#TwitterFiction Festival: 100 Greek Myths in 100 Tweets (The Full Story 21-40)

More expanded explanations from my ongoing mythic tweet marathon...Endymion to Echo and Narcissus

Bored shepherd woos Moon! Selene brokers eternal sleep deal for mortal lover! Says sex life now 'well dreamy'! 50 kids ensue
Endymion the demigod shepherd and Selene the Moon goddess fall in love.  Selene asked Zeus to make her lover immortal, so he put Endymion (his son) into an eternal sleep, and Selene entered his dreams and made love to him there.  They had 50 daughters together.

Philemon & Baucis feed godly hobos. Zeus & Hermes reward '2 Best Humans on Earth'! Save generous couple from dire flood fate
Zeus and Hermes wander the world as tramps in an attempt to find some 'good humans'.  The only ones they can find are Baucis and Philemon, who feed them and take care of them. These two are therefore the only ones saved from the Great Flood, and afterwards they are turned into an oak and lime tree, whose roots intertwine eternally.

Ace weaver Arachne in saucy tapestry stand-off with Athene! Owl goddess stuns impudent spinner with spider-change sentencing
Mortal Arachne thinks she's better at weaving than Athene herself.  The goddess challenges her to a competition, and Arachne weaves a picture of the gods in compromising and ridiculous positions.  Athene is so angry that she changes Arachne into a spider.

Midas in Golden Touch Tragedy! Barber reveals 'shameful secret' of royal asses' ears! Pointy caps now must-have palace môde
Rich king Midas rues the day he asks Dionysius to turn everything he touches to gold. When he tries to hug his own daughter or eat a crust of bread, he finds that they too have turned to the precious metal.  After the god has taken off the spell, Midas has to judge a music competition between Pan and Apollo. When he chooses Pan, Apollo punishes the king by giving him asses' ears.  Midas swears everyone to secrecy, but is betrayed by his barber.  The king sets a new fashion trend by wearing a tall Phrygian cap to cover his shame, and all in the palace soon follow him.

Bragging Niobe rues boastful ways! 14 kids charcoaled/frozen by Sun & Moon! Stone queen weeps streams from new mountain home
Queen Niobe of Thebes has fourteen beautiful children, all twins.  She boasts that she is better than the goddess Leto, and makes her people worship her.  Leto calls on her own twins, Artemis (moon goddess) and Apollo (sun god), to turn the children into piles of ice and charcoal. Niobe herself cries so much over the loss of her children that she is turned into a statue on Mount Sipylus by Zeus, where she weeps streams of tears from her stone face.

'My Grasshopper Husband!' Dawn goddess despairs! Tithonus shrinks in bug drama! 'It's all Zeus's fault!' cries agitated Eos
Eos the Dawn goddess falls in love with Tithonus, and ask Zeus to have her husband made immortal.  Zeus is in a temper that day, so he obliges, but without also keeping Tithonus young and handsome.  Eventually, Eos's husband ages, shrinks, and turns into a grasshopper, which Eos keeps in a basket by her bed.

Apollo in resentful rage! Scorpion sting fells mighty Orion! Sun god 'sorry', sends hunter to stars! Artemis inconsolable 
Virgin huntress Artemis has a cousin called Orion, a great hunter.  Because she spends so much time with him, her brother Apollo gets jealous, sends a scorpion to sting Orion's heel, and kills him.  Artemis is so sad that Apollo eventually puts Orion (and his belt) in the stars to shine forever.

Forbidden feast fiasco! Tantalus's taboo 'Son Surprise' a dud for deities!  'Did he need more salt?' asks cannibal demi-god
Tantalus decides to give the gods a treat by giving them something to eat they've never had before.  Unfortunately he serves up his son, Pelops, in a stew.  The gods are rightly revolted, bring Pelops back to life, and send Tantalus to the Underworld to be punished for eternity.  He is set in a pool of water with a bunch of delicious grapes over his head, which he can neither touch nor eat.

Poseidon confesses agony over absent Amphitrite! Delphinus in quest for God's missing missus! Petulant pair kiss & make up
Poseidon wants to marry Amphitrite, daughter of Nereus, the Old Man of the Sea.  But Amphitrite is unwilling, and hides.  Poseidon send the dolphin messenger, Delphinus as his ambassador, and eventually Amphitrite agrees to return as the sea god's bride.

Contest splits citizens! Athene or Poseidon? Wisdom goddess wins with nifty tree trick! Athenians choose olives over ocean
Poseidon and Athene fight over who will have a certain piece of land for their capital city on earth.  They agree to let the people decide between them.  Poseidon gives a gift of a fountain of salt water, Athene gives an olive tree.  The people choose the goddess of wisdom, and Athens is born.

Evil innkeeper executed! Theseus in close shave with expanding bed! 'Procrustes nearly stretched me to death!' reveals hero
Theseus is on his way to meet his father, when he stops at an inn for the night.  The wicked robber Procrustes has made his living for years by luring tired travellers into his 'special bed' (more like a torture rack!), where he then stretches them to death, cuts them up, and steals their possessions.  Theseus kills Procrustes and escapes.

Sharp-eyed Sisyphus spots sexy shenanigans!  Sneaky Zeus found out in illicit nymph affaire! Turns lover Aegina into island!
King Sisyphus misses nothing, including the fact that Zeus is having an illicit affair with Aegina, daughter of the river-god Asopus.  He tells Asopus what he has seen, and the irate father bursts in on the lovers, taking them by surprise.  Zeus disappears, after turning the nymph into the island of Aegina.

Phaëton pinches Sun chariot! Runaway race ends in shattering smash with stars! Troubled teen's tragic end saddens dad Helios
Helios (who pulls the sun across the sky every day with his golden chariot) has a rebellious son.  One day, Phaëton steals chariot and horses, and tries to drive them across the heavens, with disastrous results.  The horses bolt, and pull the sun too far away from the earth, bumping into stars on the way.  Zeus hurls a thunderbolt to stop the runaway boy, and kills him.

Party god Dionysius concocts treacherous tipple! 'Hic!" slurs hungover Hermes, "Ish bloody brilliant thish wine stuff!"
A bored Dionysius (god of revels) tips some grapes into a barrel and dances on them.  Sometime later, he finds it has fermented and turned into wine.  The gods get drunk, and he becomes god of wine.

Leda in erotic antics with sensuous swan! 'Feathers turn me on!' preens satisfied Queen! Rainbow eggs due to hatch tomorrow
Zeus makes love to Leda, queen of Sparta, in the form of a swan.  She produces two beautiful rainbow eggs, which eventually hatch Helen (of Troy), Clytemnestra, Castor and Polydeuces (Pollux).

Exclusive! 'God of War a coward' says secret source. 'Teensy cut made him blubber like a baby!' Ares issues violent denial 
Eris (Discord) and Ares (God of War) go into battle in a flying chariot.  Ares is wounded and makes a horrible fuss, because he is a coward at heart. Zeus heals him, but Ares' secret is now out.

Cowstealing baby hits headlines on Olympus! Apollo outfoxed & furious! 'Tee hee! Can't catch me!' giggles wily infant Hermes
Baby god Hermes steals all Apollo's cows and hides them where the sun god can't find them, making all the gods laugh at him for being outwitted by an infant. Eventually Hermes gives the cows back, and appeases Apollo's hurt feelings by inventing the lyre for the sun god (who is also the god of music).

Sisyphus Sharp-Eyes defies death no further! Cunning King takes up eternal  boulder-pushing burden after Hades appeal fails
Zeus is angry with King Sisyphus of Corinth after the king betrayed him over the nymph Aegina (see above).  He asks his brother Hades to drag Sisyphus down to the Underworld and punish him.  Sisyphus tricks Hades by various means, but when he eventually died of old age and went down to join Hades, the god of death made him push a boulder up a hill, and arranged it so that poor Sisyphus never got to the top.

Scorned Hera plots revenge! Moos of protest from love rival Io! 'Let Zeus screw that stupid cow NOW!' hisses spurned spouse
Zeus has an affair with the nymph, Io, which makes Hera (his wife and Queen of the Gods) very angry.  She turns Io into a cow, and sends a gadfly to chase her all over Greece.

Narcissus falls for own reflection! 'I abtholutely ADORE mythelf!' lisps vain youth as girlfriend Echo fades to a shadow
The chattering nymph Echo is in love with the handsome Narcissus, who only has eyes for his own reflection, and can't make him take any notice of.  Hera is annoyed with her whiny voice, and makes Echo only able to repeat what has been said to her. The nymph eventually turns into a ghost, and then to a voice in the air, echoing sadly.

Click HERE for Part 1: Myths 1-20 Creation to the Minotaur
Click HERE for Part 3: Myths 41-60 Actaeon to Autolycus
Click HERE for Part 4: Myths 61-80 Death of Heracles to Odysseus's Call-up for the Trojan War
Click HERE for Part 5: Myths 81-100 Philoctetes to Odysseus's Return to Ithaca (the whole Iliad and Odyssey)

You can find more detail on these stories in my book,

Atticus the Storyteller's 100 Greek Myths

which was written for children, but also seems to be the 'ready reference' book of choice for many university Classics students.  It's available HERE

#TwitterFiction Festival: 100 Myths in 100 Tweets (The Full Story 1-20)

This is for those who have asked to see my entire #twitterfiction offering in one place, with a very simple expanded explanation.  Anyone who wants even more detail can find it in my book,

Atticus the Storyteller's 100 Greek Myths

which was written for children, but also seems to be the 'ready reference' book of choice for many university Classics students.  It's available HERE

The first 20 - Creation to the Minotaur

Earth/Sky divorce rocks Heavens! Sky dooms own kids to Tartarus! Cronos gelds Sky in shock sickle strike! Earth weds Sea! 
This is the creation story of Gaia and Ouranos (Mother Earth and Father Sky). Gaia and Ouranos married, made the earth and sky and had beautiful Titan children (including Cronos). They were happy for a while,  but then Gaia gave birth to a series of one-eyed Cyclops kids, plus a crowd of hideous hundred-armed monsters. Ouranos hated these and wanted to lock them up in the Underworld prison of Tartarus.  Gaia objected violently to this, loving all her children equally, and gave Cronos a magic stone sickle with which he gelded his father and sent him fleeing to the far heavens, never to return.  Gaia then married Pontus, the Sea.

Sulky Cronos swallows 5 godlets! Wife Rhea devastated! Gran Gaia’s secret stone supper saves baby Zeus from dad’s greedy gob
Cronos married his Titan sister Rhea, but remembering what he'd done to his own father, decided to swallow his own children as each was born.  Rhea asked Gaia for help, and Mother Earth suggested hiding the next baby (Zeus) and feeding Cronos a stone instead.

Metis feeds pa-in-law toxic brew! Cronos vomits 5 furious deities, flees minus mighty powers! Zeus declared Lord of Universe 
Zeus married the Titan Metis, who tricked Cronos into drinking an emetic. Cronos vomited up the stone, plus his children Hades, Poseidon, Hestia, Demeter and Hera, who then attacked their father.  Cronos dropped his powers, which Zeus then picked up, and ran into hiding, just as his own father had.  Zeus picked them up and declared himself King of the Universe.

Triple god power share! Zeus seizes Heavens/Earth! Hades grabs Underworld domain! Brother Poseidon snatches Seas for self
After a battle with the Titans (who they then banished to Tartarus), Zeus, Hades and Poseidon divided the realms of earth and heaven between them.  The now-freed Cyclopes, who had been their allies in that battle made them gifts - a helmet of darkness for Hades, a trident for Poseidon and magic thunder and lightning bolts for Zeus.

Gods battle Gaia’s monster brood! 100-headed Typhon trapped under Mount Etna, fat snake mate Echidna flees! Deities triumph
Gaia was furious that her Titan children were banished, and gave birth to the appalling monsters Echidna and Typhon, who then attacked the gods.  Typhon was finally trapped under Mount Etna in Sicily, and Echidna fled to Greece.

Daedalus takes rap from vexed monarch Minos! Cunning wax-winged escape leads to tragedy! Sun-struck son Icarus in sea plunge
This is the story of Daedalus and his son Icarus.  After Theseus (see below) had fought the Minotaur and escaped from the maze which imprisoned it (which Daedalus had designed), King Minos of Crete condemned the inventor and his boy to a tower.  Daedalus made wings for them both out of beeswax and pigeon feathers, and they flew away.  Icarus, however, flew too close to the sun, the wax melted, and he fell to his death in the sea.

Prometheus in ‘sneaky’ fire snatch! Zeus chains to rock, condemns to daily liver ripping! Giant eagle says 'Yum!' to new job 
Prometheus (one of the 'good Titans' who were not imprisoned in Tartarus) stole fire from the gods and brought it to warm the humans living on earth. A furious Zeus comdemned Prometheus to be chained to a rock in the Caucasus and to have his liver torn out every day by a giant eagle.

Prying Pandora gets nosy! Opens forbidden box! Lets vile evils into unsuspecting world! 'Only Hope left!' sobs weeping teen
Epimetheus (brother to Prometheus) has been given the task of guarding a box. His wife, the incurably inquisitive Pandora, can't resist opening the box, thus releasing the evils of anger, jealousy, greed, envy etc out into the world.  Only Hope is left at the bottom of the box.

Man destroyed by Flood! Deucalion’s Ark in 11th hour rescue of birds/beasts! Pyrrha remakes humans in stone spell surprise
This is the Greek version of The Great Flood (Noah's Ark).  Deucalion, son of Prometheus, and his wife, Pyrrha save the animals in a great boat, and then repopulate the earth with humans by throwing 'the bones of Mother Earth' (ie stones) over their shoulders.

'You’ll never sit in MY lap,' claims coy Hera! Zeus fools shy fiancée with cuckoo con trick! Olympian wedding bells ring out
Hera refuses to marry Zeus (her brother) unless he can sit in her lap without her noticing.  Zeus turns into a cuckoo and flies into Hera's room, wet and bedraggled from a storm of his own making.  Hera comforts the poor bird, and takes him into her lap, whereupon he turns back into Zeus and makes her keep her promise.

Hades in Kore kidnap sensation! Demeter’s deft daughter deal seals seasons! Queen of Underworld returns spring to cold world
Hades kidnaps Kore, the daughter of Demeter, goddess of harvest, and takes her to the Underworld to be his queen.  As Demeter searched in vain, the world turned cold and wintry - spring never came.  After some negotiation, it was agreed that Kore (now Persephone) would return to the world as spring/summer for nine months of the year, and spend the rest (autumn/winter) in the Underworld as Hades' wife.

Aphrodite arises! Ouranos blood births goddess in sea foam spectacle! Beauty’s love arrows take aim, pierce hearts everywhere
Ouranos let fall three drops of blood when he was gelded.  One of them fell into the ocean and changed to sea foam. This became Aphrodite, goddess of love, who married Hephaestus the blacksmith god.  She had a son called Eros (Cupid) who fired arrows to make people fall in love.

Zeus riled! Hurls craftsman son to earth! Hera in risky rescue! Lame Hephaestus wows gods with gorgeous gems, amazing armour
Zeus and his son Hephaestus had a row, and Zeus flung his son down to earth.  Hephaestus fell onto Lemnos, where he broke every bone in his body, and was lame thereafter.  Hera smuggled him back to Olympus, where he redeemed himself by making magic armour and beautiful things for the gods and goddesses.

Europa in bull beach sex scandal! Claims bulky bovine abductor 'was really Zeus'! Pregnant princess defies despairing dad
Europa meets a beautiful white bull on the beach (Zeus in disguise), which then carries her out to sea and has his way with her.  Despite Europa's father's objections, she married Zeus as his mortal wife, had sons and ruled Crete.

Zeus gifts captive Danäe with baby surprise! Grandpa Acrisius in foiled marine murder plot! Mum & Perseus saved by fisherman
Zeus made Danäe pregnant while she was locked up in a tower on the orders of her father.  After she gave birth to Perseus, her father put mother and baby in a chest, and threw it into the sea.  The chest washed up on Seriphos, where the two castaways were saved by a local fisherman.

Perseus aces ‘impossible’ quest! Cunning mirror ploy slays Medusa! Invisibility hat scuppers Gorgon sisters’ revenge plans
Perseus is given a quest by the evil king of Seriphos.  He has to kill the snake-haired gorgon, Medusa, who turns people to stone with a single look.  He uses Athene's magic mirror shield to avoid looking at her as he cuts off her head, then escapes from Medusa's gorgon sisters using Hermes' invisibility cap and winged sandals.

Rescued Andromeda dubs Perseus 'My Hero'! Pouting princess free from scary sea-monster fate! "It's Love" says smitten prince
Andromeda is tied to a rock, waiting to be sacrificed to a sea-monster.  Perseus rescues her, carries her off to Seriphos, and marries her, after turning the evil king to stone with Medusa's head and taking his throne for himself.

Apollo in successful snake skirmish! Python driven from Delphi! Psychic Sibyl prophesies Underworld career move for serpent
Apollo attacks the black Python who holds the shrine at Delphi and slays her with his arrows of the sun.  She flees to the Underworld and finds a new career whispering the names of the dead into Hades' ear.  Apollo puts his own Sibyl prophetess in her place, and the shrine becomes dedicated to the worship of the sun god.

Virgin naiad snubs sexy Sun God! 'Save me, Mother!' cries fleeing nymph Daphne! Gaia o-bays with timely tree transformation
Nymph Daphne flees from Apollo, and calls on Gaia for help.  Gaia turns her into a bay tree, so that the sun god can't touch her.

Theseus/Ariadne in Minotaur massacre. Shrewd string scheme saves sacrifices! Lovers' heartbreak leads to sail mix-up tragedy
Theseus is helped by Ariadne of Crete to defeat the Minotaur. She gives the hero a ball of string, so he can find his way out of the maze when the bull monster is dead.  They then flee, hoping to get married, but Zeus forbids it, and she marries the god Dionysius instead.  Theseus is so sad that he forgets to give the pre-agreed signal (white sails instead of black) when sailing into Athens, and his father Aegeus, seeing this, commits suicide by throwing himself off the cliffs at Sounion

Click HERE for Part 2: Myths 21-40 Endymion to Echo and Narcissus
Click HERE for Part 3: Myths 41-60 Actaeon to Autolycus
Click HERE for Part 4: Myths 61-80 Death of Heracles to Odysseus's Call-up to the Trojan War
Click HERE for Part 5: Myths 81-100 Philoctetes to Odysseus's Return to Ithaca (the whole Iliad and Odyssey)

FANTABULOUS FRIDAYS A-Z: W FOR WERES WITH CURTIS JOBLING

Scribble City Central's fortieth Fantabulous Friday comes from Curtis Jobling, author of the Wereworld series, (and also creator of Bob the Builder, beloved by kids everywhere).  I first came across Curtis's Wereworld hero, Drew Ferran - the rightful king of Westland - back at the beginning of 2011 in the first book of the series, Rise of the Wolf. I described that book in a review as 'just my sort of thing...a tightly plotted gripper of a novel with some interesting and original twists to it'.

I haven't changed my mind as the series has grown and developed - Book 4, Nest of Serpents, was published earlier this year, and it's a cracker, with an injured Drew coming to the aid of the besieged Staglords, and a former foe reappearing at the worst moment.  Curtis writes in a vividly descriptive prose style which had me whipping through the pages at a rate of knots, eager to see what happens to Drew and his friends Hector, Gretchen and Whitley as they battle their way through the events of the Lyssian war. A fair splattering of bloodshed and brutality, brave (but badboy) boar warriors, renegade lion lords - and my favourite character of all, Vega the swashbuckling shark pirate - make this a series which should be on every boy's bookshelf.  The Times calls it 'a fantasy world...superior to Eragon, and great fun.'  I'd second that, and what's more, with CGI becoming ever more clever, I can see these books being made into brilliant films. Dreamworks, where are you?!

Given what I've said above, it's obvious that Curtis is just the man to explore the finer points of

W for Weres

Wolves & other Were Critturs

CJ: Although I've just had a look at Anne Rooney's fabulous previous guest post I already knew the Vampire had just bared his gnashers. Admittedly the Vampire has the advantage of being one step ahead of the Werewolf in the alphabet, as well as in many other mediums. In literature and on the big screen the Werewolf was always late to the party, very much a beast of the 20th Century whilst 'Ol' Toothy' before us was a darling of gothic novels and early European cinema. But for all that, the lycanthrope shares his hairy, scary roots with the Vampire, his legend born out of myth and folklore the world over.

Whilst the Vampire represents something seductive, exotic, equally enthralling and terrifying, your common or garden Werewolf is a beast of pure physical horror. The idea that a normal, happy human being can transform into a hideous ravenous beast is a staple of fables from every continent. The classic Werewolf origin lies firmly in Europe, via French myths such as the Beast of Gevaudan and Grimm's Faerie Tales, cautionary stories that warn children to stay away from the woods and the creatures that lurk within. Little Red Riding Hood didn't half give the lycanthrope bad press. But further back we had the Norsemen, ransacking their way across the continent, their 'Berserkers' leading the way in battle. These were warriors clad in bear or wolf skin cloaks who would supposedly acquire the physical characteristics of these animals, their ferocity in battle unequalled.

But across sea and ocean one can find other shapeshifting legends: Werejackals in the Congo, Wereowls in China, aboriginal terrors in Australia and native American nasties too! Every culture understands and retells the myth of the man turning into monster, and unsurprisingly this has inspired writers across the planet. My own love of the Werewolf comes from the old movies and TV shows I watched as a kid. Universal Studios have a lot to answer for, specifically the appearances of Lon Chaney's Wolfman character in the old black and white 'Creature Features'. But there's also British Fayre that frightened the wits out of me, old Hammer House of Horror shows from the Seventies that I watched with my dad, leaping off the sofa as some furry-faced Werewolf suddenly appeared at a window (see: Children of the Full Moon). As I grew and hair started to appear all over my good self (not in a lycanthropic way, alas, but something far more awkward - curse you, puberty!) my taste in horror expanded accordingly, as I fell in love with now legendary horror movies The Howling and An American Werewolf In London, films that dragged the lycanthrope kicking and howling towards the end of the century.

The Werewolf I know, love and admire is the bipedal beast, walking on two legs, the marriage of man and animal. I'd us the term 'Manimal' here but that particular concept has already been done, to equally inspiring effect upon an eleven year old me in the TV show of aforementioned name! Indeed the special effects wizard behind the make-up in this show was Rick Baker, the man who created the terrifying American Werewolf transformation visual effects, and thereby responsible for many fevered dreams in my youth. That and Jenny Agutter, but we won't go there right now, I don't know who's reading this, Lucy! In folklore the lycanthrope was a man shifting entirely into a wolf, but my favoured version was the one immortalised in The Wolfman, the upright horror which was far more terrifying. Hollywood is entirely to blame for this kind of Werewolf, and for that I thank Hollywood profusely.

So how does the Werewolf inspire me as a writer? My twin loves have always been fantasy and horror, and whilst living on the moors in North Yorkshire many moons ago - American Werewolf country, don'tcha know? - that's where Wereworld first came to me, a marriage of the two genres. I saw more to play with than just Werewolves though, imagining a world where many different kinds of shapeshifters ruled: Bears, Lions, Stags and Rats- these are just a few of the Werelords who appear in the first novel, Rise of the Wolf, and as the series progresses we open the world up to the reader. The canvas is vast, the variety of different animals who can be realised as Werelords almost limitless. As the title of book one intimates, it wouldn't be a Werewolf story without the appearance of a lupine hero, and we have that in Drew Ferran, a farmer's son on the brink of manhood. He's going through changes, hair sprouting all over the shop when the moon comes out, his body burning up, guts twisting about and finding fresh homes. Rise is a rollercoaster ride as we follow Drew, last of the Werewolves and rightful king of the realm, as he's chased across the Seven Realms of Lyssia by the wicking King Leopold the Lion and his agents, out of the frying pan and into the fire, encountering all manner of exotic Werelord along the way.

You might be able to tell that the Werewolf in my story is a good guy. Well, the lycanthrope's had a tough time down the years as everybody's go-to, hairy-arsed villain. I wanted to consider the wolf as the hero here, so Drew really does have to step up to the plate. It was a balance that I felt needed redressing, especially as so many of my childhood nightmares had revolved around the fascinating monsters. Another word I've brought into use into the Wereworld series is 'therianthropy' - rather than just relying upon the word lycanthrope (which obviously is only relevant to a wolf), the therianthrope is any man or woman who can shift into a specific kind of beast. And I'm not making this up - have a looksie, google it, you'll find the word existed before muggins here coined it in Wereworld. So, a Bearlord would be an ursanthrope, a Hawklord an avianthrope etc.

As a result of incorporating these many other therian races into Wereworld, I'm very much hoping I've brought my own spin to Werewolf mythology. Setting it in the fantasy world of Lyssia allows me free reign over the do's and don'ts of the lycanthrope myth - whilst silver is harmful to a shapeshifter in this world, there are other ways of killing a therianthrope: fire, decapitation, a clean blow to the heart. My Werelords can also master the beast within - by controlling their therianthropy this gives them an even greater advantage in battle: brawn and brains.

I'm just editing book five in the Wereworld series presently, Storm of Sharks, which will be released into the wild early next year. A sixth book will follow bringing the tale to a close... for now. If you like your fantasy with a soupcon of horror, chances are Wereworld is a fit for you. Or if you're a lover of all things shapeshifty and lupine, you may enjoy this fantasy romp. But most of all, if you've grown up fearful of the dark things that lurk in the woods, do give Wereworld a read: hopefully I've dispelled the myth that big bad ears, big bad eyes and big bad pointy teeth doesn't always mean big bad news.

Curtis, November 2012
UK:  http://wereworldbooks.com
US: http://wereworldseries.com
Twitface:  @curtisjobling

SCC: I'm champing at the bit to read Storm of Sharks (more Vega - yay!) and will have to read the whole lot all over again before book six comes out.  What a treat in store.  Thank you so much for a fab post, Curtis - I'm off to revisit Lon Chaney, and I'm sure others here will be doing the same.

You can buy the first book in Curtis's Wereworld series HERE

Next week: Lauren St John, award-winning author of the White Giraffe series and many other wonderful books, takes on X for Xanthos.  See you then! 

FANTABULOUS FRIDAYS A-Z: V FOR VAMPIRE WITH ANNE ROONEY

Scribble City Central's thirty-ninth Fantabulous Friday comes from Anne Rooney.  Anne has written literally hundreds of books for children and young adults on a myriad subjects, ranging from physics through grim, gross and grisly facts about the human body to picture books about monsters.  She is also a mine of information on all sorts of esoteric subjects, an expert on Arthurian myth and a Royal Literary Fellow as well as a reviewer and journalist for the New Humanist. If I need to know about, say, hagfish vomit, I go to Anne first!

Her most recent series of books mixes an ancient vampire lord with a bunch of YouTube Generation Y teens. These short novels (written for kids who want good YA stories, but may not be particularly competent readers) start with the discovery of a body in a forest (spiked with a tent peg, naturally), and follow the lives of the six teenagers as they are drawn into the world of a centuries-old vampire lord. Some of the settings are suitably glamorous - New York, Paris - and others more unusual - Kosovo.  Each book focuses on a different character, but all have one thing in common - an authentic teen voice and a gripping, page-turning story.  If you know a reluctant young reader, I'd definitely recommend taking a look at these for them. Anne is a mistress of the art of research, and naturally, the world of the undead is now at her fingertips.  She has no fear of them, she maintains, and trust me when I say she'll tell you everything you ever wanted to know about

V for Vampires

Bloodsucking Dead 'Uns

AR:

They grind the land like corn;
Knowing no mercy.
They rage against mankind;
They spill men’s blood like rain,
Devouring their flesh and sucking their veins.

Babylonian incantation against vampires

Everyone knows what a vampire is, right?

Vampire by Munch

Spiky teeth, sleeps in a grave by day, rampages in a cloak by night, sporadically sucking blood from hapless victims and changing into a bat to fly up to high windows where unwary lovelies wait with bared necks. Aversion to garlic, crucifixes, stakes through the heart and frazzling sunlight. But is it true?

Hammer Horror has a lot to answer for; Bram Stoker a little more. But vampires didn’t start with Dracula, just as rubbish school dinners didn’t start with Jamie Oliver. We were scraping out tapioca into the pig-bin in the sixties, and vampires were sucking the blood out of the hapless in Mesopotamia.
The first ‘modern’ vampire story is John Polidori’s The Vampyr, started at the same horror-fest in 1816 as Frankenstein. But it was Stoker’s Dracula that propelled vampires into the limelight and secured their tenure in cinema history.

Stoker is sometimes accused of playing fast and loose with vampire culture, but he did do a great deal of research – so his deviations were informed choices. He travelled around eastern Europe interviewing the type of old peasants sitting in haunted pubs who later became extras by the dozen in vampire movies. His notebooks, recording the vampire-lore he discovered, have been published in a facsimile volume; a newly-discovered extra notebook is due to be published next year by Robson Press.

Page of Bram Stoker's Notes

But what about the pre-Jamie Oliver – sorry, Polidori – vampire?
The dead rising again to annoy the living and suck their blood get everywhere and always have done. The quotation at the top is taken from a Babylonian stone tablet about 4,000 years old, part of an incantation against vampires. The Greeks and Romans had their versions of vampires, too, and cultures from Japan to South America have their own versions of blood-suckers.

In Ghana, the asanbosam hangs from hooked feet in a tree waiting for passing victims.

The fully-fledged, familiar, European vampire is a native of the Slavic and Balkan states. One of the earliest ‘proper’ vampire legends tells of an Istrian peasant called Giure Grando who died in 1656. Instead of lying peacefully in his grave and rotting away like a good, dead peasant, he took to roaming around his village sucking blood from people and sexually harassing his own widow. The villagers drove a stake through his body, but that wasn’t sufficient discouragement and the aggro didn’t stop until he had been beheaded.

The real trouble with vampires began with outbreaks in East Prussia in 1710 and 1721. Then there were epidemics in 1725-30 (Hungary), 1725-32 (Austrian Serbia), 1750 (East Prussia), 1755 (Silesia), 1756 (Wallachia), and Russia (1772). The best contemporary source is Dom Calmet’s treatise on vampirism, Traité sur les Apparitions des esprits et sur les vampires ou les revenans de Hongrie, de Moravie etc, 1749 (that’s the second edition). He collected all the vampire-lore he could find, and though he took a rather sceptical view, he reported it objectively. Voltaire seemed less sceptical, writing in his Dictionnaire philosophique (1764):

“These vampires were corpses, who went out of their graves at night to suck the blood of the living, either at their throats or stomachs, after which they returned to their cemeteries. The persons so sucked waned, grew pale, and fell into consumption; while the sucking corpses grew fat, got rosy, and enjoyed an excellent appetite. It was in Poland, Hungary, Silesia, Moravia, Austria, and Lorraine, that the dead made this good cheer.”

As Voltaire notes, the Habsburg empire was particularly susceptible to problematic vampires. In 1755 Empress Marie Thérèse of Austro-Hungary (mother of Marie Antoinette) commissioned her court doctor - Gerard van Swieten - to investigate. He travelled around Europe collecting reports of vampirism and eventually reported back that vampires didn’t exist.

“All the fuss doesn't come from anything else than a vain fear, a superstitious credulity, a dark and eventful imagination, simplicity and ignorance among the people.”
Abhandlung des Daseyns der Gespenster, 1768

Marie Thérèse passed a law to stop people immolating dead bodies to prevent them becoming vampires. In the backstory of Vampire Dawn, van Swieten is himself a vampire and is acting in self-interest when he makes that report.

So, how do you identify a vampire? Holes appearing in the earth above a grave is a good sign that there might be a vampire beneath. And in some places a horse won’t cross the grave of a vampire. If you dig up the grave, and the occupant is uncorrupted, possibly healthy looking and with blood around the mouth, or even ruddy-faced and bloated with blood, you probably do have a vampire problem.

If you’ve caught the vampire napping, it’s a fairly easy procedure. Staking through the heart is usually effective, preferably with ash (Russia and the Baltic states) or hawthorn (Serbia) or even oak (Silesia). Other methods include beheading, burning or, in the case of particularly persistent vampires, dismembering the corpse or removing the heart, burning it and mixing the ashes with water to feed to the vampire’s ailing victims.

Of course, prevention is better than cure, and areas plagued by vampires have a good set of preventive measures to stop the vampire coming back in the first place. If you find yourself in the position of having to bury someone you suspect might come back as a vampire, you can try any of these measures: cut off the head and put it between the feet; put a lemon in the proto-vampire’s mouth; lay a branch of hawthorn or wild rose over the corpse’s chest; bury the suspect with garlic or religious objects (such as a crucifix, rosary or holy water); spike or pin the suspect’s body or clothes to the ground; drive steel or iron needles into the heart; put hawthorn in the wannabe-vampire’s socks; shoot a bullet through the coffin; put pieces of steel over the ears and eyes, in the mouth and between the fingers; bury the body upside-down – or burn the body instead of burying it in the first place. Severing the tendons behind the knees also stops a vampire rising, presumably because it’s physically incapable of getting anywhere, and putting a sickle on the chest means the vampire will burst during transformation - as it swells, it impales itself.

Assuming you forgot to do any of that, or arrive in an area where the locals are lax in their vampire-prevention procedures, how can you deter a vampire? (You don’t have to get rid of it, you just have to dissuade it from picking on you personally.)

In some places, vampires are deterred by a mirror above the door, facing outwards. They can’t enter a house unless invited – but thereafter they can come and go as they please, so be careful who you let in. They can’t cross running water, and are deterred by seeds or sand on the ground or roof (because they are compelled to count the grains). Don’t fall into the trap of assuming you can just run around until daylight – the deadliness of sunlight to vampires is a modern innovation. The black/red cape is recent, too, dating from Hamilton Deane’s depiction of Dracula in 1924, so don’t depend on sartorial details for vampire-identification purposes.

The time-honoured way of becoming a vampire is to be bitten by one. But that’s not the only way. Slavic tradition tells that if an animal jumps over the corpse – especially a cat or dog – the corpse was in danger of returning in one form or another. A deadly wound not treated with boiling water could also turn someone to a vampire. In Russia, witches and people who rejected the Russian Orthodox Church could become vampires after death.

Romania is really vampire-central. It is, of course, the home of Dracula, and the area around the Carpathian mountains is supposedly crawling with vampires. (Although the original Dracula, Vlad Tepes (Vlad the Impaler) was ruler of Romania, he had no link with vampirism before the twentieth century; Stoker took his name just because it sounded good.)

Such is the enthusiasm of the Romanians for vampires that according to ethnologist Tatomir Vukanović they even fear vampire fruit, vegetables and inanimate objects such as farm implements and chairs. Any object left outside on the night of the full moon is susceptible to becoming a vampire.

“The belief in vampires of plant origin occurs among [Gypsies] who belong to the Mosl[em] faith in [Kosovo-Metohija]. According to them there are only two plants which are regarded as likely to turn into vampires: pumpkins of every kind and water-melons. And the change takes place when they are 'fighting one another.' In Podrima and Prizrenski Podgor they consider this transformation occurs if these ground fruit have been kept for more than ten days: then the gathered pumpkins stir all by themselves and make a sound like 'brrrl, brrrl, brrrl!' and begin to shake themselves. It is also believed that sometimes a trace of blood can be seen on the pumpkin, and the [Gypsies] then say it has become a vampire. These pumpkins and melons go round the houses, stables, and rooms at night, all by themselves, and do harm to people. But it is thought that they cannot do great damage to folk, so people are not very afraid of this kind of vampire....    The[y] … destroy pumpkins and melons which have become vampires ... by plunging them into a pot of boiling water, which is then poured away, the ground fruit being afterwards scrubbed by a broom and then thrown away, and the broom burned."    —Tatomir Vukanović, Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, 1957-60

(By the way, it has been suggested that some peasant decided to wind up the poor ethnologist and none of this is true.)

But vampires are all dead and buried now, right? Not necessarily. In 1892. Mercy Brown, the so-called Rhode Island vampire, was exhumed two months after death, her heart was cut out and burned and the ashes fed to her brother Edwin after her father became convinced she was draining his life. The meal of ashes-of-sister did him no good, and Edwin died two months later.

There was supposedly a nest of vampires living in Highgate Cemetery in London in the 1970s, and according to the Romanian Antena 1 TV station, villagers on the slopes of the Carpathian mountains dug a corpse from the graveyard, drove a stake through its heart, burnt the remains of the heart, mixed the ashes with water from the local well and drank it - in 2004.

When my editor at Ransom asked me to write a vampire series, I didn’t really want to fill it with supernatural spiky-toothed eternals. Which rather begs the question of why I agreed to write about vampires at all – but I wanted to see what I could with it that didn’t involve anything impossible. I went to see a professor of epidemiology at Oxford University and we came up with a plausible disease (prion-based) that could account for all the bits of vampirism I wanted to use. The result was vampires who are freaked out by religious symbols, have obsessive arithmomania (so count small things), need blood and live ten times as long as non-vampires.

Then I went about populating the world with vampires, which was great fun. I ransacked history for useful people – amongst my vampires are Louis Pasteur, Joseph Guillotin, and a very famous dead(?) singer. My older vampires have pointy teeth because they filed them for convenience. The new vampires can’t be told apart from non-vampires. They struggle with the problems of being a vampire – blood-lust is kept under control most of the time with dietary supplements, but how do you deal with not ageing, with what you are going to do with your life for the next 700 years, and with inevitable ennui of living with the same partner for hundreds of years? And what does living so long do to your character?

Vampire Dawn is a series of six short novels and a handbook for new vampires, called Blood-sucking for Beginners. I took all the traditional vampire lore, working from Calmet’s treatise, Stoker’s notebooks and some nineteenth and early twentieth century academic texts on vampirism, and dealt with all of it. But they don’t shrivel at dawn, they do have reflections and they don’t glitter in sunlight. I love my vampires – even the evil ones. And I don’t think they are going to lie down and die after one series.

SCC:  Anne! You are a genius.  I thought I knew a lot about vampires, but there's stuff in your piece that's new to me. I really do hope the Vampire Dawners aren't going to lie down and die - there's so much well... life... in them. I'm sure people will be referring back to this post for a very long time, so thank you!

You can buy Anne's first Vampire Dawn book HERE

Next week: Curtis Jobling, master of shapeshifters introduces a variety of W for Weres.  See you then.

FANTABULOUS FRIDAYS A-Z: U FOR UNICORN WITH KATHERINE ROBERTS

Scribble City Central's thirty-eighth Fantabulous Friday comes from Katherine Roberts, winner of the Bransford Boase Award, and author of many wonderful books, including Sword of Light, which has just been long-listed for the Carnegie Medal. The Pendragon Legacy is a quartet of books about Rhianna Pendragon, daughter of the legendary King Arthur, who has been brought up on the fairy Isle of Avalon, ignorant of her own heritage until the moment of her father's death.  I'll tell you this - Katherine tells a damn fine tale of derring-do, weaving together a young girl's fight against the prejudice of the knights and squires who are unwilling to let her lead them, with the story of the villainous Mordred and his bloodbeard minions, determined to thwart her quest at every turn.  There are also talking fairy horses - and utterly enchanting they are too.

I'm reminded, very pleasantly, of Tamora Pierce's Alanna books - also featuring a young girl knight - and I think Katherine's British Rhianna will appeal to the same audience.  There can never be too may new takes on Arthurian myth as far as I'm concerned, and this is an excellent addition to the canon. The writing is smart, funny, and zips along at a tremendous pace, and the main characters are well-rounded and endearing.  I especially like Cai, the chubby squire who gallops (rather uncomfortably) at his princess's heels, and was pleased to see that he is developing nicely in the just-published (and equally gripping) second episode of the series - Lance of Truth.  Although (so far) unicorns are only mentioned peripherally in these books, Katherine is something of an expert on them - having one as her muse - so I hand you over to her to talk about how they have had a strong effect on her writing life.

U for Unicorn

Answer to a Maiden's Prayer

KR: I don’t remember exactly when my muse first appeared out of the enchanted mists – but he’s always been there, lurking at the edges of my imagination. It just took me a little while to see him, as is often the way with magical creatures.

He appeared in my first ever published story “The Last Maiden” (published in the British Fantasy Society magazine “Dark Horizons”1994), where he is a misunderstood creature hunted by the villagers for goring a baby to death… something he may or may not have done, as I leave it up to the reader to decide. Perhaps that’s how I felt about my writing at the time, since the fantasy genre appeared to be shunned by the literary establishment and generally misunderstood as being only about swords and dragons. This was before Harry Potter made fantasy trendy, at least for younger readers… though being trendy seems to have had the opposite effect, since post Harry Potter everyone thinks it’s all about boy wizards and millionaire authors. My unicorn shakes his mane in despair.

Shortly after this, I won a competition for a short story. The prize was £50 (riches!) and my first real earnings from writing. Strangely, I don’t remember the winning story or where it appeared, but I took my winnings into town determined to buy something to remind me of the achievement, and spotted these unicorn bookends in the window of a gift shop. They cost £35, which made them a luxury purchase for me at the time. But even though they seemed a bit whimsical with their pink horns and gold stars, I took them home to prop up my favourite books. I think of them as unicorn foals, and they represent the childlike side of my muse… interestingly, this was before I even considered writing for children, so maybe they were responsible?

Unicorns certainly seem to have been adopted by children as magical pets. Here’s a fluffy pink one I rescued from the bargain shelf of my local supermarket (someone had spilt yellow liquid over him – he only needed a wash!)

But unicorns are not always so sweet. My muse apears in my second novel “Spellfall” (first published by Chicken House, 2000). There he leads a herd of unicorns from the enchanted land of Earthaven, where magical creatures have fled to hide from the dangers of our technological world. When Earthaven is attacked by evil spell casters, the unicorns use their horns to defend their home and their foals, but they also let the heroine Natalie and her friends ride them. So they are both magical and fierce in this story for teenage readers.

This contradictory nature of the unicorn makes him an interesting muse. He can be mysterious and beautiful when it suits him, and obviously as a mythical creature he is very useful to a fantasy author because he knows a lot about magic and enchanted worlds. But it's a mistake to underestimate him, because in his adult form he is a powerful creature with a razor-sharp horn who will fight fiercely to defend his territory.

A few years later, browsing in Hay-on-Wye during the annual book festival, I came across this lovely unicorn poster. I wasn’t actually looking for unicorns at the time (I was after dinosaurs) but I couldn’t resist him. He stayed rolled up in a corner through several house moves, before finding his way on to the wall of my current office. Here he is handsome and noble, wearing a charm around his neck. He’s watching me write this with a glint in his dark eye.

Finally, of course, a unicorn can be tamed only by a maiden. He lays down his horn in her lap and becomes gentle and kind under her hand. In this guise, he is sometimes associated with the Virgin Mary, showing his spiritual side, which is another important thread in my writing.

Some people like to say the unicorn does not exist, and that he is actually a rhinoceros. I can hear my muse laughing right now! Sometimes people try to cut off his sharp horn and turn him into a common horse. Others would like him to stay a soft-horned foal forever. Too much of that, and he’s likely to disappear back into the enchanted forest. But treat him right, and he will continue to bring magical stories out of the mists.

In this brave new e-world, my muse has embraced technology with a blog of his very own , and recently ran a competition to find his true name Raziele Razorhorn Roberts (Razz for short). Now all he has to do is live up to it!

Thank you, Razz, for being my muse!

SCC:  Thank YOU, Katherine for introducing us to Razz.  I think he's the first Muse who's appeared on these pages.

You can buy Katherine's books HERE

Next week: Anne Rooney, writer in many genres and expert on the undead talks V for Vampire.  Bring garlic and a stake.

FANTABULOUS FRIDAYS A-Z: T FOR TROLL WITH KATHERINE LANGRISH

Scribble City Central's thirty-seventh Fantabulous Friday comes from Katherine Langrish, a writer whose work has often been compared to that of Alan Garner. That's a pretty fine accolade, and, in my opinion, well-deserved.  Katherine has an innate knowledge about the ins and outs of folk and fairytale - but more than that, she is someone who will delve down into the deep earth at the hidden roots of a story in order to bring its true essence up to the light of day.  For her, I think, the devil is in the detail, and it is in that very precise pinning down of a sound or a feeling with just the right word or phrase that her writing genius lies.

Her latest book, Forsaken, tells the story of a mer-child, abandoned by her human mother, and is a perfect example of this.  It is uncomfortable to read how Mara's 'delicate tail fins became tattered and curled', how the sun blasted her so that her skin 'would soon begin to crackle like seaweed left on the beach'.  But can't you just see that mer-child now, feel her pain, just from those few words?  I can.

Katherine is also involved as an editor in the just-launched journal of brand-new folk and fairytale writing, Unsettling Wonder, and I'm much looking forward to reading the first offerings from that when they arrive.  Do have a look at their website, HERE.

I interviewed Katherine a little while ago, about her wonderful Troll trilogy, West of the Moon, and you can read that interview HERE.  Right now, though, I'm quite certain there's no one better qualified than Katherine to talk about:

T for Troll

Mischief-makers of the Mountains

Photo of Katherine Langrish by Helen Giles

KL: I probably first met trolls when I read The Hobbit in the 1960’s. Those particular trolls are called Bert, Tom, and Bill Huggins; they talk Mockney: and while I don’t know whether Tolkien consciously intended it, they are quite obviously caricature working-class characters who present a proletarian threat (violence; hunger) to Bilbo’s comfortable bourgeois identity.  This being the 1930’s, it’s not surprising that the low-class trolls are stupid and easily tricked by upper-class, donnish Gandalf into wasting so much time deciding whether to murder Bilbo and his friends by squashing them, roasting them or mincing them, that they’re finally overtaken by dawn and turn to stone.

Trolls get a bad press. Cave trolls in The Lord of the Rings are even more stupid and violent than those of The Hobbit (but no longer comic); while the trolls in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series are giant Fungus-the-Bogeyman type creatures with sloping foreheads and green snot dripping from their noses. Well, even though it’s quite true that some trolls in traditional tales are large and stupid and turn to stone at sunrise, the race of trolls in general is a great deal more interesting and varied than this!

To begin with, the word ‘troll’ in Norway, Iceland, Denmark and Sweden isn’t all that specific.  It’s much more like the word ‘elf’ in English – which (if you discount Tolkien again; he really has a lot to answer for!) used to mean almost anything from a brownie to the Queen of the Seelie Court.  In Scandinavia, a troll can be anything from a giant, to something human sized, down to quite small creatures.

Hans Christian Andersen wrote a wonderful story called The Troll Hill or The Elf Mound, depending on the translation. Its original Danish title is ‘Elverhøi’: but as the inhabitants of the fairy hill bustle to make preparations for the wedding of the king’s two daughters with two sons of the Troll King of Norway, it’s clear that elves and trolls are much alike:

There he was: the troll king from Dovre!  His crown was made of ice and polished pine cones.  He was wearing a bearskin coat and heavy boots.  His sons, on the other hand, were lightly dressed: their collars were open, and they weren’t wearing suspenders.  They were two big strapping fellows.
“Is this a hill?” laughed the younger one.  “In Norway we would call it a hole in the ground.”

It’s a funny, eerie story, as well as a light satire on the Norwegian nationalist movement. It influenced Henrik Ibsen’s play Peer Gynt, in which the eponymous hero meets a green troll woman and has a son by her, and narrowly escapes being turned into a troll himself in ‘the Hall of the Mountain King’. I paid tribute to both with my own version of a troll wedding in my first book Troll Fell.

Icelandic trolls often tend to be giant-sized, like Hallgerdur of the mountain Bláfell, or the trollwife who decided to wade from Iceland to Norway, remarking: ‘They’re deep indeed, the Iceland channels, and yet they are fordable.’  She drowned, however, when she made a grab at a ship and lost her footing.  Then there was the sinister ‘Night Troll’ who appeared at a small window and exchanged creepily complimentary verses with the quick-witted girl inside, who capped all his lines and rhymed him down till sunrise caught him and turned him to stone.

But in Norway the trolls are often small and mischievous, like the ones who raided a
farmhouse every Christmas Eve, stealing the food and throwing things about and generally making the family’s life a misery – until the day a traveller arrived with a polar bear which he was taking to as a present to the King of Norway. When the trolls tried teasing the polar bear – well, let’s say it taught them a lesson.  And trolls can also be beautiful women – huldrefolk – though one should beware of their tails, or hollowed-out backs.

And so I feel that ‘troll’ is a far more flexible category than the ‘enormous-thickos-covered-with-green-snot’ stereotype would lead you to believe. Some trolls are large, some small.  Some are stupid, or at least gauche – some are cunning.  Some are giantesses, while others are rustic kings with fir-cone crowns.  Some are like little, thieving animals: feral nuisances rather than murderous threats.  Oh, and none of them talk in Mockney.

In this passage from my first book, Troll Fell, my heroine Hilde is stabling the pony in the barn one stormy night, when something unexpected happens.

She rubbed the pony dry and threw down fresh straw. She wanted to be with the family.  It was creepy out here with the wind howling outside. The small lantern cast huge shadows.  She whistled to keep up her courage, but the whistle faded.
Kari, the little barn cat who kept down the rats and mice, came strolling along the edge of the manger.  She ducked her head, purring loudly as Hilde tickled her.  But she suddenly froze.  Her ears flattened, her eyes glared and she spat furiously.  Hilde turned and saw with horror a thin black arm coming through the loophole in the door.  It felt around for the latch.  She screamed and hit it with the broom.  Immediately, the hand vanished. 

“Trolls!” Hilde hissed.  “Not again!”  Dropping the broom, she grabbed the pitchfork and waited breathlessly, but nothing happened.  After a moment she let out her breath, tiptoed to the door and peered out.  Falling rain glittered in the doorway.  At her feet a black shadow shifted.  Squatting there in the mud, all arms and legs, with its knees up past its large black ears, was a thing about the size of a large dog.  It made her think of a spider, a fat paunchy body slung between long legs.  She saw damp, bald skin twitching in the rain.  Glowing yellow eyes blinked from a black, pug face. For one fascinated second they stared at each other, troll and girl; then Hilde was splattered with mud as the troll sprang away in a couple of long liquid jumps.  

Hilde flew across the yard and wrenched open the farmhouse door to tell everyone about it. She tumbled straight into a colossal row. 

Her father and mother were shouting so loudly that Hilde put both hands over her ears.  The door slammed again with a deafening bang. And so she forgot the troll, and didn’t see it leap as suddenly as a frog on to the low eaves of their thick turf roof and go scrambling up to the ridge…

SCC: Thank you, Katherine - it's clear that many people have quite the wrong idea about trolls, so I'm sure this piece will help to put everyone straight - and for those who haven't read Katherine's books - you have a wonderful treat in store!

You can buy all Katherine's books HERE, and her wonderful fairytale blog, Seven Miles of Steel Thistles is HERE. If you love fairytales, there are many wonderful treasures to be found there, so do go and have a browse. 

Next Week: Katherine Roberts, author of The Pendragon Trilogy (and just longlisted for the Carnegie Medal) talks about U for Unicorn.  See you then!