The Astronomer Who Met the North Wind
that I wanted to explore.
    Fairytales tend to start with the assumption that the good guys with the magic are the ones who know what’s best (the fairy godmother in “Cinderella”, the good fairies in “Sleeping Beauty”, the enchantress in “Beauty and the Beast”), but what if they don’t? How can a complete stranger, even a magical one, know your own head and heart better than you? This led me to a more real world issue, that of well-meaning adults asking kids “What do you want to be when you grow up?” and then telling them (young girls in particular) that they don’t actually know what they want if their suggestion is too daring, too unusual, too anything. This is again a type of rescue, an attempt to protect the child from disappointment, or from things the adult deems “too hard” or “dangerous” for them. But again: whose head is this? Whose life? The scenario, both in real life and in the realm of fairytale, seemed ripe for challenging.
    Speaking of fairy tales, are you a fairy tale enthusiast? Do you have any favorites you’d like to share with our readers? Conversely, do you have a least favorite fairy tale (you must also tell us why, of course).
    I do love fairytales, but have always had issues with them. My least favorite is probably “Sleeping Beauty”, because it seems like Exhibit A in what I would call “stupid plot”—that is, the plot relies entirely on a stupid decision made by the characters, one that flies in the face of the story’s logic. In no version I have found, have I ever seen the princess’s parents sit down and say “You know, this spinning wheel thing is going to be a problem. We should tell our daughter about this curse so she can be wary of them.” The princess never knows WHY she has to stay away from spinning wheels, but if she did, there wouldn’t be a story. It annoys the heck out of me.
    By contrast, one of my favorite fairy stories was one I found in my school library in Ohio when I was about eight. It was called “Tatsinda”, and was about a little girl who came beyond a fog veil to a community of people who all looked the same. It’s a lovely story, with all the trappings of a fairytale, but turns a lot of the usual tropes sideways, which made it a rewarding read. I also really enjoyed “The Adventures of Amanda Greenleaf”, which was a collection of stories with fairytale elements that nearly every child in 1980’s-90’s Newfoundland (where my family is from) knew.
    My true love is folk stories and there are some more modern retellings that I absolutely love:
The City of Dragons
by Laurence Yep,
The Snow Child
by Freya Littledale,
The Girl Who Loved Wild Horses
by Paul Goble, and
The Polar Bear Son
by Lydia Dabcovich to name a few. The art in these books were what caught my attention as a child, but the stories are also beautiful.
    Tell us a bit about your experience writing short stories: what would you say are the advantages and potential pitfalls of writing short fiction?
    I used to joke that I could never write a short story, that my ideas required too much page space. In fact, I just took too long to get to the point. I learned a lot about story craft and short story craft in particular when I went to Odyssey Writing Workshop in 2013, and since then writing short stories has been challenging, but really rewarding! I’ve been lucky enough to have a few stories published (including “The Scrimshaw and the Scream” in
Women Destroy Fantasy
, “A Visit From the Hag” in
Crossed Genres
, and this story here at Book Smugglers!) and while I’m continuing to work on longer projects, short fiction has become one of my favorite vehicles for storytelling.
    There are so many advantages to short stories. Short fiction is one of the great vehicles for communicating ideas to people, to engaging in a conversation with society about things we take as “normal” or “the way things are.” A lot of punch can live in a small package! The potential

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