4th Podcast Episode of "CAGES: A Steampunk Retelling of Grimm's Jorinde & Joringel" is up

Part IV of V of my steampunk fairy tale retelling is up at Supernatural Fairy Tales!

You can read the text and/or listen to the podcast
(me reading with a little music added)
HERE.

There is a small button labeled PLAY below the header for the audio.

Part I can be found HERE.
Part II can be found HERE.
Part III can be found HERE.

If you'd like to read the fairy tale that inspired it, you can find it HERE, at the amazing fairy tale resource site of SurLaLune.

The next and final episode - V - will drop on August 28th, along with a PDF of the whole story that will be available for FREE download and distribution.

Dorlana Vann has been wonderful for hosting this short story podcast series and very patient with me as I figure out the technical details of recording a podcast for the first time. :D

Thank you Dorlana! You are awesome!

Enjoy Part IV!

Disney's The Princess and the Frog - Conjuring the Villain NEW Featurette

Just a little something that popped up today - getting a behind-the-scenes look at what went into creating the villain in the Princess and the Frog.

Have you ever noticed that in fairy tales the greatest villains are the humans? It's not the witches, the Baba Yaga's etc - they're just forces of nature. Dangerous, yes - if you meet a wolf you'd better know how wolves behave in order to survive the encounter - but these individuals are rarely downright evil. It's the humans like Vassilisa's stepmother, scheming to make life miserable (occasionally aiming to kill their family members), that are the truly scary characters in a story. Give these malicious people access to a little magic and, well, let's just say it's a lot harder to escape their clutches.

In Disney's The Princess and the Frog, Dr Facilier is a smooth-talking, scheming, nasty piece of a human, who also happens to be a witch doctor - one who really know his voodoo. Here's a behind-the-scenes look at his creation, courtesy of Cartoon Brew:

The Science of Fairy Tales (Series) - Awakened From Coma By A Kiss

So this whole guy wakes girl with a kiss thing works! At least, it happened in this case, in January of this year:Emma Ray suffered a heart attack and never regained consciousness, falling into a coma. After a period of two weeks in which doctors and husband tried everything they could think of her desperate husband asked his comatose wife for a kiss.

From the news article:

'What happened next was beyond my wildest dreams,' he said. 'She turned her head towards mine, puckered up her lips and gave me a little kiss.

'I couldn't believe it. My heart felt like it was going to leap from my chest - it suddenly felt like a huge weight had been lifted.'

It should be noted, this was the second kiss her husband gave her. The first was actually the 'kiss of life' when she suffered the heart attack in a shopping center and collapsed. When doctors were finally able to start her heart and it wasn't possible to'wake' her, they warned her husband, Andrew Ray, that her condition might be permanent.

Thankfully, their story has a happy ending.

But things are still not easy. When Emma's heart stopped her brain was deprived of oxygen, resulting in damage which is still being worked through. Short term memory loss and the inability to walk without assistance are constant reminders of the incident. Her grateful husband and family, however, are just glad she's with them.

Bless you all, Ray family, and thank you for sharing your heartwarming story.

When it comes to the tale from which Emma earned her new nickname however, I wonder: although I've read retellings where Beauty has to cope with time passing and must reacquaint herself with the kingdom, has anyone ever considered Beauty dealing with internal damage from what the curse put her through?

You can read the rest of the amazing 'real life Sleeping Beauty' story HERE.
Note: The above painting is by Thomas Ralph Spence. You can find more information on him HERE.

The Great 'Sleeping Beauty' Rewrite (III of IV)

If you missed Tuesday's post on Diamonds & Toads, I suggest you go read it so you'll know more about where these lovely short story retellings have come from.

As promised, here are the rest of the stories (and their authors) that entered the Diamonds & Toads contest. Their stories are published on a special page for all to read them. Please note, these are in no particular order, though I will be making another special mention today. The winner of the contest will have a special post all to herself in a couple of days (August 22nd). :)

A sincere thank you (again) to Kate Wolford of Diamonds & Toads for helping me put these posts together!

“Sleeping Beauty,” by Victoria Zhou, is notable for its extremely determined and mean villainess, Jade.

Diamonds & Toads comment: This story had an extremely compelling villainess, which made it stand out among the entries.

“Cinderella,” by Tom Mollica, turns the whole fairy tale theme on its head. “Cinderella” just happens to be the heroine’s name, and she falls into her sleep because of an aunt who is so anti-alcohol, she sets a spell on Cinderella to cause her to fall into her deep sleep based on one sip of champagne. A jolly story.

Diamonds & Toads comment: Kookie aunts, beer, a sleeping beauty named "Cinderella" -- I enjoyed this irreverent tale.

“Cupcake Princess,” by Jennifer Alberts, is a story set in a little French town, where the heroine is really just the daughter of the most talented bakers an author could dream up. This story is filled with references to confections, making it a foodie’s dream story.

Diamonds & Toads comment: How could I not love a story about cupcakes? A very yummy tale.

“Saving Beauty,” by Heather Spiva, clearly shows the reader how tough life would be for the parents of any “Sleeping Beauty,” character. Serious in tone, the story even has a Cain and Abel twist.

Diamonds & Toads comment: This was intriguing because it involved fostering the endangered heroine, and I liked the dedication.

“Sleeping Beauty 2009,” by Tyffany D. Neiheiser, has many of the conventional elements of the original tale, except dad is a doctor, and the “evil” force in the story, Aunt Destiny, in the end, is the one who brings our heroine happiness. For who can deny Destiny?

Diamonds & Toads comment: This story was such fun, because it was set in the suburbs, and the author did some smart work with "Destiny."

“A Gift Returned,” by Liz Chernov, features a schoolteacher hero and a villainess who keeps going even after the happy ending for hero and heroine. Dreaming is used as an intriguing way of letting the couple communicate.

Diamonds & Toads comment: I loved this entry because it had a charming hero and a well-drawn villainess.

Today's special mention is:

“The Sleeping Beauty Mystery,” by Carl Macek, which features a detective hero who brings Humphrey Bogart’s old movies to mind. Yet, it has a modern flavor to it as well, and is light and amusing.

Diamonds & Toads comment: I am a total sucker for a mystery. I can truly say that I thought this story was great fun!

And here's a brief excerpt from the beginning of "The Sleeping Beauty Mystery":

The package was delivered to my office, Charlie Prince Investigations, without a return address. I suppose somebody at the Post Office had finally decided to clean out a couple of their dead letter files and put some effort into delivering the previously undeliverable. But when I saw the ratty condition of the homemade cardboard envelope that was sitting outside my office door, I wasn’t all that eager to open it. I kept thinking about the people that I’d heard of who’d found out the hard way that what they thought was Aunt Agnes’ famous fruitcake turned out to be a letter bomb. The way I figured it, I had a fifty-fifty chance of coming out alive. I just closed my eyes and ripped the cardboard package apart.

What I found inside was an old VHS tape. I hadn’t seen one of those “antique” plastic cassettes for nearly 25 years. There was a piece of white tape along the spine with the words “Please Help” scrawled with a thick black marker pen. It took me almost two weeks to find someone who had an old video tape player that worked so that I could even watch the stupid thing. And by that time my curiosity was sufficiently piqued. But I wasn’t prepared for what I found recorded on that antiquated relic...

To keep reading, click HERE.

Stay tuned for the winning entry - coming in a couple of days on August 22nd.

NOTE: All images and close-ups are from Errol Le Cain's "Thorn Rose". Click on the sleeping dog at the head to find out more about this amazing animator and illustrator. He illustrated many fairy tales! The other pictures you can click on for a closer view - highly recommended.

Unusual Sleeping Beauty Art

We're looking at how different people have interpreted the tale of Sleeping Beauty this week and I thought I'd share some unusual art I found during my research.

This first piece is a gigantic work, painted on a wall by graffiti artist El Mac (you can find out more about him and his work HERE). His sleeping beauty, actually titled 'Phoenix Goddess', implying she'll wake sometime, gives a distinct sense that Beauty has slept so long and so soundly that the world has changed around her. In the background he has painted a cityscape, something we don't normally see in a picture with Beauty asleep. (You can see the patio table in the foreground for perspective on just how big this work is.)

The second is a piece, by Sasha Foster, that I was surprised - and glad - to find (you can find her blog, her comments about this piece and more of her work HERE). If you know your Sleeping Beauty, you probably also know that the popular version is only half of the first written record of the tale, called 'Sun, Moon and Talia' and that Talia (left anonymous by Perrault, though he was the first to use the story title 'Sleeping Beauty'*) wasn't woken by a kiss at all. When the Prince found her, hidden in the wood for safety, he found he so beautiful that he, after being unable to wake her up, raped her - while she was asleep! I know: wrong, wrong, wrong! Anyway, she eventually had twins (the mind boggles at the logistics required), and was woken by one of the babies looking to nurse but, finding her finger instead, sucked on it, removing the splinter of flax that had caused her sleep in the first place.

And I haven't even mentioned the Ogress yet, even though she came after the jealous wife of the Prince... Phew! I think I'll leave that for another time.

In the meantime if you're aware of unusual Sleeping Beauty illustrations or artwork that show an 'often-unconsidered' side of the tale, please feel free to leave a comment and point us all in that direction. From each retelling and each artistic interpretation there's a little more to learn.

*It was the Brother's Grimm who named the sleeping princess Briar Rose or, in a variant Rosamund, and, though their retelling of the tale is probably taken from Perrault's it's thought they would deny their version had anything to do with his. Their's was also the first version to cut the tale in half, ending with the Prince arriving and waking the princess with a chaste kiss. This was also the first time the magical kiss apeared. In the Perrault retelling, the twin children are named Morning (or Dawn, which in French is L'Aurore) and Day. The name of the girl child L'Aurore is likely where Disney got the name for the Sleeping Beauty most well known today. You can read all about these variants and how the story was shortened HERE and HERE.

The Great 'Sleeping Beauty' Rewrite (II of IV)

If you missed yesterday's post on Diamonds & Toads, I suggest you go check it out so you'll know more about where these short story retellings have come from.

As promised, here are a half of the stories (and their authors) that entered the Diamonds & Toads contest. They all have their stories published on a special page for all to read them. I'll profile the rest tomorrow. Please note, these are in no particular order, though I will be making a special mention of a story today and tomorrow. The winner of the contest will have a special post all to herself at the end of the week. :)

A sincere thank you to Kate Wolford of Diamonds & Toads for helping me put these next couple of posts together!

“Sleeping Beauty,” by Sandra Urias, is an intergalactic adventure featuring suspended animation, twists and turns in the plot, and an unusually kind and generous heroine.

Diamonds & Toads comment: Please make a special effort to read this extraordinary entry.

“Aurora Speaks,” by Lisa Fu features a first-person narrative by Sleeping Beauty (Aurora) herself and a non-perfect hero, which makes the story a bit more realistic, in a good way. Aurora’s plight also results from an interesting twist in family relations.

Diamonds & Toads comment: I love that we see some point of view from the princess. I also love that the hero is not perfect.

“Lonely Beauty,” by Elena Valeriote, is unusual because Oriana, our heroine, is “protected” from her fate by being raised in a dungeon. What makes this story fun is that she has seven brothers, and is the much-hoped-for girl. All ends happily, and Oriana ends up with lots of company.

Diamonds & Toads comment: A princess protected in a dungeon? Now that was some creative thinking! I also love the seven brothers angle.

“Sleeping Cutie,” by Hugh Neeld has a funny, Hollywood excess feel to it that makes the story just plain fun. After all, it is set in the land of “Gotitmade.”

Diamonds & Toads comment: What do I have to say about this story? Just this: It is very, very good! And fun!

“Sleeping Beauty and the God of Death,” By Emily Debenham, uses mythic characters and mythic story structures to give the story a grand sweep.

Diamonds & Toads comment: This writer took the story into the realm of gods and myth, making it stand out.

“Sleeping Beauty,” by Juliette Bowers features family jealousy, as many fairy tales do! What is intriguing about the tale is that Philip, our hero, is the son of the family’s housekeeper, and knows the heroine before she falls into her sleep, making the happy ending seem more probable.

Diamonds & Toads comment: This story had some intriguingly written sisters and an excellent hero, both qualities draw the reader in.

Today's special mention is:

“Keeping Beauty,” by Barbara Knight. It stands out because it highlights some of the troubling, complicated relationships we all have with beauty, as the story is set in the “Land of Vanity,” where homeliness of any kind is not permitted.

Diamonds & Toads comment: Note: Barbara Knight should keep on writing! This is highly entertaining and provides some very smart commentary on beauty standards.

And here's a brief excerpt from the beginning of "Keeping Beauty":

Once upon a time, King Handsome and Queen Charisma ruled in the lovely Land of Vanity. All those who lived in Vanity were pleasing to the eye. There was beauty everywhere. Rows of pastel colored houses were perfectly landscaped and immaculately maintained. Organic gardens grew only unblemished fruit and vegetables. Long necked swans graced the clear ponds as feathery finned angelfish swam below the surfaces. And melodic birds filled the flowering trees.

Each time there was a birth within the kingdom, the baby was presented to the King and Queen. If he or she was worthy, they would be allowed to stay. But if the child was not up to standards, he or she would be banished from the land forever, forced to live amongst the plain. This happened rarely, as beauty usually begets beauty...

To keep reading click HERE.

Stay tuned for the other stories - coming in a couple of days on August 19th.

NOTE: All images and close-ups are from Errol Le Cain's "Thorn Rose" (ie. Sleeping Beauty) picture book. click on the book cover at the head to find out more about this amazing animator and illustrator. He's illustrated many fairy tales! The other pictures you can click on for a closer view - highly recommended. The man was amazing! More of these gorgeous illustrations coming from "Thorn Rose" in a couple of days too.

"Diamonds & Toads" Blog Holds "The Great 'Sleeping Beauty' Rewrite" (I of IV)

If you're not aware of the blog "Diamonds & Toads", let me now direct your attention to this wonderful resource:

Run by Kate Wolford, a lecturer at Indiana University South Bend, this blog focuses on the analysis, research and writing of fairy tales as well as the general enjoyment of fairy tales and, while aimed to help her students, is available and accessible to non-students too. Kate, who's love of fairy tales is evident with every post, encourages dialogue on fairy tales from all sources and is working on getting an online magazine, specifically on fairy tales, up and running sometime during 2010 (more details to come).

(We can't wait Kate!)

In the meantime, she held a contest called "The Great 'Sleeping Beauty' Rewrite" and had a lot of excellent entries.

The above gorgeous painting is one of my favorite artistic renditions of Sleeping Beauty and is by a later Pre-Raphaelite artist, Edward Burne-Jones.

The requirements were that the story be unpublished elsewhere (ie 'new'), to retell 'Sleeping Beauty' and be 1 000 words or less. Entrants had one month to write it (from July 1st to July 31st). The story had to be 'G' rated but adult in tone and not geared toward children. Diamonds & Toads reserved the right to publish the story on their blog and keep it there, though authors were free to publish it anywhere else after the contest was over. And yes, there was a lovely fairy tale themed prize (you can see a picture on the blog).

Kate was delighted with, not only the number of entries but the quality of them and, with her permission, I'm going to introduce you all to the stories (which are available to read HERE) over the next few days and show you just how many wonderful variations people came up with.

But the good news doesn't end there.

There's ANOTHER contest - just for READING the stories! (Details HERE on the August 7th entry.) You enter by reading, then making a comment... where and how, I'll leave up to you to figure out. (It's not difficult.) Contest ends at the end of August so get reading! (The prize is a lovely one-of-a-kind artwork by talented artist Cat Mallard, a.k.a. darklingwoods on Etsy and Twitter. (She has other fairy tale themed art too and all her work is beautiful, so check out her Etsy page HERE.)

Part I of "The Great 'Sleeping Beauty' Rewrite" is posting tomorrow.

Before we get to the new stories, though, I'd like to share two of my favorite retellings:

Jane Yolen's Briar Rose and Robert Coover's Briar Rose (book covers are shown below and you can get more information on each by clicking on the images. Please note there are two covers for Jane Yolen's book currently available.)

I recommend the audio book for this version too - unabridged of course!

In the meantime, go check out the rest of "Diamonds & Toads". If you're not familiar with the story this blog is named for you can find more information there. ;)

Charles Vess Illustrating Gaiman's "Instructions"

We're about to be treated: Charles Vess is busy illustrating Neil Gaiman's "Instructions".

If you're not familiar with the poem, it's what to do if you ever find yourself caught in the middle of a fairy tale - what to do, what not to.

Here's an excerpt:

If an eagle gives you a feather, keep it safe.
Remember: that giants sleep too soundly;
that witches are often betrayed by their appetites;
dragons have one soft spot, somewhere, always;
hearts can be well-hidden,
and you betray them with your tongue.

You can find the whole poem at the Endicott Studio HERE.

Re the image above: Don't forget to count the black birds...

I also found a video of Mr. Gaiman reading his poem, which you can see below:

It's a deceptively simple poem but there's a lot in there and lovers of fairy tales should have a copy somewhere in their collection.

As for the illustrations, Charles Vess has collaborated with Neil Gaiman many times in the past and is the perfect illustrator to render these images. Gaiman is extremely pleased to have Vess on the project, as you can tell by his post HERE, which also has one of the images as a preview.

You can see some examples here in this post but there are quite a few more. Mr. Vess has kindly posted his WIP drawings for some of the panels at his Green Man Press HERE and you can see a couple of others in his friend's blog HERE.Re the image above: Can you recognize the characters and objects in the illustration? There are more than there first appears to be.

I don't think a release date is set yet but it's definitely next year (2010) sometime.

The Fairy Tale Factory - September '09 Workshop

Amy Morgan's Fairy Tale Factory in Seattle, WA, has a workshop coming up in September for writers.

But it's not just about writing new fairy tales, although there's quite a bit of skill involved in that. Writers of all kinds should benefit from learning the principles of distilling a story down to a very tight plot then fleshing it out with the right motifs and brief descriptions to feel not only timeless, but relevant across cultures too.

Here's the blurb from the website:

Spend six weeks in the land of Fairy. Learn the basic rules of the genre, plus a variety of approaches to fairy tales as readers and as writers. Study western European tales from the late middle ages to modern times. Write a lot! Writing exercises assigned after each class. By the end of the course you will have written at least one original fairy tale of your own. All experience levels welcome.

Interested? Here are the details:

Intro to Writing Fairy Tales
September 16 - October 21
Wednesday nights (6 classes)

How can you not want to spend weeks absorbed in fairy tales from around the world?

If you're already an avid fairy tale reader (and possibly writer) there's also a "Fairy Tale Factory Writing Intensive" workshop following that (date to be announced). I really like the sound of this too!

Here's the blurb from FTF:

Use fairy tales to sharpen your skills as a writer. This six-week workshop focuses on plot and language. We’ll do writing exercises in class and for homework, each one designed to push your edge in the areas of creativity, language, and story. By the end of the course you will be getting a bigger bang for your buck out of your stories. You will also (hopefully) develop a deeper relationship with language and inspiration. You will write at least one original fairy tale. Intro to Writing Fairy Tales recommended as a prerequisite.

You can find out more about Ms. Morgan HERE and there's a brief, but fun, interview with "Reading Local Seattle" HERE. You can also (and I highly recommend this) read three of her *new* fairy tales. I say *new*, because these tales really do read like something out of a world wide fairy tale collection though they're completely new.

To whet your appetite a little, the titles are:

The Wood Wife
The Owl and the Maiden
The Yellow Bird

And for those of us unable to travel, maybe one day we can talk her into doing an online version of these courses! (hint, hint Amy!)

New Look, Same Once Upon A Blog

No, your eyes are not deceiving you - you are still at Once Upon A Blog!

I just decided to do my own icon as I caved in and finally joined Facebook (site is HERE) to help spread the fairy tale news. Then I realized this blog could use a new header too - one that was smaller than the pic there before - so you can see posts as soon as you go to the page.

I tried this first - I mean, you think fairy tales you think fairies, right? (Even though not many fairy tales have ACTUAL fairies in them):But thought it looked a little generic.

Then I realized I had an old silhouette of a cat grinding coffee, from the tale "How Puss Learned to Talk", and thought the idea of a magic cat, grinding out fairy tale news (with a little dash of espresso) was just right for the blog. :)Here's the same header but with the URL added so people can find us.Please feel free to use any of the artwork above to spread the word about the blog and all the great stuff happening. The world needs fairy tales!

And just in case you miss the cute little creature reading up on fairy tale news, please find him still reading below. :)