that dark without the light is just a bit TOO dark for me. I guess we have yet to find a balance.. (And so the pendulum swings!)

Here's another interesting piece from a showing earlier in the year:

 

You can see the details of the current show in the image at the head and, if you're interested, you can check out the variety of Krampus art on the website HERE. If you want to see it in person, the show runs in Chicago till January 15, 2012.

Advertising: A Wusthof Knife For Snow White

 

I have no idea if they made this "art apple" in real life (I would love to see some 'making of' footage for that!) or if someone was very clever with Photoshop (it looks convincingly real with all that cutting detail at the bottom of the removed apple piece). Either way, it's very effective.

The article on Trendhunter summarized the campaign so well I have to add an excerpt:

Taking the symbol of the protagonist’s downfall, the Jung von Matt advertising agency exploited the juicy red fruit as an appropriate canvas for this campaign. Divulging the finesse of the kitchen blade and the painstaking incisions it can make, the peeled picture of the young girl in an elaborate gown, surrounded in dainty blossoming branches, is enough to demonstrate such precision.

The Germans really know how to use their fairy tales and I kind of want one of their Wusthof Knives now too.

With little alteration I can see this as an awesome art print for a kitchen...

Advertising: Gandhi Bookstore Ogilvy Ads Use Classic Tales

 

Mexican bookstore chain Ghandi Bookstores has fairy tale characters reading classic childrens books. The illustrations are so beautifully done, it's as if the characters have come to life, straight out of childrens books themselves.

The first two are easy to recognize but the third may not be as familiar as it's not strictly a fairy tale. It's the character of Samsa from Kafka's story Metamorphosis.

 

The Ogilvy advertising agency sure knows how to produce beautiful illustrations!

Sources: HERE & HERE.