Deborah's Journal

This is an experience I never anticipated when I began editing anthologies. Having a movie made about one of the stories! Sue Lange is creating a video based on her story, "Princess Dancer" in Beyond Grimm: Tales Newly Twisted that I co-edited for Book View Cafe (with ramblin_phyl

Here's the latest update -- I can hardly wait to see the completed project!

Beyond Grimm: The Long Dark | Book View Cafe Blog

First of all, a Happy Editor dance... [dance, dance, dance]

This is the first anthology I've edited (actually, co-edited with Phyllis Irene Radford) for Book View Cafe. It began, lo these many many months ago, with an in-house discussion along the lines of "Hey, wouldn't it be fun to..." Book View Cafe has already published several anthologies (Rocket Boy and the Geek Girls, Dragon Lords and Warrior Women -- which has a story of mine! -- The Shadow Conspiracy I and II), so there was some precedent. We knew to ask things like, Will this be reprint, original stories, or both? Will it be a benefit for BVC or will the authors receive shares of the proceeds? How will we define the theme? At a certain point, we'd reached a sufficient level of enthusiasm and clarity so that someone had to put on an organizational (aka editor's) hat.

Thinking this would be marvelous fun, I volunteered, and the way it worked out, Phyl co-edited it with me. I supplied time and my own editorial experience, and she had the expertise of working with the BVC anthology publication procedures. Because there were two of us, we could submit our own stories to one another, thereby avoiding the editing-your-own-work scenario.

One of the things I love about editing anthologies is watching the process, the landscape of that adventure, unfold, discovering moments of truth and hilarity and heart-wrenching sadness and sheer beauty and poetry in prose. Beyond Grimm was no exception. Although we started with "let's retell classic fairy tales," our imaginations took us in other directions as well - the sun-drenched islands of Greek mythology, legends from the frozen north, Arthurian tales, nursery rhymes, even my own riff on the plots of classical ballets. Fairy-tale lands, contemporary urban settings, magical and not-so-magical steeds, spells and epistles of the people's revolution, mysterious locked chambers and shape-shifters...moonlight and storms.

Here's the blurb:

Not your grandmother's fairy tales...
From the far-ranging imaginations of Book View Café authors comes this delirious collection of classic tales newly twisted into dark, dangerous, and occasionally hilarious re-tellings. From the golden isles of Greece to the frozen north, from fairytale castles to urban slums, join us on an unforgettable journey!

And....drum roll....

The Table of Contents...

Through Forests Dark and Grimm...
Hair Raising, by Pati Nagle
No Newt Taxes, by Patricia Rice
Rum Pelt Stilt’s Skin, by Alma Alexander
Of Rats and Cats and Teenagers, by Irene Radford
Tinderbox, by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff
Any Brave Boy, by Laura Anne Gilman

Across Golden Seas...
Elfleda, by Vonda N. McIntyre
Harpies Discover Sex, by Deborah J. Ross
To Serve A Prince, by Brenda Clough
The Rapture of Ancient Danger, by Sherwood Smith

In Another Part of the Forest...
Mending Souls, by Judith Tarr
Sister Anne, by Sylvia Kelso
Princess Dancer, by Sue Lange
Nimuë's Tale, by Madeleine E. Robins
Ricky Cowlicky, by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff
Little Red in the Hood, by Irene Radford

Around A Campfire...
Hero/Monster, by Amy Sterling Casil
To Ride Beyond the Wide World's End, by Judith Tarr
Turnabout, by Deborah J. Ross

Secrets Unveiled... [this last part is author bios, every bit as delightful and fanciful as the stories they contributed!]
Here's where to buy it, for only $4.99.

The cover photo was taken by my husband, Dave Trowbridge, and is the maze in our back yard.

Mirrored from my blog.

Just put up "Poisoned Dreams" on my blog (go here or click "Read A Story"). It's from Sword & Sorceress XI, 1994, and is one of my darker, more twisted tales, with an embittered, crippled fay and a princess willing to do anything, pay any price, to earn her father's love. I hope you enjoy it!

At the first stirring of the single uneaten cock, the fay lifted her head and turned eyes like milky opals toward the east. The delicately pointed ears that protruded through her matted amethyst hair quivered.  Ember-light reflected dully from the loop of iron around her neck, no thicker than a wire and joined by only a twist of rawhide that even a child could have pulled loose. Purplish discoloration spread across the moony skin from under the wire, leaving cracked, oozing scars. As the fay bent over the ashes once more, the movement shifted her tattered cloak to reveal the wings which hung, crippled, down her back.

With one finger, she traced over the runes, coaxing them from luck to dread and from dread to cowardice and from cowardice to mortal terror. The King had commanded her to work a charm of victory for the morning's battle and so she would, but he had not said whose victory.