Adventures in Crafting with Words

This post is pulling double duty today. First up, An Inconvenient Princess.  The youngest and seventh child - Penny - meets Rapunzel.    Only,  unexpectedly, Penny has no magic - unlike her siblings.  It's expected that the seventh sibling have some sort of abilities, but Penny doesn't, and it disappoints everybody who encounters her. When Penny goes searching for her twin, Anneliese,  she literally finds herself in a tree.  With a tiger in a tree blocking her from climbing down, she calls on Mortimer to help get her somewhere safe.  Mortimer sends her to a tower where she meets Rapunzel.   Once they escape, sorta, Penny finds herself in the arms of Arthur. Arthur, you may recall from A Goose Girl.  He is Conrad's cousin and the younger prince. Chaos erupts as the trio begin searching for Anneliese.  Cases of mistaken identity - Penny IS Anneliese's almost identical twin.  Kidnapping.  And...

I am nearing the end of this Special Edition blog post series. A Little Mermaid (Aya Ling) is the fifth and second to the last book in the Entwined Tales series.  (The last comes out today.) Whereas the other tales focused on the female members of the Woodcutter family, this tale features a mermaid named Clio and a Prince named Lukas. Wait... you dear puzzled reader might be asking.  Where's Mortimer?  We just had Elisette's story, what about Martin? Or Annelise? Or Penny?  There's only two books left and three Woodcutter's children left? I'll get to some of these answers.  Promise. Clio is the youngest mermaid and loves to dance.  When she meets Lucanus - after she found herself tangled in kelp while practicing dancing - she falls tail over head for the older merprince.  To the point she can barely speak to him! Years later he returns and her tongue-tied mouth keeps her from getting his attention while her older sisters chase after him....

One of the things I like about the Entwined Tales series is that I'm getting a novella length trial run of authors that have been on my to-read pile or Amazon keeps recommending. Kenley Davidson is one of those authors.  Her The Andari Chronicles keeps appearing in my recommendations.  Her contribution handles another lesser known tale, The Frog Princess, with deftness. Wait? Don't you mean The Frog Prince?  No.  I mean The Frog Princess.  Three brothers (princes) are tasked with three impossible tasks in order to earn the crown.  A cursed maiden ends up helping the youngest brother. A Beautiful Curse follows Elisette on her mission to show that she is more than just a pretty face.  Her quest leads her to a library in Anura where she is reluctantly admitted as an apprentice.  Only she's admitted on trial terms: she can't distract the other apprentices and patrons, she must do her work, and no flirting. It's at the library where she...

A Bear's Bride is Book Three in the Entwined Tales series features Sophie.  Any readers of the previous two books can deduce that she's a handful. We start off with her sneaking off to visit her friend, Peter.  The very friend she's been forbidden from seeing.  Peter then proposes and they make plans to run away together. Until her father interrupts and informs Sophie he's accepted somebody else's offer for her hand.  Naturally, spirited Sophie runs off to Peter only to be reminded that her friend is a ladies man.  It's obvious that she didn't really want to marry Peter when she nicely ends their "engagement" and runs off alone. Hours later she finally calls the Fairy Godfather Mortimer for help.  In asking for a knight's assistance, Sophie gives him an idea.  Within moments they are countries away and in front of the palace of the cursed prince. By day Henri is cursed to be a bear.  By night he is a human. Impulsively they marry....

Okay, Brittany Fichter has been in my to-read-eventually list for ages.  What a better time to be introduce to her writing than with this Entwined Fairy Tales series? An Unnatural Beanstalk is the second tale in the series and is based off of Jack and the Beanstalk.  Obviously. While one of the lesser known tales, Jack and the Beanstalk has one major plot line despite the many variations.  Jack has to go sell the family cow and is offered Magic Beans.  Jack, probably thinking more about what can be done with the beans, accepts the trade.  His mother, angered, flings the beans out the window.  Overnight the beans grow and grow and grow up into the clouds.  Up to a kingdom of giants. Here is where the tales I've read vary.  Jack defeats the giants.  He also rescues a princess or a golden goose. Fichter's version adds a welcome twist to this original story. Eva - younger sister to Rynn from The Goose Girl (Book One) was granted ...

Recently I discovered that a few of my favorite fairy tale retalers have joined together for an intertwined fairy tale journey. The Entwined Fairy Tales series featuring six books begins with KM Shea's The Goose Girl. This tale follows the eldest girl of a former woodcutter's family, Corynn also known as Rynn.  Rynn has taken a temporary assignment of escorting Princess Davina to her intended Prince in a different country. This is where things differ from the original tale.  Rynn does not like the princess, certainly.  She finds Princess Davina spoiled and silly.  Princess Davina is the one with the plan.  She doesn't want to marry the assumed hunchbacked Prince.  With a little help from her guards and a fairy gift, the Princess forces Rynn into pretending to be the princess. Rynn, filled with duty and doing what is right, is frustrated.  Threatened by the guards, constantly dropping hints at the Prince and his cousin Conrad, and trying...