Faery Tales & Nightmares

INTRODUCTION

IT’S NOT ALWAYS AS EASY TO SEE THE PATH when you’re on it, but looking back is often much clearer. In 2004, I wrote a short story, “The Sleeping Girl,” that turned into a novel (Wicked Lovely) that evolved into a series. At the time, I was homeschooling my kids, reading adventure with my son and YA books with my daughter, and still teaching university. A few years before that, I’d taught two defining courses. One was called “Girlhood Narratives.” It started with fairy tales and worked forward into novels. The second was simply called “The Short Story.” In retrospect, it’s pretty easy to see that my children and my teaching were influential in writing the fairy tale that started my career.

Since then, I’ve continued to mix fairy tales and folklore together in novels and short stories. They’re scattered in anthologies, ebook-only editions, and special editions of my novels, so I figured it might be nice to have some of them together in one book.

Well over half of these pages are taken up by Wicked Lovely world stories; the rest of the pages are reserved for other worlds. These are stories pulled from lore and nightmares, set in places I’ve visited and places I’ve imagined. In the tales, you’ll find a selchie story influenced by Solana Beach, CA; a tale of vampires inspired by parties I once went to in a dead-end town I won’t name; a goblin encounter set in the woods where I once picked berries; and a tale of dark contentment in a mountain town that owes a debt of gratitude to a Violent Femmes song I love. Of course, you’ll also spend time with the Wicked Lovely faeries who have lived in my head and my novels since 2004. I hope you enjoy them.