I’m thrilled to announce that my new collection of short stories, poems, and art will be released in April, right smack during the A to Z Challenge, so of course I have to make it my A to Z theme for this year! Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns is in the same format as the book I featured as my theme last year, Bittersweetness & Light, but this time the over-arching theme is that all the short stories, poetry, and relief block prints are inspired by, reimagining, or riffing on fairy tales, classical mythology, and other myths and stories from folklore. Some of the stories that provided inspiration are famous (such as Sleeping Beauty and Pandora’s Box), and others perhaps less well known (such as the Green Children and the Tarasque). For every letter I’ll share artwork, plus teasers and glimpses behind the scenes of my writing and how it connects to the various traditional stories. Whether you know the original tales or not, however, I hope to bring something new: twist the story, look at it from a new perspective, answer some questions, or ask new questions of my own. Join me to consider these classic tales from new angles and see what I’ve done with them.
If you want a bit more of a preview of the book you can read about it here at Once Upon a Time There Was a Kickstarter… or look at the Kickstarter page itself. (The campaign is over but the page still tells all about the project.) And also, here’s a prior blog post about Fairy Tale Retellings in general, listing a lot of diverse examples by other authors. It might be a good idea to start getting used to the breadth of possibilities!
Today is also the day to remind you of my past A to Z themes, especially as there will be connections to many of them…
2025 - Bittersweetness & Light (Same format, different stories)
2024 - The Botany of the Realms of Imagination (Barnacle geese, giant Beanstalk, tree of Life, hanging gardens, and more!)
2023 - Alphabet Squared: an Alphabet of Block Printed Alphabets
2022 - How to Make a Mythical Creature (Flight, Gigantism, One-and-Only, Questions, Transforming, and more!)
2021 - Mythical and Imaginary Places (Eden, Hades, Faerie, Oz, and more!)
2020 - Nursery Rhymes and their Block Printed Illustrations (Hey, Diddle Diddle)
2019 - On the Virtues of Beasts of the Realms of Imagination (Dragon, Fairy, Unicorn, Vegetable Lamb)
2018 - Characters from My Own Books (Well, none of the same ones, but absolutely!)
2017 - Block Print Artists (Block prints every day!)
2016 - Mythical Creatures (Cyclops, Djinni, Fairy, Golem, Gorgon, Mermaid, Siren, Sphinx, Unicorn, and more!)
Perhaps it should come as no surprise that someone who dares to tweak famous traditional stories is also going to tweak the A to Z schedule. As always, I’ll be starting early to give myself a few extra days off during the month of April. So you can join me next week and jump right into A, or if you prefer to do it properly along with all the other A to Z bloggers then come back on April 1 and even though by then I’ll be a few letters into the alphabet, I’ll link you to the correct letter for each day. In either case, I can’t wait to share my new book with you!
The moral of Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns (You knew I was going to have morals, right?) is that apparently I just can’t leave well enough alone.
Also, there’s always another perspective on a story and another layer to the tale!
Do you have a favorite fairy tale or myth? Do tell! It might be one of the ones I’ve explored in this book. (Then again, perhaps not… Some of my very favorite stories are ones I haven’t re-imagined because I didn’t necessarily feel the need to change them. But you can read a blog post about some of My Favorite Fairy Tales here.)
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