Elijah David

Fairy Tale Central is doing some daily challenges on Instagram featuring OTPs (One True Pairings) as part of their celebration of all things fairy tale this month. For those of us who wind up doing these things in blog form, Arielle had kindly shared the full listing on her own blog here . Fairy Tale OTP Challenge: 1. The first fairy tale OTP you shipped      Probably Beauty and the Beast or Aladdin and Jasmine. These are the earliest fairy tales I can remember getting deeply involved in. 2. The cliché fairy tale OTP that everyone ships but you still love      I think I'll probably go with Snow and Charming from Once Upon a Time. Do I sometimes feel like they get too much of the spotlight in later seasons? Yes, but their relationship is wonderful in the first few seasons as we see them fight for each other. 3. Your favorite hate-to-love fairy tale OTP      I'm assuming this is an enemies to lovers trope rather than an ex...

I've seen this tag show up in a few places, but Kate over at Seek Him First was the first I saw put an authorial twist on it and answer based on her own stories. I liked the idea so much I had to try it myself. ON THE FIRST DAY OF CHRISTMAS, MY TRUE LOVE SENT TO ME: A PARTRIDGE IN A PEAR TREE. The partridge stood alone in the pear tree. What is your favorite standalone novel? Definitely There's No Place Like Home? because I think it's probably the strongest of the few standalone books I've written. I can't wait to dive into editing it later next year. ON THE SECOND DAY OF CHRISTMAS, MY TRUE LOVE SENT TO ME: TWO TURTLE DOVES. Love is in the air! Who is your one true pairing? So, this is a tricky question because the Albion series has its fair share of pairings, but with only the first book released, none of them are exactly "canonical" yet. But the one pairing that's fairly set up (or at least implied to be in the early stages) in Albion Acade...

Yesterday's prompt for the April Fae art challenge was Portal. Since I've been doing a poem a day this month as well as the art challenge, I started brainstorming what a portal poem might be like -- and what portals have been special to me over the years. The tendency in fantasy movies and shows like Once Upon a Time is to have a swirling vortex as the gateway between worlds. (I'm not immune to this image. In fact, the main method of inter-world travel in the Non de Velai books is a shimmering silver pool, though it often appears between two trees.) But the portals that appear in fiction are often more varied than that. The first portal stories I can remember seeing were The Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland . The portals in these stories are naturally occurring phenomena: a tornado/twister/cyclone (whatever term you prefer) and a rabbit hole. While tornadoes weren't common where I grew up (outside of hurricane season), holes in the ground were common enoug...

I mentioned on Wednesday that I had a couple of worlds populated with characters who might or might not have made it into the sketchbook. Since I've mentioned a couple of these projects before, and since most of them have Pinterest boards, I thought I'd lay out what the larger universe (or multiverse) looks like, beyond Albion Academy . Note that most of what's on this list exists either in rough draft or (more commonly) as ideas and outlines. So far only Albion Academy  and some of the John Valley stories are published. Our World Or at least, a fictional version of it. Home to wizards, cyborgs, vampires, and a great deal of things that fall into the cracks in between. There are 4 main sub-series set here. The Albion Quartet - 4 books dealing with Merlin Pendragon, magic, Albion Academy, and the Faerie Court; there are also some short stories set in this timeline, along with a novella about Robin Goodfellow; Book 1 ( Albion Academy ) is published; Book 2 ( Albion Ap...