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If you want to make hearth and home work, then being in shape helps a lot. Let’s face it, Cinderella was almost certainly a strong and sturdy person, or she’d have perished long before that fateful ball. I’m a born slug. I admire physical bustlers who keep busy doing little physical tasks all day long and who voluntarily exercise. But I don’t want to be one of those people. I want to sit and read and watch movies or TV or write something or meditate. That’s just who I am. But my sluggishness has been hard on me. It’s true that a lot of my chronic health problems aren't behavior based, but my physical laziness is not helping. So I’ve tried a variety of exercise methods: Walking, yoga, standard cardio, etc. I just couldn’t stick with any of them. Enter the fantastically named Justin Agustin , specialist in exercise therapy. How did I find him? I kept seeing these little clips on Pinterest showing exercises that seemed geared toward the out of shape and awkward. The smiling, friendly-looking buff fella who was doing them seemed genuine. I thought, why not check him out? Reader, I am hooked. With Justin, you can work on mobility, strength, flexibility, cardio, and all the things. And you can do a lot of it in a chair or on a bed, in addition to traditional standing. Most importantly, you’ll never feel judged. Justin radiates empathy and understanding for his viewers. Those of you who are super fit and coordinated may not understand that many “beginner” exercise coaches say they don’t want you to push too hard, but their bouncy patter and unnecessarily fast movements suggest otherwise. Some of us need to start “before” brisk beginners level. And that ultra-cheery “push, push, push” vibe will not work with us, even at the basic level. It just makes us feel like we’ve failed at the starting gate. (I’m using the royal “we” because I know I’m not alone.) I didn’t feel overmatched or condescended to when I started with Justin’s easiest moves. Through his videos, I worked on ankle and feet strengthening, increasing blood flow, loosening joints and muscle, basicallyreally easy stuff. I’d never started that basic. I’d always jumped right into cardio and full-on strength training, instead of starting with the gentlest movements. And I’ve always quit. It turns out that starting with basics like gentle stretching, and stability, and not pushing too hard, is the answer for out-of-shape types like me. I’ve now moved on to cardio and light strength training because I got more stable and looser first. I’ve never followed an exercise trainer who breaks it down like Justin Agustin, so I’m able to progress. It’s true that you can get tougher workouts if you join his program, but if you need absolute beginner training first, Justin Agustin  is the guy for you. You can try his first month free, and there are a variety of subscription tiers. I’m on six months for $60 and I’m really enjoying it! He also has an excellent app, which is what I use. So, fellow slugs who want to get in shape, give Justin Agustin a try. Screenshot from JustinAgustin.com .

Today, we’re preempting Throwback Thursday to remind you that the fundraiser/writing contest is ending soon. The original post runs below, but there are some important things to know here: We normally do not require submission fees, but we are a nonprofit on a minuscule budget. Every dollar we earn goes to the magazine, and this contest will literally determine how many works we can buy going forward. As of now, that will not be a lot, but there are seven days to go! If you’d like to submit or know someone who might, please checkout the post below. We want to offer as many opportunities as we can to talented writers! Keep reading if you are interested, and we hope you are! This year’s poetry and prose contest and fundraiser window will be open from July 1 at 12 AM, EST, through July 31, at 11:59 PM, EST. It is our last submission opportunity of the year. This is the only fee-to-submit opportunity for 2024.   All rules for length, theme, rights and content in place overall for this year are also in place for the contest.  That means you must follow the regular submission guidelines, which you can find here . You can submit as many times as you want for $5 per submission . So, for example, if you submit three poems, you’d need to send $15 to katewolford1@gmail.com   to PayPal. This is our official business and nonprofit email address. We only accept PayPal. Please do not send money any other way. Again, our PayPal address is katewolford1@gmail.com . There will be a $50 top prize in each category (poetry and story), plus $25 each for honorable mentions. So, in the poetry category, there will be a $50 top prize winner, plus two $25 honorable mentions chosen. Ditto for stories. Entries should only be sent to thefairytalemagazine@gmail.com . Please put “Poetry Contest 2024” or “Short Story Contest 2024” in the subject line of your email. We will notify you of receipt of submissions only , if your submission is not chosen. Those chosen  will be contacted by email no later than September 1. So if we haven’t reached out to you by then, your work has not been chosen. The winning entries will be published in the fall, specific date to be announced. It’s a huge mistake to not read our guidelines  and to not read our latest issue  before submitting. So to help your chances, please do both. All writers and poets who submit will be entered into a drawing to win a FREE copy of Lissa Sloan's fabulous Cinderella retelling Glass and Feathers . We look forward to reading your submissions.

Mary McMyne’s phenomenal new release, A Rose By Any Other Name , tells the story of Rose Rushe, the mysterious “Dark Lady” of William Shakespeare’s sonnets. In the prologue to Rose’s narrative, she describes herself as the “daughter of an ill-starred astrologer and a witch who refused to hide her Catholicism,” and casts the bard’s famous sonnets as “the bitter spew of a jealous lover.” By the end of the first page, I was prepared for a tumultuous journey through the dazzling world of Elizabethan England, and A Rose By Any Other Name  did not disappoint! McMyne’s book begins with Rose dreaming of a life beyond the confines of her country home. She has learned much from the crafts of her parents, but she also sings and plays music, and her deepest desire is to travel to London with her childhood friend Cecely and secure a position as a musician in Queen Elizabeth’s court. When her father passes away, Rose’s unconventional plans are thwarted by her need to protect her mother and her little brother. Chased out of town by accusations of witchcraft, Cecely, Rose, and her family flee to the London home of her father’s good friend, an alchemist seeking to turn base metals into gold. Although Rose is trapped into marrying to secure her family’s welfare, she never stops reaching for her independence, using both ingenuity and duplicity to locate her mother’s estranged relatives and to earn money by singing in brothels, composing music for the theatre, and dabbling in astrology for powerful and wealthy clients who pay handsomely for her discretion. Rose’s complex relationship with her mother, Katarina, is on full display throughout the narrative. Katarina has spells and potions at her disposal, using them indiscriminately to further the security of her family, sometimes at the cost of her own daughter’s freedom. Rose has inherited much of her mother’s shrewdness, and although she has spent her youth dallying with boys’ affections and enjoys a physical relationship with Will Shakespeare, she is a woman who knows what she wants out of life, and she will stop at nothing to get it. Like Rose and her mother, Shakespeare himself is presented as a complex character, both brilliant and insecure, both intimate and distant. Will’s wit draws Rose into his world of ink and paper, but when he brings her into contact with Henry, the Earl of Southampton, whose mother has hired the poet to write sonnets convincing him to marry, Rose is able to peer beneath the surfaces of the men’s desires because she is so clear in knowing her own. McMyne’s greatest strength as a writer comes from her ability to create engaging narrators who are not as fully in control of their stories as they seem. Like Haelewise, the narrator of McMyne’s “Rapunzel” retelling The Book of Gothel , Rose is a multidimensional character whose writing reveals more than the story she reports. Rose writes, in part, to vilify Will Shakespeare, claiming that after their ordeal, she took little interest in his work though he filled his plays and poems with references to her and their romance. Careful readers of Rose’s narrative, however, will spot nods to the bard’s work in her chosen language, revealing that while her relationship with Shakespeare may have been a small part of her life, it had a lasting impact on her and the way that she understands the world. McMyne skillfully gives the dark lady a powerful new voice while simultaneously binding her to the poet who first immortalized her in verse, and the effect is breathtaking. “Sometimes the music just comes,” Rose says to Will upon reading his beautiful sonnet which compares the Earl of Southampton to a summer’s day, and in A Rose By Any Other Name , the music has come to Mary McMyne. Passionate, mysterious, and achingly beautiful, this book offers readers a new take one of the world’s greatest literary mysteries. It is a must read for all those interested in complex family dynamics, sapphic romances, and the pull between societal duty and individual desire. McMyne’s stunning combination of scholarly research and engaging fiction will transform the way audiences understand women, witches, and William Shakespeare. I loved it! You can find it here . To read my upcoming exclusive interview with Mary McMyne , and for a chance to win a FREE  copy of A Rose By Any Other Name , sign up for my reader list at https://kellyjarviswriter.com/ . Kelly Jarvis works as the Assistant Editor for The Fairy Tale Magazine where she writes stories, poems, essays, book reviews, and interviews. Her poetry has also been featured or is forthcoming in Blue Heron Review , Mermaids Monthly , Eternal Haunted Summer, Forget Me Not Press, The Magic of Us, A Moon of One’s Own, Baseball Bard , and Corvid Queen.  Her short fiction has appeared in The Chamber Magazine  and the World Weaver Press Anthology Mothers of Enchantment: New Tales of Fairy Godmothers . You can connect with her on Facebook (Kelly Jarvis, Author) or Instagram (@kellyjarviswriter) or find her at https://kellyjarviswriter.com/

This year’s poetry and prose contest and fundraiser window will be open from July 1 at 12 AM, EST, through July 31, at 11:59 PM, EST. It is our last submission opportunity of the year. This is the only fee-to-submit opportunity for 2024. All rules for length, theme, rights and content in place overall for this year are also in place for the contest. That means you must follow the regular submission guidelines, which you can find here . You can submit as many times as you want for $5 per submission . So, for example, if you submit three poems, you’d need to send $15 to katewolford1@gmail.com to PayPal. This is our official business and nonprofit address. We only accept PayPal. Please do not send money any other way. Again, our PayPal address is katewolford1@gmail.com . There will be a $50 top prize in each category (poetry and story), plus $25 each for honorable mentions. So, in the poetry category, there will be a $50 top prize winner, plus two $25 honorable mentions chosen. Ditto for stories. Entries should only be sent to thefairytalemagazine@gmail.com . Please put “Poetry Contest 2024” or “Short Story Contest 2024” in the subject line of your email. We will notify you of receipt of submissions only , if your submission is not chosen. Those chosen will be contacted by email no later than September 1. So if we haven’t reached out to you by then, your work has not been chosen. The winning entries will be published in the fall, specific date to be announced. It’s a huge mistake to not read our guidelines and to not read our latest issue before submitting. So to help your chances, please do both. We look forward to reading your submissions. Image from Pixabay .

I don’t have the kind of recipe book that appears in Glass and Feathers . If you haven’t read my Cinderella continuation novel, one of my characters, Mother, is a healer who lives in the woods. She has a book filled with drawings and descriptions of plants and recipes of the herbal remedies she makes with them. It is a spell book of sorts, including entries from many different hands made over years and years. While I don’t have such a recipe book, I do have an inherited treasure that’s a bit similar. It’s my mom’s 1961 Betty Crocker cookbook. I don’t use most of the book, but the recipes I do use are family favorites so delicious that special occasions wouldn’t be special without them. Besides, the dog-eared, flour-spattered pages with my mom’s writing are comforting. And over the years, my husband and I have made this book our own by writing in it too. Here's a favorite I make every July: Fresh Berry Pie (courtesy of Betty) with my mother-in-law’s recipe for the crust. There’s a kind of magic to using our family inheritance. Enjoy!   For a 9” Pie: 1 to 1 ½ cups sugar (depending on the sweetness of your berries) 1/3 cup flour ½ t. cinnamon 4 cups fresh blueberries (Betty says you can use other berries—but blueberries are our favorite) 1 ½ T. butter   Crust: 2 ¼ cups flour 1 t. salt ¾ cup butter 5 T. cold water (more or less as needed)   Heat oven to 425°. Mix flour and salt in bowl. Cut in butter with pastry blender or two knives. (I actually use my hands, but you do you.) Add water to flour/butter mixture, 1 tablespoon at a time, and mix with a fork. Once dough is formed, divide in half. Roll out each half to form the bottom and top halves, placing bottom half in pie pan. Mix flour, sugar, and cinnamon, then mix into the berries. Pour mixture into pastry-lined pan and dot with butter. Cover with top crust with slits in it and seal. (I usually sprinkle the top crust with some sugar, but that’s optional—it’s quite sweet already.) Cover the edges with strips of foil to prevent over-browning. Bake 35-45 minutes or until crust is nicely brown and juice is bubbling up through the slits in the crust. Serve slightly warm, but not hot. It’s also delicious cold. Lissa Sloan is the author of Glass and Feathers, a dark continuation of the traditional Cinderella tale. Her fairy tale poems and short stories have appeared in The Fairy Tale Magazine, Niteblade Magazine, Corvid Queen, Three Ravens Podcast, and anthologies from World Weaver Press. Visit Lissa online at lissasloan.com , or connect on Facebook, Instagram, @lissa_sloan, or Twitter, @LissaSloan. Images by Lissa Sloan.

A very long time ago a huntsman and his young wife lived in a small cottage by the forest. The huntsman and his wife wanted to have a child, but though they tried for many years, they remained childless.    One day news came to them from a nearby village of a woman found living in a small cottage in the forest. This witch, for so she was called by the people of the village, could speak with the spirits of the dead during heavy rains and would grant favors to those who came to her in the wet dark.    The huntsman begged his wife not to visit the witch. It was said that beyond the black forest there was a land of dead spirits, and that those who traveled there would be filled with dark and dangerous magic, but the wife was so overcome with her desire for a child that one morning when he was out hunting, and a heavy rain welled up suddenly in the sky, she traveled into the forest alone.   She came upon a small shamble of a cottage set around a willow tree so ancient and thick that the rain could not slip through its leaves. When the wife knocked at the door of the cottage, a gnarled woman answered, her body bent and twisted and her skin holding the pallor of death.    The wife was nearly overcome with fear, but her desire was so great that she found herself being led into the cottage where the witch agreed to help the huntsman’s wife conceive a child. In return, the witch asked a promise of the young wife. She would have to give her word that when the witch came for her she would leave her family and travel to the land of the dead.    The huntsman’s wife was grieved to make such a promise, but so great was her desire for a child that she agreed and left the witch’s cottage with a magical draught. She was surprised to find the heavy rain halted and sunshine slipping through the heavy canopy of leaves as she walked. That night, before her husband could ask what she had done, the wife drank the draught and took her husband to bed.   That very night they conceived a daughter and, overjoyed, the young wife forgot the promise she had made to the witch in the forest, but on the very night their daughter was born the rain welled up heavy and hard against the thatch of their cottage. That night, the witch arrived and forced the huntsman’s wife to keep their bargain. Leaving the newborn with its father, the wife left her family and traveled to the land of the dead, never to return.     As the weeks passed the huntsman’s heart grew cold. He resented his newborn daughter. Her cries and needs. Her resemblance to his lost wife. One evening he woke to her cries and called out, “I wish you were a stone, and could be put out and forgotten.” Then he fed the child and returned to bed. When he woke in the morning there was a large round stone where his daughter had been. The huntsman sat the stone in the garden that had been his wife’s pleasure, and though he did not truly forget, the years that passed dulled the huntsman’s pain as it dulled his memory.      Eventually the huntsman remarried, and with his second wife conceived a son who brought joy and warmth back to his father’s heart. When the boy was five years old, however, the huntsman’s new wife was also taken to the land of the dead. After her death, the huntsman grew afraid even of a light rain and locked his son inside their cottage, fearing that the world would take his one last pleasure.   The boy grew strong in the cottage, but he also grew very lonely with only his father as company. Many times he tried to escape. Through his window he could see the world outside, but he could only open the window enough to breathe in the clear air and never enough that his small body could fit through. Every day he would stare out his window to their little garden and the forest beyond and wish for friends to care for him.   One day during a light rain, while his father was out hunting, a pale and gnarled woman appeared at his window. Excited to see someone new, even if her visage was terrifying, the boy rushed to open the window wide to speak to her. To his surprise the woman only passed him a large stone through the open window. It was a stone from the garden, one that he had stared at many times but never really thought of.   “Make your wish upon the stone,” the woman said, “and you shall have someone to care for you.”   The boy, who had been warned about dangerous witches by his father, was wary, but his desire for a friend was so strong that as soon as the woman had gone, he sat the stone down on his small bed and wished for it to become a friend. Immediately the stone began to transform, and soon became his sister, now grown to a young woman.   When the huntsman returned home, he was met by his son and his daughter. At the sight of the young woman who now looked so much like his first young wife, the huntsman’s heart was overcome, and he begged to be forgiven. His daughter, rather than see him in such agony, only said; “I wish you were a raven, so that you could fly far from here to be again with those you have lost.”   Immediately, the huntsman was transformed into a raven. He flew from the open window and crossed the forest to the land of the dead, and when he had gone the stone-sister and her brother lived together in happiness. Betty Stanton  (she/her) is a writer who lives and works in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in various journals and collections and has been included in anthologies from Dos Gatos Press and Picaroon Poetry Press. She received her MFA from The University of Texas - El Paso. Pixabay image by PyroblueKe.

“It wasn’t that she didn’t like people. It was that she liked books more.” With this quotation from The Spellshop , Sarah Beth Durst won my heart. Durst presents her readers with a cozy fantasy novel about a young woman named Kiela who works in the Great Library of Alyssium. When revolutionaries attacking the Crescent Island Empire force Kiela to flee the library toting all the ancient (and heavily guarded) spell books she can carry, she must journey across the sea to the island where she grew up, starting a new life in the old cottage that once belonged to her parents. Although Kiela has spent so much time among books that she has lost touch with her social skills, she soon learns that to survive on the outer islands, she will have to talk to people, make friends, and find a community. She decides to use a spell to bring her parent’s garden back to life, and tensions mount when she opens a secret spellshop to restore magic to the people, disguising her intent by selling jam. Alongside the debate about who should have access to magic is a sweet, budding romance with an old family friend named Larran. The Spellshop  is a book filled with delights! There are mermaids, merbabies, singing apple trees, winged cats, and even merhorses (half-horse, half-fish) who swim in the magical waters around the islands. Kiela’s best friend is a sentient spider plant named Caz, and his quick-witted quips made me laugh out loud: “I’m blushing. You just can’t tell because of the chlorophyll.” In her author’s note, Durst explains that she wanted to write a book that read like drinking hot chocolate, and in this, her novel succeeds. The lovely prose will leave readers longing for cinnamon buns and raspberry jam, and the happily-ever-after will lend a touch of nostalgia to readers weary with the challenges of the real world. The Spellshop  is a lovely, quick escape best enjoyed on the beach or curled beneath a cozy blanket. Its humor, light magic, and optimism reminded me of Diana Wynne Jones' novel Howl’s Moving Castle , and readers (young and old) will find much to celebrate in its pages. You can find it here . Thank you to NetGalley for a free copy of the book in exchange for a fair review. Kelly Jarvis works as the Assistant Editor for The Fairy Tale Magazine where she writes stories, poems, essays, book reviews, and interviews. Her poetry has also been featured or is forthcoming in Blue Heron Review , Mermaids Monthly , Eternal Haunted Summer, Forget Me Not Press, The Magic of Us, A Moon of One’s Own, Baseball Bard , and Corvid Queen.  Her short fiction has appeared in The Chamber Magazine  and the World Weaver Press Anthology Mothers of Enchantment: New Tales of Fairy Godmothers . You can connect with her on Facebook (Kelly Jarvis, Author) or Instagram (@kellyjarviswriter) or find her at https://kellyjarviswriter.com/

I am aware that this may seem like the wrong space to be advocating for a TV show, but “Cinderella’s Hearth” is about the home. And most people watch TV at home. To be honest, I absolutely, unabashedly adore TV. I’m a homebody and it keeps me company, even though I’m usually reading while I watch it, because I do prefer reading to TV. Anyway, I kept hearing about a show called “America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders.” Before I go any further I need to be clear that I don’t understand or care about football at all—except when the Steelers are in the Super Bowl. I also don’t follow cheerleading, although I do respect the athleticism and hard work cheering takes. I’m definitely not a person who sneers at it. So last week I tried episode one, and I was hooked. Maybe it was the barely contained free floating hostility that raised its head from the beginning. Maybe it was the genuine talent and grit the cheerleaders have. Maybe it was the very abundant sparkle and glitter. Maybe it was the mean girl behavior. Maybe it was the friendships that seemed sincere. Maybe it was the fact that many members of the team were impressively employed outside of DCC—and they need to be, because the DCC wages are meager. Maybe it was the pressing question about whether the two women in charge were heinous bullies or just very crisp and realistic. Or, maybe it was because there were some real oddballs underneath all of the glamor and big old hair. Whatever it was, I found it engrossing and entertaining. Each of the seven episodes held my interest completely and I was sorry when it was over. We live in difficult times. “America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders” took me out of my generally anxious mood about November. It was shiny and entertaining.  So if you’re looking for a watch, you could do a whole lot worse than “America’s Sweethearts.”  Cue “Thunderstruck,” by AC/DC. If you watch, you’ll know what I mean. Image from NBC. Kate Wolford is the publisher of FTM and The Enchanted Press. The press published its first book, Glass and Feathers , by Lissa Sloan, on March 26. You don't want to miss this engrossing continuation of Cinderella's story.

Editor’s note: Here’s a throwback from 2021, from one of our favorite poets! She comes to my cottage, adorned in Cinders and ash, silver-gray as the artemisia, Growing in my garden. She comes to tell me there will be a ball. That she longs to go. For her, my only godchild, I gather sage, lambs’ ear and lavender, Lemon balm and mint, beginnings and endings, In an ancient basket. She shall have a dress the color of Rosemary blossoms, Drawn not from needle or wand, but from wish, Slippers crystal-clear as rainfall, though they Are more difficult, requiring freshly gathered dew And a stronger spell. For her hair, a circlet of Pearls from the ashes so readily at hand. Her scent, roses and anticipation. A carriage from a pumpkin. To break a spell of envy, gratings Of lemons and oranges, but No love potion. That is her work, not mine. Bio: Deborah W. Sage is a native of Kentucky, USA. She merged her talent and interest in her first published book of poetry.   A former business executive who after years of being committed to the bottom line is gaining equilibrium in her psyche through her endeavors in folklore. Image of lemon balm from Pixabay

Arabella is no ordinary girl. She’s not even an ordinary princess. True, as the second-born, she won’t inherit her mother’s throne but will instead marry a prince from a neighboring country to secure an alliance. All typical enough for a princess. But Arabella and her three siblings are magical, each inheriting one of their mother’s elemental powers. And as power over the element of air gradually flows from mother to her daughter, Arabella is rapidly becoming the strongest of her siblings. Still, her power is neither here nor there—until the rules are changed. Now the queen’s four children must compete for the crown, and only the fittest will inherit. The Princess of Air must decide where her loyalties lie, what she wants, and who  she wants. Princess of Air  is book one in  Elements of Royalty , a romantasy series by Natalie Cammaratta. Outwardly confident and charming but inwardly conflicted and unsure, Arabella is an appealing protagonist as she banters with her beloved but aggravating siblings, navigates political unrest, investigates a mysterious threat, and struggles to sort out her romantic entanglements. Is her sizzling, secret relationship with Tomas only an infatuation, or is there more to it? Can she and her betrothed prince Jamys form a true partnership, or will cultural differences and a controlling future father-in-law doom them from the start? I loved the unique combination of elements that made up this world and would love to stay in the Elements of Royalty resort, should one ever open. Arabella’s country is airy and beautiful, and the fashions and manners are uninhibited with a classical Greek or Roman feel. However, she is to marry a boy from a buttoned-up, conservative culture that feels more Victorian. I found the resulting culture clash for Arabella extremely intriguing and unsettling. Complete with exciting superhero action, family drama, and heartfelt romance, Princess of Air  is a winner. You can find it here . Lissa Sloan is the author of Glass and Feathers, a transformational continuation of the traditional Cinderella tale. Her fairy tale poems and short stories have appeared in The Fairy Tale Magazine, Niteblade Magazine, Corvid Queen, Three Ravens Podcast, and anthologies from World Weaver Press. Visit Lissa online at lissasloan.com , or connect on Facebook, Instagram, @lissa_sloan, or Twitter, @LissaSloan.

As of this writing, it’s 76 days until the most wonderful time of the year: the Autumn Equinox, but I’ll be calling it “fall,” because it makes me think of falling temperatures. Why do I love it so much? First, I’m not kidding about how much I love the falling temperatures. I live in the Midwest, which means our summers have always been extremely hot. The sun is brutal, endless and intense. This was true 200 years ago, and it’s more true now, thanks to climate change. I find the sun so overwhelming that I no longer enjoy gardening, as the gardens in our yard are not shaded. So, in the summer, a formerly big part of tending hearth and home is off the table for this rapidly aging writer. On the plus side, fall is the time of a gorgeous, soft light that is always gently shadowed no matter how sunny the sky is. The relentless sun on much of our yard gently fades each day. It’s restful and our garden looks spectacular. Fall is a time to scale back outside and begin to bustle inside. It’s a time for gathering and drying and storing and inventorying. We change out the light clothes and bedding and prepare to hunker down like the Three Bears before the extremely rude and ill-bred Goldilocks breaks in. Plus, for me, a university lecturer for so many years, it’s the real new year. January doesn’t do it for me. Every fall I’m taken back many decades to buying my five new fall outfits, new shoes, new pencils and textbook covers—usually brown paper that I doodled on all year long. It’s a fresh time for new learning and looking forward to life’s new experiences. Then there’s October, which for me is the big event—the most wonderful time of the year! Warmer and cozier than Christmas and cooler and more relaxed than the Fourth of July, October is the month when I’m happiest. The pumpkins are absurdly orange, trick or treat is not too far away, and it’s National Book Month! It’s a time for casseroles and sweaters and whatever festively named beverage you can’t resist. It’s a fairy tale of a month! So, my fellow tolerators of summer, take heart. The happiest season is on its way. Images by Arthur Rackham.

Whale Fall  is a stunning, debut novel that takes place on a fictional, remote island off the coast of Wales. Although it is 1938, the population on the island, which numbers only fifteen men, twenty women, and twelve children, is at least ten years behind the mainland in terms of fashion, politics, and ideologies. When a dead whale washes up on the shore, the islanders take it as a portend of doom, and following not far behind the whale is the entrance of two English ethnographers who seek to study the island’s culture, collecting its customs, tales, games, and geography for university study. A bright, eighteen-year-old island girl named Manod, who feels caught between the pressure to marry and leave the island and the need to stay on the island and care for her younger sister in the wake of their mother’s death, becomes enamored with the English researchers. They hire Manod to help them translate stories and communicate with the Welsh speaking islanders. The story of Manod’s experience is punctuated with notes from the ethnographers and recreations of the tales they collect in their research. One tale features a woman with three daughters so beautiful the ocean sweeps them away in a jealous rage, returning them only as gulls flying in the wind. There are several variants of this tale, one which returns the daughters as whales, along with selkie stories and references to the Mari Lwyd. Although the novel celebrates folklore and those who are drawn toward it, Whale Fall also provides a poignant commentary on the exoticization of isolated communities and the impossibility of maintaining authenticity when studying other cultures through the lenses of our own. The researchers and the islanders exact irreversible changes upon each other that affect both Manod’s individual coming-of-age and the community’s sense of cultural identity. At the background of Manod’s human narrative is the ever-present decay of the whale just off the coast of the island waters. The title of O’Connor’s novel forces readers to think of the researchers’ interest in the dwindling population on the island in relation to a natural “whale fall,” a term used to describe the slow plunging of a whale carcass to the bottom of the ocean. Although the death of a whale is a tragic loss, its decomposition supports various communities of marine life who scavenge on the flesh for months, and the researchers in the novel, who live on the stories of a disappearing culture, are presented as scavengers who take what is not theirs and use it for their own intellectual benefit. In direct contrast to the rotting whale is Manod’s younger sister, a wild child who speaks only in her native tongue and collects the bones of dead animals, storing them in jars until she finds the scraps she needs to recreate whole skeletons from the pieces. The tide-like push and pull between decomposition and reanimation, between the human world and the natural world, between the island and the mainland, between preserving stories and losing them, between death and life, pulses beneath the narrative of one girl at the crossroads of her obligations and her desires. Heartbreaking and harrowing, Whale Fall  is a must read for fans of folklore and all those who enjoy contemplating our power and powerlessness as tellers of tales. I loved it!You can find it here . Thank you to NetGalley for a free copy of the book in exchange for a fair review. Kelly Jarvis works as the Assistant Editor for The Fairy Tale Magazine where she writes stories, poems, essays, book reviews, and interviews. Her poetry has also been featured or is forthcoming in Blue Heron Review , Mermaids Monthly , Eternal Haunted Summer, Forget Me Not Press, The Magic of Us, A Moon of One’s Own, Baseball Bard , and Corvid Queen.  Her short fiction has appeared in The Chamber Magazine  and the World Weaver Press Anthology Mothers of Enchantment: New Tales of Fairy Godmothers . You can connect with her on Facebook (Kelly Jarvis, Author) or Instagram (@kellyjarviswriter) or find her at https://kellyjarviswriter.com/