The Social Porcupine

Welcome to Keturah's Korner, Cait! I'm so excited to be talking with you today. Could you start out by telling us some things about yourself?  Thanks so much for having me on your blog! And hi to everyone! My name is CG Drews (also known as Cait from Paper Fury) and I'm an author and cake enthusiast from Australia. When I'm not writing, I'm trying to convince my small dog that the bed is not his (I have zero luck here) and making my own ice cream from scratch (writing fuel!). How long have you been writing and how many stories have you written? I started writing seriously when I was fifteen ... so ten years now (yiiiikes I feel old) and I've accumulated over thirty drafts. I promise they're not all very intelligible though! Can you tell us the story behind finding your agent/ publisher? I started querying for an agent when I was nineteen. I'd researched the process (ah, Google, my old friend) until I was overflowing with advice and had a query le...

I have always loved fairy tales. But not for the reason most seem to like them. I have always thought the fairy tale cliches of love at first sight, dreams do come true, and being saved from a hard life by a handsome Prince were stupid. "But isn't that what fairy tales are all about? A magical way to dream of true love?" No. I like real  fairy tales because I see them a stories full of virtue and lessons. I don't see a story fascinating when it's about a girl falling in love because she finds her heart unable to beat steady because she just saw wind whip over a rugged face and deep blue eyes. To me, that's not a real fairy tale, but something that Disney has made us think is the real deal. To me a fairy tale is synonymous for a moral tale — a short story about people learning lesson in a radical, shocking way often with a touch of fantasy to thrill us as we learn something valuable. Often where one would expect magic there will be gruesome horror....

So, it looks like I'm starting off my writing career as a fairy tale author? This last year I've had three stories accepted and published by two different anthologies. And,yes, all three of my stories are fairy tales. The first one was a retelling of Cinderella and you can find out more about that one here . The last two are in this  book, pictured above. It released yesterday! You can buy the print version here . While I love my fairy tales, I'm not sure what I think of being a fairy tale author. Because I really love contemporary, too ;D Overall, I'm purely excited ;D This book has twenty-eight stories in it. I haven't read the rest of them yet, so I can't recommend the book as clean. But I'm hoping! Because some of these stories look AMAZING! My stories are: PRINCE PERFECT: A prince goes on a quest to find the perfect bride, encountering all of the familiar fairytale princesses we know and love. But each one has some small fault he can'...

I have  one  more Snow White retelling review to share with you all!  I have read a lot of Kendra's books. At first I was stunned by her writing style. It's so different. But it's grown on my. To the point that I think I really love it now. Even so . . . some of her books have outright pleasantly surprised me by how much I actually loved it. This is one of those! Right next to Woodcutter Quince , I think.  What I liked: Normally world jumping makes my mind dizzy. But I thought this was well done. Kendra's humor is very unique — her writing is nearly purely sarcasm, even description. It's taken me awhile to appreciate it, but now I love it and sometimes even laugh over her perfect word choices.  Adding to the last point, her writing isn't only sarcastic humor, it's blunt humor. And I like, that, too.  I loved how this story blended genres together — contemporary, fantasy, and cyborg.  What really caught me was how real Gwen's gri...

As I mentioned in my last  post , I really needed to find some good combinations of Bible fairy tales to see if I'm doing this thing right with my Fur Slipper. These stories couldn't have come to me at a better time. Especially this one. Wow. Overpowered is amazing. What more can I say? I'll try to tell you what made it so great. What I liked:  As crazy as this may sound, I've always loved the book of Judges in the Bible. It's full of so many unique stories. It was definitely an interesting time for Israel. I can never bore while reading that book. So, suffice it to say, I loved how this fairy tale felt just like a story out of Judges . I really recognized the stories of Gideon. And a lot of what happens in Judges 9 happened in the background of Overpowered. I loved  that. But even though this story was obviously heavily influenced by ancient Israel, I could tell it was clearly set in another world. And I didn't mind that. It allowed room for the a...

As many of you may know, I've written a fairy tale called Fur Slipper, a retelling of the original Egyptian Cinderella story combined with the Biblical Esther story. After writing this novel of mine and learning some about comp titles I realized I hadn't ever read any other biblical/ fairy tale combinations. And I have plans to write more — I wondered if this genre might be unique to me, or if I could possibly find other stories similar to mine. And so when I heard that the Magic Mirrors blog tour had a few Bible fairy tale retellings I was beyond thrilled to read and review! I got a bit confused with the schedule, sadly ;/ This post should have been done this early morning. But I didn't even realize this until last minute. I hadn't even read the book yet . . . So I've spent much of today reading For Such A Time As This.  Even though I read the novella hurriedly, I enjoyed it immensely. My Thoughts: I love how this story is obviously both Snow White and...

Find it on: Amazon  Goodreads Spinner of Secrets   by Annie Twitchell  I recently had the privilege of beta reading this amazing book!! I was so excited to start it when I heard it was a retelling of Rumpelstiltskin. I must admit - I love fairy tales. Even the ones that are a little bit on the side of this-story-is-so-off-and-this-philosophy-so-unrealistic. Something else, I knew going into this book, was that it had a unique twist on the whole fairy tale love theme. So I was excited.  And not disappointed :)  Back Cover: Where will the journey for love take you? Will it be worth the fight? Letta is a peasant girl, whose father was outlawed and killed when she was small. Though her name means truthful one, she finds herself submitting to her step-father's will, and complying with his lies and trickery. Prince Kyle is her reluctant husband. His mind is focused on one thing: avenging the murder of his childhoo...

Welcome to the launch of Song of the Sword , the second novella in the Legends of Light series! Although the history of Aslaria and the conflict between the Prince and the rebel, Tauscher, flows chronologically through the series, each novella is a stand-alone retelling of a favorite fairy tale. Each story in this nine novella series focuses on one of the nine aspects of the Fruit of the Spirit while also retelling popular fairy tales in a clean, exciting, and inspiring manner. A glittering sword. An ancient oath. A blackened rose. And a melody which ties it all together. Evrard and Roinette, twins separated at birth, are caught in a battle beyond their own limited powers. With their ability to walk in the melody realm, catching glimpses of the light and darkness underlying Aslaria, comes even more danger. Deadly mistbenders. Writhing walls of blankness. Hateful drumbeats. As a warrior in the Melody, Evrard has seen it all. But his own ability in the melod...

Hey, you all! I have some goodies for you - or actually news about some great deals!!! ;) :) Here's a 3-book series free on kindle for today only. It's an original fairy tale series about nine adopted princess sisters. Each book is centered around one different sister. I accidentally downloaded and read the first book this spring and have since fallen in love with the author and her books. :D The books ( on Amazon ) :D Maelyn Coralina Heidel And also a book of short stories free for today, on kindle also. Fast paced, mystery, clean, original, I'd compare it to Sherlock Holmes, except modern, African culture, and Christian. Oh, and  Check out my review :)  of this book! I got to beta read this before it first came out, and absolutely loved it! I was glued to it like crazy! And the book - Stasis Let me know what you think about these awesome books!!!!!

Hey, guys!!!! Today my blog is a part of the Water Princess, Fire Prince blog  tour. As you will soon see, Water Princess, Fire Prince is an original fairytale novel written by a young Christian woman,  Kendra Ardnek . I am having an interview with the author herself!!! And then some stuff about the book :D So, enjoy! And check out this awesome story! 1. Welcome, Kendra, to Keturah's Korner! Thank you so much for joining me today :). Thank you for having me! 2. Could you tell us a little about yourself? Um, well, I'm human, have lived just over twenty years in Earth's timestream, and have been a Christian for most of that, and have been homeschooled for almost as long. My favorite color is purple, I spend most of my time working with words and I make the world's best spaghetti. 3. When did you know that you wanted to be an author? When I found out that books were written by people and that it was a viable career option for me. I did get distract...

Hey, guys, today I am doing an interview with a new author, Noah Barfield. Hope you enjoy getting to know about him and his new novel as much as I have!!!!! :D 1. Welcome, Noah, to Keturah's Korner! Can you start out by introducing yourself? I'm Noah Barfield, which means presently, unless someone else is also me, I'm 17 years old. Oh, and also an aspiring author. I'm currently traveling around these United States of America with my parents and a couple of younger brothers; we rent vacation homes and travel to a new place every few months or so. Because I don't think any of us could stand to live in an RV honestly. And about me? I love reading books, but I don't really have any specific genre; just good books. I really like Christopher Paolini, J.K. Rowling, Edgar A. Poe and H.P. Lovecraft. Mark Twain and Mary Shelley are also pretty amazing. Books tend to be my passion, which is why I like writing. But I also like good TV shows or movies; I ...