My Favorite Fairy Tale Blog Hop

Welcome to the Fairy Tale Blog Hop! In honor of June 24th being International Fairy Day, twelve fabulous fairy tale authors and I have put together this blog hop to talk about some of our favorite fairy tales!

How to play:

Hidden within each of our posts you’ll find a number. Collect each of those numbers to total up at the end and enter the rafflecopter on Shonna Slayton’s Fairy-tale Blog Hop page to win a print collection of all of our books! (There are several anthologies, debuts, and even an ARC for a BLINK YA book you can’t buy in stores yet!) Follow the links at the bottom of each author’s blog post to hop to the next author’s website.

The contest will run from Friday, June 22 to Friday, June 29 with a wrap-up party on the Fairy-Tale Forum Facebook Group page where there’ll be games, giveaways, Q&A and the chance for you to go onscreen to talk t the authors face to face! The Wrap party starts Friday June 29th at 12:30 Pacific, 3:30pm EST, 8:30 UK, so be sure to come join us. It’s sure to be a great time!

What’s My Favorite Fairy Tale?

“At Miles Cross” by Alicia Gaile

One of my favorite fairy stories is “The Ballad of Tam Lin.” In it, Janet is warned to stay away from Carterhaugh where Tam Lin lives, because good little maidens just don’t venture there. However, because Carterhaugh is a property that was given to her by her father, Janet refuses to let anyone tell her she can’t go there anytime she pleases, so she goes and picks some roses which instantly summons Tam Lin. They get into an argument over which of them actually owns Carterhaugh since he was kidnapped by fairies and spent the past few years with the faeries, but one thing leads to another and then the two of them go their separate ways.

However, after a few months, the ladies in Janet’s father’s court notice her gowns aren’t fitting the way they used to. Janet informs her father that her baby doesn’t belong to any of the knights in his court (and might not even have a human father) and she goes back to Carterhaugh to have a talk with Tam Lin. He tells her that the faeries kidnapped him, but his time in their world is just about up because they’ve decided to sacrifice him as their tithe to Hell on Halloween if she won’t save him. So Janet—nine months pregnant—goes to the graveyard at Miles Cross at midnight on Halloween and snatches Tam Lin off his milk-white horse. She holds onto him until dawn when the faeries are forced to give up and leave. It’s not easy though, because they turn him into a whole long list of terrible monsters and even a burning coal, but Janet hangs on and wins her true love away from the Faerie Queen.

This tale comes from a Scottish ballad that dates back to the 1500’s, and I love that not only does the young woman rescue the knight, but she manages to do it while she’s nine months pregnant. Janet is fiercely independent and handles her own problems, which is a refreshing thing to find in a fairy tale, particularly one as old as this one.

It’s also a great message about chasing dreams in general. If you believe in your course, hang on with everything you’ve got, and manage to hold out through the worst that adversity can throw at you, then you just might win your heart’s desire too. It took several long years before Trial by Song was ready to go out into the world, and in spite of the doubts, revisions, and fear of failure, ultimately I hung on to the belief in my story and now I’m so proud Jack’s journey is one I can share with all of you.

If you like seeing mortals go head to head with the faeries, be sure to check out my Faery Trials series, which sees Jack Sorley fight to save his family, his town, and his future from a dark and scary world of faeries out to get him for stealing their golden harp. If you’re a fan of fairy tale mashups, Celtic folklore, and adventure this is one series you won’t want to miss!

Born with an otherworldly talent for music, Jack Sorley dreams of sharing his incredible gift with the world. But revealing his magic makes him a target of the fae, who will stop at nothing to hide their existence from mankind.

When he sneaks out to perform at the local county fair and his family’s prize-winning cow is stolen right from under his nose, a desperate Jack tries to retrieve her before his brothers find out. Dragged through a portal deep into Faerie, he finds a golden harp that could catapult his talent to even greater heights. If he wants his chance at greatness, he’ll have to take it—but stealing from faeries is never a wise choice.

With danger closing in on every side, Jack must find a way to evade the legendary Wild Hunt, or go back to Faerie and face the music.

So there you have it! Did you find my hidden number? Be sure to write it down before you move on to the next stop on the Blog Hop at Lyssa Chiavari’s Blog.

Want to see which of these stories should be next up on your reading list, check out this game that K. M. Robinson put together that will match you to which of these books will be a perfect fit! Play it now at: FairytaleRecs.kmrobinshonbooks.com

And if you’d like to hear more about my exciting new project, Braid of Sand, that’s a retelling of Rapunzel set in a world of warrior priestesses, mercenaries, and vengeful goddesses, be sure to follow me on Facebook for the latest updates!