• Summer Reading Freebies

    My Latest Short Story Ready for Summer!

    Hello, my friends,

    My latest short story is here! Hurrah. I’m excited. There’s a chance I’ll expand on this idea, but as of right now this is what I’ve written and will let it swirl around my mind until I feel called to keep writing in the world of ocean kingdoms, empires, and merfolk’s life with the surface people. 

    The working blurb (as of right now):

     

    “Rory has a secret. A secret very few people know about.

    She is the daughter of the Kraken King – a sea monster. Masquerading as a human when on dry land she must keep up the facade in order to protect her family and others like her. On top of it all, she must keep human interaction to a bare minimum – except she has fallen in love with a surface boy. 

    When her true identity is threatened to be revealed she must decide whether to risk showing her true self in the name of love or break off her relationship with the hope of keeping her family safe.”

    ‘Beyond the Sea’ is part of a few free e-book group giveaways this summer. Please feel free to check out the other books in these giveaways as it will help out other indie authors like me. Click ‘Beyond the Sea’ cover to take you straight to the e-book download and/or click the giveaway banners below to peruse other titles.

    The cover for ‘Beyond the Sea’ was created by ‘Covered Creatively’ and I love it. Please check her stuff out. 

    Thank you for all your support.

    JT Harris.

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  • Fairy Tales and Costumes

    A few years ago, there was a missed opportunity for me to dress up my daughter as Red Riding Hood and my son as the wolf (a lumberjack-type werewolf to be exact) for Halloween, but my son had his heart set on being a different character, so I put the idea on the back burner. This year for Halloween the idea came back into my mind: I wanted to have a Little Red Riding Hood group to go out trick or treating. It would be fun. I tried asking my kids if they wanted to do the idea with me, but they are still young to understand the fun of being in a costume group. They have their own ideas and I love their imaginations and want them to dress-up as anything they wish. Alas, the Red Riding Hood group would have to wait. 
     
    Who Am I kidding? As much as I love to write I also love to create characters, and costuming is another one of my creative outlets. If my son and daughter wouldn’t be part of the fairy tale group I would make one with my husband (the woodcutter/ lumberjack), myself (Red Riding Hood), and my dog (the big bad wolf). This group will happen!
     
    Fairy Tales have been apart of my childhood and probably lit the fire for my love of stories and, at the very least, kept me in the dreams and wonder of where the fairy tales could take me. As a child, the fairy tales told to me or read by me were often the lighter versions of their darker counterpart, but as I grew older I began to explore the origins of these stories and, my goodness, were these ever creepy and sometimes down right disturbing. (Halloween and fairy tales seem to be a great fit, am I right?) 
     
    Despite the ‘grim’ stories (pun intended) there are gold nuggets among the pages. Many authors in the past decade have searched these fairy tales and put their own twist to these stories of old and have come out with amazing retold stories of their own. Red Riding Hood has been told and re-told time and time again, each with small changes that make it slightly different than the last. Some re-told Riding Hood stories have been changed so much that they are hardly recognizable. Two things remains the same. The person with the red hood and a depiction of a wolf. 
     
    Any hint of the essence of fairy tales being told in a story, consider my interest piqued.
     
    Tell me, what are your favourite fairy tales of old or new?
     
    Until next time, keep creating.
     
    Inkblade Writer.
    http://Photo credit: chiaralily via Visualhunt.com / CC BY-NC