When I was younger I would scour my grandmother’s house for books to read. There was no Amazon then. There also weren’t that many book stores near by, so I read what I could find, which was old and varied, having been picked up here and there over the years. I often read through her Children’s Hour series. The thick red books occupy some of my earliest memories. My favorite being volume 2, Favorite Fairytales.
I still read them occasionally when the mood strikes me. And have added many more to my reading list over the years like Andrew Lang’s Fairy Books and the Brothers Grimm, to name a few. I picked those old red books up again when my daughter was younger, reading them to her when she was having trouble sleeping.
Since then, there have been more then a few stories that have taken root in my mind. Some are retellings (actually, re-imaginings would be a better term) of lesser known fairytales that I loved as a child or that caught my imagination as an adult. Some are stories spun up from my own fancies.
There is a book planned for next year, but I thought to post a few of those stories here beforehand, in an unedited form, while I work on the illustrations to go with them. It also gives me the chance to share some of the events and inspirations that led me to write them, for those of you who find such things interesting.
Look for the first one, Daughter of the Sea, to be posted in August.
Idyll Dreams & Nonsensical Things 