Hark! Who goes there?

It is me! JT! And that rhyme was totally planned. :)

I’ve been slacking on blog posts. But posts are about the only thing I’ve been slacking on. I’m presently working full time, which is mining a lot of my time and energy. I’m not writing as much as I was prior to going back to work, but I’m still writing a lot.

I’ve been working on Tales from Vindheim—an anthology that follows Cinderella, Snow-white, Red Riding Hood, and Rapunzel after the events in Twilight Wolf. It took a while to figure out what Rapunzel’s story would be about, which is why I started on her story last. Now that I have, her story has proved to have far more going on than any of the others and she’s sort of pointed out some weaknesses in those other tales. Those other three stories were always drafts, but I’ll likely do a fair bit of rewriting/restructuring with them now.

I’m having a lot of fun with Rapunzel. She’s such an interesting character and her circumstances are quite unique. She grew up as a girl in a bubble. She lived in a witch’s tower and was surrounded by magic. Her only contact with the outside “normal” world was the prince that she allowed to climb up her hair. He insisted that her tower was not how the normal world worked and, eventually, she came to have doubts.

When Rapunzel is finally free of the tower, both the witch and the prince are out of the picture. When she emerges in a post-apocalyptic world that’s overrun by a zombie hivemind, this is her first experience with the outside world. So, how is she to know that this isn’t what “normal” looks like? On top of that, she doesn’t know what magic is. She grew up with it as part of her everyday life, so that’s what normal was for her. And with her tower magic absent, it leads her to believe that something is broken in the world.

As you can imagine, this story somewhat dwarfs (ha! puns…because fairy tales) the others. And it has led me to craft this set of stories as something closer to a novel rather than an anthology. I’m struggling a little bit with the amount of POVs though. There are currently seven: Cinderella & Gideon (Prince), Red Riding Hood & Jack (Huntsman), Snow-white & Beldigras (Prince), and Rapunzel. So, crafting that into a linear story line has proved a bit of a chore.

Enter Inako and Lonnie. Lonnie is a side character from Twilight Wolf, while Inako is someone that comes after the conclusion of the Grim Legacy series. I wanted the anthology to be told from third person limited, but Lonnie is going to step in as a narrator, introducing the characters before transitioning to something close to third person limited. This is essentially two more perspectives though (FML), but I think they are necessary to make the others cohesive.

I’ll let you know how that plays out. Until then, be sure to check in on Rapunzel’s story. She’s a bit…wild. So, if you like anti-heroes with borderline psychopathic tendencies, you might find her fun to follow :)

Lastly, I’m currently hovering over a new name for this story:

Vinheim Tales
The God, the Hero, the Sister, and the Friend

I think it has a nice ring to it and I think you’ll agree once you figure out what the subtitle means. :)

Happy reading!
JT