Oldies But Goodies {Put This One on Your TBR List} The Seventh Bride by T. Kingfisher by Karen S. Wiesner

 

Oldies But Goodies

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

The Seventh Bride by T. Kingfisher

by Karen S. Wiesner 

  Beware spoilers! 

Not too long ago, I reviewed three "reimagined and unconventional fairytales" by T. Kingfisher. In trying to get a handle on some of the other books Kingfisher has written that include a reinterpretation of beloved fairytales, I came up with this list of her selections, arranged below on the basis of publication dates: 

The Seventh Bride ("Mr. Fox"/"The Robber Bridegroom", and other aberrations)         

Bryony and Roses ("Beauty and the Beast")

The Raven and the Reindeer ("The Snow Queen") 

Thornhedge ("Sleeping Beauty")

A Sorceress Comes to Call ("Goose Girl")

Hemlock & Silver ("Snow White") 

In my previous take on Kingfisher's reimagined fairytales, I reviewed Nettle & Bone, which is like a subversion of everything that's been done in a fairytale all rolled into one, as well as Bryony and Roses and Thornhedge. 

There's a little known (maybe because it's so shocking) fairytale that goes by many names and variants, with two prominent ones being called "Mr. Fox" and "The Robber Bridegroom", that I stumbled upon while brainstorming for future installments of my Woodcutter's Grim Series (which horrorized fairytales). You can actually find the full text of these old tales by looking them up online by their titles. I never wrote a story based on this premise, and now I don't have to, since T. Kingfisher has done it, though I had reservations about her The Seventh Bride rendition. 

The old story goes that a poor miller's daughter is betrothed to a wealthy man who prefers a kind of murderous obstacle course on his wedding night rather than what most people think of for such an event. Turns out, this creep has murdered all his previous brides-to-be and now this new one had better figure out how to get through his carnival of cruelty so she doesn't become the next in line. Interestingly, T. Kingfisher wrote a very short story similar to this idea in "Bluebeard's Wife" (free from her website or you can get it in one of her collections). 

Fortuitously, old fairytales have a predictable manner of storytelling that's bare bones--usually just a skeleton of an extreme external conflict while the rest of the story has little or no internal conflict let alone complex goals or motivations--you know, beyond escaping this bad situation. Settings and in-depth characterization are all but forgotten with these meager tales. So that really allowed Kingfisher to take this glimmer of an idea and make it her own. She sets up a basic scenario with 15-year-old Rhea being a miller's daughter unexpectedly engaged to Lord Crevan. Try to remember that in times gone by, a 15-year-old girl would practically be an old maid if she wasn't already or about to be married, and that most of the historical romances you read probably have very young heroines and you just weren't told their ages in order to prevent the ick factor from spoiling everything. 

Kingfisher sets up several interesting and unique twists on the old story variants, such as the fact that Rhea's parents are neither greedy nor evil--they actually want her to have a good life, and a man who lives in a near-castle certainly seems to fit the bill. Yes, their mill is struggling and extra income would come in handy, but her parents are genuinely saddened by how distraught their daughter is to be "sold off like cattle to the highest bidder", but they initially take a practical approach to her distress. Her mother relates that, once upon a time, she was also forced to marry a man she'd barely met in Rhea's father and look how well that turned out. In this particular world, for a low-born citizen to refuse a lord is a recipe for utter ruin. Bottom line, this family has little or no choice but to comply with anything this man wants from their daughter. 

In this version of the old story, there are many small magics in the world, including those associated with plants, strange creatures, and people who possess minor powers. In The Seventh Bride, Craven is a terrifying sorcerer who uses the gifts of these women he brings to his home to marry (hilariously, they call him "Himself"), trading them for something else he deems of value to him or others. The first wife, Maria, was a witch with a familiar. Craven took most of her power and her spirit bear disappeared in the woods around the manor. Other wives have lost voice, sight, life, death, and will…and all are trapped here in this place, forced to be obedient. Whether or not they're loyal to him is another question, as is whether Rhea can trust anything they say or do.   

Other compelling fleshing-outs are that, once she's at Lord Craven's house, Rhea is set a series of tasks that she must complete. The "or else" is always "or else I'll marry you"--and there's no greater threat. Also, in the author's alter ego trademark (Kingfisher writes children's books under her real name Ursula Vernon that include many, many amazing, "something more" creatures), Rhea doesn't have to go through her terrible ordeal alone. She meets a sweet hedgehog companion who accompanies her and helps her in unfathomable ways that don't seem quite hedgehog-like. More on that later. 

I loved everything about this story except one thing issue that was a two-fold problem. Unfortunately, this very nearly wrecked the whole thing for me. From the beginning, we were set up on the premise that Rhea was a strong and inventive girl, and she would find creative ways to solve her dilemmas and conflicts. We were shown--in an equally gross and funny moment--how she handled a swan who kept stealing her lunch when she packed the creature a horse turd sandwich that the cruel bird quickly regretted snatching from her. However, from that point on, the author stole every opportunity for Rhea to prove her own worth by having her problems conveniently solved by others--her hedgehog, Maria's bear familiar, the clock wife, and other things that rescued her. In the process, they ruined what could have been a heroine worth rooting for beyond the simple reason that we feel compassion for another human being in such a dire circumstance.

In my writing reference titles, I frequently talk about cardinal sins in writing. One of those is that the main character has to lead the action and save the day. She's not in a supporting role, nor can she be rescued when the going gets tough. She can't fall backwards into success. This is her story, her time to be a superhero, her moment in the spotlight. Resolutions to conflict can't stem from symbolism, events, or other people so she never truly solves her own problems. A form of this is sometimes referred to as “coincidence resolution”. While you can have a plot that begins this way, the coincidence must fade to be replaced with very clear choices, purpose, and action. Something similar to the coincidence resolution is deus ex machina--“god from a machine”. This device introduces a resolution brought about by something outside of the story, something cataclysmic or even supernatural that’s not cohesive with the rest of the story--basically, anything illogical that could be dubbed cheating that's introduced to resolve a central conflict. 

In fiction, true change and growth should come from strength within, just as it does in real life. You can't wrap up a conflict with an act of nature, something symbolic that parallels a character's conflict but isn't actually part of it, or in a stranger-to-the-rescue type of event--it won't be believable or fair to the reader, who's spent the entire book waiting to see your character reach the goal of self-fulfillment and success. That triumph also has to be hard-won. She'll probably have a face full of bruises and a heart of pain that will haunt her until the day she dies, but those scars are also ones she can wear proudly. In Writing Fantasy Heroes: Powerful Advice from the Pros (Rogue Blades Presents), it says, "Great heroes have flaws. If a hero is perfect, invulnerable, then he is free of challenge and also free of honor. What is effortless is not honorable; difficulty wins glory and brings the hero to life." Writers should never take the true victory away from their main character by letting anyone or anything else do the work for her. 

In this heinous way, Kingfisher stole the victory from Rhea over and over, letting someone or something else snatch it from her. It was really quite unforgivable, and ultimately it became clear to me that Kingfisher, while in the planning stage of crafting this story, didn't properly equip her heroine with the necessary skills, abilities, and gifts that were cohesive with the plot or setting Rhea was placed in. While I admit this point could be argued, probably the worst part to me was that Kingfisher actually did make tiny inroads toward arming Rhea in such a way that she could have had everything she needed to solve her own problems, if only the author had developed them the way they should have been right from the beginning.

 

Spoiler alert: At the end of the book, Rhea is told by Maria that she possesses some magical abilities. That's why the hedgehog came to her, as it's obviously not a normal creature either. It's her familiar. Maria encourages Rhea to come back to Craven's manor when she can get herself to so Maria can train her in this magic she has.

Why in the world didn't Kingfisher use those hinted at skills to allow Rhea to begin formulating ways to use her fledgling magic (and maybe everything she learned at the mill previously) to deal with the crises she found herself entangled in? That would have been a far more interesting story, too.

 

The second aspect of the problem I had with this story is another cardinal rule of writing that was broken by the author and by her editor, as well, who, shamefully, let her get away with it. The end of The Seventh Bride was so easily resolved, it came off as a total let-down. Yes, the villain got his come-uppance, Rhea got to go home, but "the battle" to get to that point was all but over before it began. It amounted to a page or so. The escalating tension was forgone almost completely, or maybe more aptly, never existed, as if it wasn't needed or necessary. What a disappointment for readers to be robbed of chills and thrills related to Rhea's unique tale! 

When readers finish a book, they should close it believing that the story ended the only way it possibly could have. One of the strongest ways to do this is to create cohesive story elements. Sorry, but here's another lesson from my writing reference titles: Cohesion needs to start with the first spontaneous spark of a story. Characters must blend naturally with the settings they've been placed in, just as plot must become an organic part of the characters and settings. If a story doesn’t work, it could very well be because the character, plot, and setting elements aren’t blending naturally. 

Character reveals plot and setting, just as plot and setting reveal character, and setting reveals character and plot. This three-way trinity is vital to the dimensionality of your stories. They work together to unearth, connect, and layer a story. The strongest stories are the ones in which every part of the story--the characters’ role, physical descriptions, personalities, strengths and weaknesses, relationships, skills, conflicts, goals and motivation, and settings--becomes cohesive and fits together organically. We’ve all read stories in which the parts don’t merge naturally. Maybe we didn’t notice a specific problem, but we knew something was off, that something lacked logic or didn’t quite fit with the rest of the story, and the imbalance frustrated us. There’s a chance you never finished reading the story. The books that you absolutely cannot put down without losing a little of your sanity, the stories that stay with you every minute of the time you’re reading them and for years afterward, are the ones in which every aspect is so intricately connected that separating the threads is impossible. 

On top of the crucial need for cohesion with story elements is that, in the back of the writer's mind at every point in the storytelling should be the fact that the end of the story is where it's going. The author continuously builds toward the wrap. The direction is pivotal because, as with an opening, the story beginning should resonate throughout the rest of the book, satisfy the resolution, and may even tie into the final sentence. The end grounds and justifies the whole of the story. James Scott Bell says in Plot & Structure, "…almost all great jokes are built on a structure of three--the setup, the body, and the payoff." Stories are no different with the beginning, middle and end. Specifically, all story endings must be logical, with a sense of inevitability. Everything's been leading up to the closer, regardless of red herrings, artful concealments, and delaying tactics. But is the ending warranted and utterly logical; does it fit what the author has promised the reader from the beginning as the payoff for coming along for the ride? Endings should always require a "the only way it could end" declaration, but that doesn't mean they can't (and shouldn't) be surprising, too There's a big difference between a twist (reader is stunned, speechless but gratefully overjoyed) and a trick (reader feels cheated, the victim of a bait-and-switch, unforgivably incensed). Steven Pressman says in his article "Setups and Payoffs", "If the payoff is really good, we realize, in the end, that there was no surprise at all. What had seemed to be a turn of fate proves to be inevitable and, as we realize it, we receive the gift of insight. We should have seen it coming!” Maybe you can't please everyone with your story ending, but you should at the very least satisfy them with a coherent conclusion.

T. Kingfisher's ending here felt rushed and lacking in anything resembling suspense and anticipation. I'm left regretting all the could and should have beens instead of what we were given that couldn't possibly satisfy me. Very sad because I actually enjoyed every part of the story other than those seriously sad, truncated, and disenchanting pages at the end of Chapter 28. Sigh. If only the story had actually developed the potential Kingfisher instead threw at the reader like refuse (or a horse turd sandwich) in the very last chapter. 

While some readers (and even writers) might choose to overlook the problems in this story in favor of just enjoying Kingfisher's generally lively prose--which I might add, I like 75% of the time--I don't feel this one was as good as it could have been if only it'd been properly developed. I will note that it is the first of these types of stories she tried to write (published in 2014), so maybe she can be forgiven. I'm currently reading A Sorceress Comes to Call and plan to review it next. Fingers crossed that it's as strong as the majority of her other (later) stories. 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website and blog here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

A House with Good Bones

This novel by T. Kingfisher, a Southern Gothic incongruously set in a suburban tract house, features a theme of return and/or reunion to find unsettling or outright shocking changes, similarly to THE TWISTED ONES and WHAT MOVES THE DEAD. Also, A HOUSE WITH GOOD BONES shares with THE TWISTED ONES the motif of a malignant grandmother. “There was a vulture on the mailbox of my grandmother’s house.” How could any fan of dark fantasy resist an opening line such as that? Narrator Samantha (Sam) receives a message from her brother that their mother seems “off.” Since Sam has been temporarily furloughed from her job as an archaeoentomologist (a scientist who studies insects in archeological digs), she travels to North Carolina to check out the situation. Her mother owns the house where she and her two children spent an impoverished period during Sam’s childhood, living with the late grandmother, Gran Mae. Upon arrival, Sam finds the usual cheerfully eclectic, cluttered décor replaced by a “sterile” ambience more reminiscent of her grandmother’s taste. The walls have even been repainted off-white. Her mother acts nervous, as if she feels watched or overheard.

Sam sees the environment in terms of ecology in general and, of course, arthropods in particular. In the house’s monoculture rose garden, she immediately notices the absence of insects aside from ladybugs. This phenomenon and the flock of vultures roosting in a neighbor’s tree, however, constitute the least of the strangeness. For instance, a swarm of ladybugs invades Sam’s bedroom at night. We gradually learn about her childhood and her grandmother’s peculiarities, including strictness verging on abuse, while Sam unearths buried family secrets -- literally, in one case. It takes a while to reassure herself that her mother isn’t sinking into senility, but the alternative is almost worse. Sam discovers her great-grandfather, Gran Mae’s father, practiced dark magic. No wonder Gran Mae was obsessed with “nice and normal.” Furthermore, the “underground children” she warned her grandchildren about turn out to be real, not imaginary boogeymen. And the rose bushes are sentient.

For me the climax, when the house collapses into a sinkhole, besieged by the underground children, required some suspension of disbelief, but I enjoyed it anyway. Gran Mae’s sort-of return, on the other hand, struck me as believably, deeply disturbing. Sam’s witty narrative voice, the vulture lady and local benevolent “witch” Gail, and the friendly gardener Phil, who grounds the whole story in the mundane milieu of a “cookie-cutter” housing development, irresistibly draw the reader into the experience. Kingfisher has an enviable talent, through Sam’s chatty yet sometimes sardonic tone, to feed backstory to the reader with never a sense of info-dumping. Amid the mainly happy ending, Sam’s unease with the idea that she might have inherited her grandmother’s magic causes the supernatural danger to linger in the reader’s mind after the final page. In Kingfisher’s afterword, she mentions her own battles with roses and the fact that this is her second novel to portray rose bushes as evil, the first being her “Beauty and the Beast” retelling, BRYONY AND ROSES. The section headings (labeled “First Day,” “Second Day,” etc.) enhance the theme with a brief description of a different rose variety for each one. Between the insects and the roses, this novel, like many of Kingfisher's works, displays her characteristic fondness for odd, fascinating scientific facts.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

{Put This One on Your TBR List} Review of Miscellaneous Selections by T. Kingfisher/Ursula Vernon by Karen S. Wiesner

 

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Review of Miscellaneous Selections by T. Kingfisher/Ursula Vernon

by Karen S. Wiesner 

T. Kingfisher (the pen name of Ursula Vernon) is a versatile author, illustrator, and artist. She has a page on her Red Wombat website labeled Short Stories that includes links to her short stories and articles, some of which are included in a variety of different anthologies. From this page, you can read them free on her website and/or from online magazines. 

https://redwombatstudio.com/short-stories/

Nearly all of these freebies have won awards, too. The genres run the gamut. There's a little of everything, as you'll soon see in the reviews below. I went into this endeavor not entirely sure what I was getting into, but I was pleasantly surprised for the most part with the majority of these selections that are worth seeking out. As they'll cost you nothing, you have everything to gain, nothing to lose! 

Beware: May contain unintended spoilers! 

"Jackalope Wives" and "The Tomato Thief" by Ursula Vernon: Although these two, connected stories are contained in T. Kingfisher's collection Jackalope Wives and Other Stories, they were written under the author's real name. Go figure. The duo features Grandma Harken, a clever old woman who is far more than who…and what… she seems. She lives in a house with its back to the desert, and she understands this harsh environment much better than most. Her biting humor and compelling way of looking at the world around her make both stories irresistible.

In "Jackalope Wives", Grandma Harken's daughter Eve has a very foolish son who's, unfortunately, much beloved by the females. However, he's only attracted to a jackalope wife. This shy being has the capability of removing her skin to dance under moonbeams. The boy does something stupid to obtain one, and Grandma Harken has to set things right. This very unusual folktale has an interesting message: "You get over what you can't have faster than you get over what you could. And we shouldn't always get what we think we want." Strange things happen in the desert, indeed!

In "The Tomato Thief", Grandma Harken is determined to find out who's daring to steal her famous, homegrown tomatoes. The answer surprises her and forces her to act. If she doesn't, those living in the desert will be in grave danger. It's very hard not to fall in love with a story with lines like these two gems: "Sometimes the best cure for life was a ripe tomato" and "…there was no telling how low a body would sink once they'd started down the road of tomato theft."

I loved both of these stories. They were my favorites of all included on this webpage.  I'm left wanting more of Grandma Harken and her hilarious wisdom. 

"Metal Like Blood in the Dark" by T. Kingfisher: Artificial intelligence identifying as a brother and sister lose their creator and have to fend for themselves in a universe their Father has warned won't be kind to them. Soon, Brother and Sister are discovered by an alien creature that kidnaps and forces them to work for him.

What an unexpectedly moving tale. I've never read anything quite like this tale that postulates the idea that lying is something like an error code in formatting and computer processing. "Lying was to be deliberately in error, and to express that error in others. Error without correction. Error entered into by choice." Further: "What did a lie do, once you let it loose? Did it sit still…or did it go spinning off into a chain reaction…" In a computer, processes and subprocesses might learn to "lie", which would wreak falsehoods and cause them to report back that something was fixed when it was still broken and vice versa. More than this, once you lie, you realize others could lie as well. With this knowledge, could a person or even a computer go back to how they were before learning the truth? In this story, Sister learns that knowing others lie could very well be the only way to keep from falling into error. But, oh to be ignorant of such darkness! 

"The Rose MacGregor Drinking and Admiration Society" by T. Kingfisher: Be prepared for raucous hilarity! Fairy man, bull selkie, and horse fae--three paranormal paramours get their comeuppance in a human woman with a taste for exotic lovers. While each has treated human females badly, they've never been on the other end of such ruthless seduction. They take to meeting regularly around a campfire to discuss the state of lingering wounds to their pride. This was quite a twist on Casanova stories. I'll be darned if I didn't burst out laughing nearly every sentence while reading this brief but very vivid sojourn into unexpected territory. Talk about perspective. 

"Sun, Moon, Dust" by Ursula Vernon: This story clearly came to T. Kingfisher as a precursor (or a lingering leftover) of the days when she was writing Swordheart (do a search for my recent review of it on this blog). A farmer boy gets a magic sword from his dying grandmother. She instructs him to call forth the magic--three warrior spirits that are bound inside the sword--who will teach him. But his grandmother is wrong about who will be teaching whom. Sometimes the learned ancient can discover something new from the young and simple. I enjoyed the twist in this story. 

"Elegant and Fine": This one wasn't ascribed to either T. Kingfisher or Ursula Vernon. It was probably the only one I didn't love. The author puts Susan from C. S. Lewis's Narnia Chronicles as the main character and has her pining for a Dwarf lover she never knew the name of when she has to return to the real world--and her life as a child. I don't like it when a writer takes someone else's work and does things with it that the original author probably would never have wanted. I wish this story had cast a wholly unique character from the author's own imagination into the thought-provoking scenario she presented here. Sigh. But enough said about that.

"Godmother": Another entry not ascribed to either author name. According to the author, it was the catalyst for T. Kingfisher's Nettle & Bone (which I've already reviewed on this blog). There's something poetic about this flash-fiction that evoked lovely images cast in shadows and equal amounts of confusion for me. 

"Bluebeard's Wife" also doesn't have an author listed but it was included in the T. Kingfisher Toad Words and Other Stories collection. Pirate Bluebeard's notorious, bloodthirsty reputation with women doesn't faze Althea. She believes the best of her new husband and no one can speak a bad word about him in her presence. I won't ruin it completely, beyond saying, sometimes rumors have a basis in truth. I enjoyed the story written very vividly in Althea's point of view--with her rose-colored glasses on…until they're rudely knocked clean off her face. 

"Origin Story" by T. Kingfisher: This story was also included in the Jackalope Wives and Other Stories collection. In this disturbing tale, a fairy works in a charnel house, taking apart dead beasts and creating something new. Not surprisingly, the humans find her creepy. You'll need a strong stomach and solid backbone to get through this one. I would be surprised if you don't get a chill, as I did, at the end of the story. 

"History, Discovery, and the Quiet Heroics of Gardening" by Ursula Vernon: Those who have read a lot of this author's stories know she's an avid gardener and her experiences have made into to many, many of her fiction projects. I'm a new convert to gardening, so I was fascinated. Whether or not you have any personal interest in gardening, this essay will teach you something new. I've never thought about how heirloom vegetables may have come back from the edge of extinction because of the aggressive actions of a few fearless and utterly tenacious gardeners. Kingfisher says that this has influenced her writing, as she's found herself writing about unlikely heroes intent on saving one small but important thing. 

~*~

There's really no way to go wrong here. If you haven't previously read any of T. Kingfisher/Ursula Vernon's work, most everything included on this page would be a great introduction that won't cost you a penny. If you're a fan, you might find something here you haven't read before. In any case, I think you'll want to read more. This prolific author and extremely talented illustrator are well worth your time and money--I fully expect, as I have, you'll be happily willing to pay to read much more of her fine work. 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website and blog here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

The Hollow Places

Although I didn’t find this novel as mind-blowing as Kingfisher’s THE TWISTED ONES, it’s a captivating tale I've reread more than once. Like THE TWISTED ONES, it derives from a classic horror story, giving the source material Kingfisher's unique spin. THE HOLLOW PLACES combines a peculiar house with one of my favorite motifs, portal fantasy. Like the earlier novel, this one features a female first-person narrator with an irresistibly witty voice. But unlike the heroine of THE TWISTED ONES, who reluctantly returns to her late grandmother’s grim house to clear out mounds of hoarded junk, newly divorced Kara finds a welcome refuge in her eccentric uncle’s Glory to God Museum of Natural Wonders, Curiosities, and Taxidermy, where she often hung out while growing up. Although other people, including her ex-husband, might consider the bizarre collection creepy, she thinks of the displays, artifacts, and stuffed animals as old friends. She gladly accepts an invitation to live at the museum, in a back bedroom adorned by her favorite taxidermy piece, an elk’s head she named “Prince” in childhood. In return, she waits on tourists and begins the monumental project of creating a digital catalog of the collection.

Soon after the arrival of a box of miscellany that includes a “corpse-otter” carving from the Danube, her uncle is hospitalized, leaving Kara in charge on her own. Almost immediately, she discovers a hole in a wall, which turns out to be much more than it initially appears. At first assuming a visitor did the damage and left without mentioning it, Kara enlists Simon, who works at the coffee shop next door, to help with the repair. Simon is one of Kingfisher's typical quirky secondary characters, a middle-aged, gay man who proves to be a brave and loyal friend, sticking to Kara throughout the harrowing adventure that follows. Probing behind the wall, they find more space than the building could reasonably hold. They soon run out of plausible explanations for the anomaly and come upon a mysterious door.

It leads to a realm of water and fog, dotted with small islands overgrown by willow trees. Each one, it turns out, probably harbors a portal to a different realm, like the Wood Between the Worlds in C. S. Lewis’s THE MAGICIAN’S NEPHEW. The comparison doesn’t escape Kara, who eventually begins to think of the place as an anti-Narnia. Though eerie and desolate, the landscape doesn’t seem outright scary at first. Exploring it, however, Kara and Simon stumble upon horrors both human and inhuman. Graffiti that warn “They can hear you thinking” and “Pray They are hungry” are just the beginning. An encounter with a trapped explorer from another world is particularly gruesome. They manage to escape and get home, just barely, but Kara soon learns that walling up the hole doesn’t end the danger. The final revelation of what caused the crack between dimensions came as a surprise to me, poignant as well as terrifying, and it pulls together all the baffling elements of the story. My first thought when Kara and Simon entered the fog-shrouded island landscape was of Algernon Blackwood’s “The Willows.” Sure enough, the concluding Author’s Note reveals that she was inspired by Blackwood’s classic story. This novel is a can’t-miss read for fans of numinous horror with a subtly Lovecraftian feel.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

The Twisted Ones

I consider THE TWISTED ONES, by T. Kingfisher, the best horror novel I’ve read in many years and possibly the only one I’ve found really scary since the original publication of PET SEMATARY. While Karen was unimpressed by it, for me it was the book that turned me on to Kingfisher's work, making her one of my favorite authors. The narrator, Melissa, nicknamed Mouse, receives a call from her elderly father about clearing out his recently deceased mother’s house. The house has been locked and uninhabited for the past two years, since his mother went into a home for the aged. He warns Mouse the place could be “bad,” but she accepts the task, since there’s nobody else to do it. If it turns out to be too much for her, he assures her he’d be okay with having the house razed instead of sold. Even with only vague hints from the blurb about the prospective horrors, I was captivated by this beginning. Mouse’s narrative voice makes the most mundane decisions and chores interesting. She grabbed me on page two with this description of her job, especially since I worked as a proofreader/editor for many years: “I’m a freelance editor. I turn decent books into decently readable books and hopeless books into hopeless books with better grammar.”

She and her rescue hound, Bongo, dutifully head for her grandmother’s house in rural North Carolina. Her grandmother was a hateful person who turns out also to have been a hoarder. “Bad” doesn’t begin to describe the house. At least, however, there’s no rotting food inside, and the water, electricity, and stove work. Mouse finds one bedroom untouched by the piles of accumulated junk (including a room stuffed with creepy dolls). It had belonged to her step-grandfather, Frederick Cotgrave, an immigrant from Wales whom she recalls only as a colorless, silent man constantly browbeaten by his wife. She does have one fond memory of his teaching her to draw the “Kilroy” cartoon popular in World War II, which becomes vitally important later in the story. She finds a journal written by Cotgrave and later a hidden manuscript referenced in the journal. At first she thinks the weird experiences he narrated prove the old man suffered from dementia and paranoia. On the other hand, the petty persecution he mentioned would have been totally in character for her grandmother.

What about the things Cotgrave claimed to have seen in the woods? When Mouse and her dog come across a strange cluster of stones with grotesque carvings on them, in a spot that should not exist in the local geography, she begins to suspect Cotgrave wasn’t losing his mind after all. By the time she discovers his hidden manuscript, she’s inclined to believe the dark things it hints at. It reconstructs as much as he could recall of another journal, the “Green Book,” written by a young girl who’d had sinister encounters with what she called the “white people.” Are the horrors that nineteenth-century girl witnessed being duplicated in North Carolina? Do similar things lurk in secret places all over the world? In the midst of her struggle with the house, Mouse glimpses what appear to be effigies made of sticks, bones, and miscellaneous debris topped by deer skulls. Moreover, she reluctantly entertains the possibility that they are animated. She makes friends with three middle-aged “hippies” on a nearby property, and they acknowledge that all the locals know there are vague but dangerous “things” in the woods.

I can’t be more specific because I don’t want to give away spoilers. As the plot accelerates, unexpected, terrifying events come at every turn. Yet even in the tensest moments, Mouse’s narrative interjects wry humor. (Unlike Karen, I don't feel this feature undercuts the horror. This aspect of Kingfisher's style is one of my favorite elements in all her books.) Mouse labors on the house to a background of the local NPR station’s Pledge Break week, another detail that pays off in the end. This novel includes an abundance of my favorite horror trope, the unearthing of dark secrets from the past. It was also a thrill to recognize this story as essentially a sequel to Arthur Machen’s classic story “The White People,” as the author explains in her afterword. She, of course, puts a different spin on his plot elements. The dog, Bongo, is a character in his own right but not unrealistically sapient. As Mouse frequently notes, he’s as dumb as a box of rocks aside from his almost preternatural tracking ability. Unlike too many horror-fiction characters, Mouse has sound motives for sticking around despite the frightful incidents and, later, for venturing deeper into the forest. Another feature of the novel I admire is that she has a credible reason for writing down her experience -- to sort out the traumatic events in her own mind -- and that, unlike some horror protagonists, she doesn’t blithely move on with her life unscathed after escaping the monsters. Furthermore, Cotgrave’s manuscript sounds believably uncertain at points, not (as Kingfisher discusses in the afterword) as if he had a photographic memory. I’ve rambled on long enough, so I can only urge horror fans to read this fantastic -- in both senses -- story.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Oldies But Goodies {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Reviews: Three Fantasy Horror Selections by T. Kingfisher by Karen S. Wiesner

 

Oldies But Goodies

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Reviews: Three Fantasy Horror Selections by T. Kingfisher

by Karen S. Wiesner 

Beware potential spoilers! 

I read a tremendous amount of T. Kingfisher (who also writes and illustrates under her real name Ursula Vernon) books in 2025, and I've been reviewing them for my Friday column here on the blog for much of that time. Because there are so many, I've been trying to do combined evaluations of her works according to series, genre, and/or theme. This week, I'm grouping three of her stories under the category of adult fantasy horror. 

Before I start, I have to lament about the fact that library apps tend to be insufficient when it comes to following prolific authors. I have two different library apps (Libby and Hoopla) and cards from two different physical libraries, yet I find that, even with all of that, I can't get everything I'd like in order to read/listen to everything by Ursula Vernon and her alter ego T. Kingfisher. Libraries should really commit to an author--all or nothing. If I like something by an author, I want to read her entire body of work. I think most true readers feel the same. In the case of this particular author, I wasn't able to get everything via the library apps or at the actual locations themselves. I ended up purchasing new trade paperbacks of each because I couldn't get them from the library. Of Kingfisher's body of work, these are probably my least favorites. Sigh! 

After reading so many of her eclectic selections, I've deduced that this author is uniquely her own--whether she's writing adult or kids' fiction, whatever the genre she writes in. She has her own style that flouts all conventional definition, and these are no exception. I like that, but it can also be an issue when you're reading a lot of her titles at once. In some ways, it's like the fact that Julia Roberts is always Julia Roberts in all her films. As an actress, her own personality bleeds into her work so it leads to her being typecast. She's tried to get out of that by doing different genres, including several unflattering roles, but the end result, unfortunately, is that Julia Roberts is always Julia Roberts. If you like her and think she's a great actress, as I do, then that's fantastic for you and her. If you don't, then probably not so much. In the same way, T. Kingfisher/Ursula Vernon seems to me to be, basically, the main character in anything she writes. Most of the time, that works for her; rarely, it doesn't quite make it. 

Note that I'm reviewing these selections in the order I read them, not the order they were published in.  

The Hollow Places is an adult fantasy horror novel published in 2020. Kara is the main character. Newly divorced, she's invited by her uncle to live at his unusual museum featuring weird "natural wonders" while she gets her bearings. While she's there, wanting to keep busy and avoid the melancholy of her situation, she stumbles upon a mysterious portal. She and her old friend Simon from next door enter it and become trapped in a nightmare, alternate universe. 

By all definitions, this one sounds like everything I'd love in a book. Yet I didn't. The protagonist and her companion didn't seem as well fleshed out as the characters in the previous stories I'd read of this author's. Additionally, it reminded me a lot of Alice in Wonderland and Gaiman's Nevermore, both of which I want to love but ultimately just don't. Too many insane events take place in stories like these, and, in my opinion, simply don't form a cohesive whole that I can connect with. It all just strikes me as random, unappealing crazy- or silliness. For fans of Wonderland and Nevermore, I imagine this one could be an amazing, upside-down adventure. 

A House With Good Bones (clever title) is an adult horror novel with a touch of modern gothic thrown into it. It was published in 2023. The heroine Sam takes an extended vacation from work as an archaeoentomologist (she studies insects and arthropods recovered from archaeological sites) because her brother is worried about their mother. Sam quickly realizes he was right to be concerned. Her mother seems different. While investigating why, sometimes with the help of her mother's handyman, Sam stumbles onto a lot of family secrets and peculiarities within the house and outside, in the rose garden. As usual in these kinds of stories, sometimes it's better to leave the past buried. After all, curiosity always tries to kill the cat. 

I expended tremendous effort trying to get into this story. I read a plodding chapter, took a break for a few weeks, read another slow chapter, went on to something else for a very long while. At that point, I knew I was going to have to buckle down and work really hard to force myself to read it. I'd purchased the trade paperback, brand new, so I didn't want it to be for nothing. 

There were a lot of interesting parts to the story. Sam is a well-constructed character with Kingfisher's typical big personality chock full of unique humor. My problem with all of Ursula Vernon/T. Kingfisher's work is that her main characters are constantly uttering little "asides" in introspection that can take over so they're no longer amusing injections but annoying blockades to plot development. There are so many of them, it became like I was reading someone's stream of consciousness journals! Each one is a detour from the main story, and that can get boring and overwhelming when trying to get into a particular story. 

Combine that problem with the fact that this story was such a slow burner. Having read The Hollow Places first, I got an inkling of where the faults in this particular genre were for the author, but here I was really slapped in the face. My crux issue is that the author seems to have a problem developing horror. Every time things got scary, it was as if she herself jumped onto the page and jarred us out of the story with off-putting and off-piste commentary that detracted from the action. It really broke up the tension and left me deflated and disappointed. I read horror because I want to be scared out of my pants. I want to chew my nails. Why would an author pop that balloon of rising terror when it's the whole purpose? 

As contradictory as this is going to sound, I did end up liking A House With Good Bones. You know, despite itself. It was an unusual story with creepy roses and bugs and a compelling twist on the obvious villain. In general, I liked the main character, but the over-excess of personality did get overwhelming sometimes. I wish it hadn't been so hard to get into, such a challenge to make it all the way through. But I was glad to have read it despite its slow and uneven pacing and the author self-sabotaging when it came to developing the horror. If you can stick with it, as I forcefully did, I think you'll be glad you did. 

The Twisted Ones is an adult horror novel published in 2019. While between editing jobs, Melissa, aka Mouse, accompanied by her loyal, sweet but dopey coon dog Bongo, ends up clearing out her so-not-beloved grandmother's house crammed with everything imaginable hoarded over the course of a lifetime. Early on, she finds her step-grandfather's journal and begins to be pulled into the crazy world he lived in in his final years. Local folklore combined with the old man's rantings about incoherent dreams of the woods and its bizarre, creepy creatures mingled with her own intrigue with the journal could lead her down a path there can be no return from. The local neighbors are certainly colorful and full of not-quite helpful information and support.

As in the previous two stories, we have what I believe is T. Kingfisher's fictional counterpart playing the starring role with the specific details like job, friends, and names, etc. being slightly changed up. Again, we have a male "protector" who doesn't quite live up to the role of hero, doesn't become a love interest, doesn't actually feel all that necessary to the story one way or the other. Instead, a new friend takes on the role--foolishly and unbelievably--of accompanying the heroine when she has to go against all sense and reason to confront the evil stalking her. Once more, there are way too many asides distracting from the plot, and the author defuses all the tension every single time before it really comes to a head. 

It was so hard to get into the story in the first place, and sticking with it was a daily struggle. The Twisted Ones wanted to be scary but it wasn't. Instead, it was just weird--probably as weird as her inspiration for it (mentioned in the Author's Note), apparently an Arthur Machen found manuscript called "The White People" that was published in 1904. I haven't even heard of it. While I'm glad I finished it because the core story was worthy, I didn't love the execution of this tale any more than I did the previous two. 

I hate to say something like this, but these three books seemed disturbingly similar as I read them. It was almost as if they were one book and the author just swapped out miscellaneous technicalities to make them slightly different. A House With Good Bones and The Twisted Ones, in particular, felt way too much alike. At least initially, the "Scooby Doo" lovable dog made this one much easier to read because at least the main character wasn't just talking to herself. Now she was directing her nervous tension onto her pet, which made everything a lot more palatable. I also wasn't a huge fan of the "past story told in journal entries" plot advancement. I won't lie to you--those were extremely hard to get through. In my opinion, it was a lazy way to tell the backstory, almost like those cabbagehead-isms from Star Trek, where characters are wont to say, "As you know…" before launching into important information about the plot that the viewer needs to know. 

~*~

I was looking for pee-my-pants chills from these three books, but I got novelty weirdness instead. Alas, I expect a lot of readers who like freaky, strange tales rather than true horror might like these three vastly more than I did. In general, I'd say the core narrative of each was good and pushing through to get to it was, at minimum, rewarding. 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website and blog here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog and her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

Paladin's Grace

As Karen explained in her review of the Saint of Steel series several weeks ago, that deity suddenly and inexplicably died, leaving his paladins with a void in their souls. As berserkers, often possessed by the god in combat, they’re now at risk of being overcome by the “black tide” of battle madness with no divine force to channel it. Those who survived this catastrophe now live as best they can under the patronage of the White Rat God, whose domains are healing and law. The series takes place in the same world as the Clocktaur duology and SWORDHEART, and Zale, a legal advocate who plays a major role in the latter novel, also appears in PALADIN’S GRACE.

Paladin Stephen more or less accidentally rescues Grace, a gifted perfume-maker. They feel an instant mutual attraction, which both resist, Stephen because of the unpredictable battle madness and Grace because of experiences with the emotionally abusive husband from whom she fled. Incidentally, their respective motives for reluctance to get involved seem plausible to me. Anyway, what kind of romance plot would we have if the course of true love ran smoothly from the first meeting? Nevertheless, as readers would expect, their paths keep crossing. Grace receives a commission to create a perfume for a foreign prince, a job that gets her unwillingly entangled in the hazards of court politics. By the time she falls under suspicion of poisoning and witchcraft, she and Stephen are so deeply involved that he risks everything to save her. The Temple of the White Rat comes to their aid, as, in a more subtle and problematic way, does Grace’s landlady and best friend, who turns out to be a professional spy.

In addition to the devotees of the White Rat (of whom I can never get enough), these books include an entertaining nonhuman species, gnoles, three-foot-tall, badger-like humanoids who perform a variety of jobs. One of their common sayings, “Humans can’t smell,” encapsulates their perception that most humans are so oblivious we can hardly be blamed for our ignorance. The gnoles’ own language applies gender pronouns according to class rather than biological sex. In the human tongue, though, they hardly ever use pronouns or proper names at all (except when being unusually formal and precise). A gnole refers to itself in the third person as “a gnole,” other creatures as “a human,” “an ox,” etc.

The author’s afterword states that she wanted to write a fluffy fantasy romance in the world of SWORDHEART and the Clocktaur duology. By the time she finished, she realized fluffy romances don’t usually contain so many severed heads. Subsequent Saint of Steel books feature some of Stephen’s comrades in their own love stories. In PALADIN’S STRENGTH, the love interest is a bear-shapeshifter lay sister of the Order of St. Ursa on a mission to rescue a group of kidnapped werebear nuns. In PALADIN’S HOPE, it’s a lich-doctor, this society’s equivalent of a medical examiner, who has the secret ability to view the final moments of any dead person or animal he touches. The fourth novel in the series, PALADIN'S FAITH, foregrounds Grace's undercover-agent landlady, Marguerite. All these novels display Kingfisher’s irresistible wit and sparkling characterization.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Oldies But Goodies {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: The World of the White Rat with Swordheart and The Clocktaur War by T. Kingfisher, Part 2 by Karen S. Wiesner

 

Oldies But Goodies

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: The World of the White Rat with Swordheart and The Clocktaur War by T. Kingfisher, Part 2

by Karen S. Wiesner 

Beware potential spoilers! 

Last week I reviewed T. Kingfisher's novel Swordheart, a medieval fantasy in The World of the White Rat (sometimes called The Temple of the White Rat). This umbrella series includes The Saint of Steel series, which I reviewed not long ago on the Alien Romances Blog, as well as Clocktaur War. This week I'll review the two books in the Clocktaur War.

I purchased ebook copies of the two Clocktaur War stories, steampunk fantasy romance novels. Yet again (sigh!), I think I read every part of this series out of order. On her website, the author suggests that the best order to read these interconnected books is the same as the publication order, namely:

Clocktaur War

Clockwork Boys, Book 1 (November 2017)

The Wonder Engine, Book 2 (July 2018)

Swordheart

Swordheart, Book 1 (November 2018)

Daggerbound, Book 2 (to be released in August 2026, and this one may actually take place later--after The Saint of Steel books; we'll have to see)

The Saint of Steel

Paladin's Grace, Book 1 (February 2020)

Paladin's Strength, Book 2 (February 2021)

Paladin's Hope, Book 3 (October 2021)

Paladin's Faith, Book 4 (December 2023)

In Swordheart, Jorge relates this to Halla and the advocate divine Zale from the Order of the White Rat: "It's been a mess. Since the Clockwork Boys got turned off, all the demons that were running the damn things jumped…well, you know. Five years and we're still cleaning up the mess." That puts something of a timeline on all this. I assume based on this that the Clocktaur War titles took place five years before Swordheart. It's not clear how long after Swordheart the Saint of Steel books take place, however, in my review of that series, specifically for Paladin's Hope, Galen talks about how he'd had some experience with "wonder" (mechanical and magical) doors and machines. At that time, I speculated about whether the two stories in the Clocktaur War told this story Galen references. The answer is, yes, in part at least. The mess with the Clockwork Boys being deactivated and demons taking over everything is the story told in Clocktaur War. However, Galen himself wasn't necessarily involved in the direct events taking place in the Clocktaur War books. His order, the paladins of the Saint of Steel, probably assisted The Dreaming God religious order paladins in "cleaning up" the demons that got loose in the Clocktaur War, but that particular tale is told offstage of any of the books in this world.

Clockwork Boys, Book 1, is little more than a (230-page) introduction to the actual story. Here, the plot of the Dowager of the capital realm wanting to figure out who's sending Clockwork Boys from a rival kingdom to wage war against her is set up. Clockwork Boys are unstoppable, centaur-like, living though mechanical soldiers that have four to six legs, are eight to ten feet tall and covered with gears. Her desperate, last-ditch attempt to put a stop this is to have a master forger and thief who's a descendent of a minor wonder worker (Slate, the only female in the band) assemble a team for a final suicide mission. The Dowager had previously sent two proper teams with military and artificers but none have returned alive, nor stopped the devastation. Already in place is assassin-for-hire (Brenner) who was Slate's lover a few years ago. The second one recruited (comprising the opening chapters of Clockwork Boys) is a disgraced and disillusioned paladin named Caliban, who's considered a traitor by his temple and been imprisoned because he became infected with the demon he was trying to exorcise for The Dreaming God. He ended up killing a lot of people during his possession. Learned Edmund, initially a misogynist, teenage dedicate for the Many-Faced God, rounds out the group when he volunteers to accompany them. He's made the study of arcane machinery his specialty.

While none of the criminals that encompass the group anticipate making it out of this situation alive, they have a very good reason for wanting to. Their motivation continues to develop as they begin to bond and Slate and Caliban complicate things by falling in love with each other. They've been promised pardons and generous rewards for their crimes if they succeed where others have failed. There are also consequences (in the form of a carnivorous tattoo that will eat them alive) if they try to bolt prematurely.

Getting to Anuket City is just the first hurdle, but naturally the war-torn cities and no-man's land between there and the capitol are being ravaged by Clockwork Boys and cause the band of criminals no end of trouble. They find a wonder-engine along the way--a device created by an ancient artificer (in this series, this amounts to a magical inventor) and this reaffirms that someone must have activated a wonder-engine to create the Clockwork Boys in such scores.

Both books in this duology are one story, but, as that would have made it a very large volume indeed (Book 2 has 360 pages), it was split in two, the first ending on a cliffhanger before the group arrives in Anuket City. If both books hadn't been available at the time I was reading them long years after their initial release, I would have been so annoyed. A cliffhanger shouldn't be a legitimate way to end any book in an overarching series if all the volumes aren't available to be read at the same time or nearly so. A month apart is forgivable, but not much more than that. In my mind, any significant gap between interconnected books is cruel and permissible grounds for abandoning the series, as I surely would have if I'd had to wait nearly a year to get my hands on Book 2 the way the readers of the first published edition of Clockwork Boys had to. Okay, so I wouldn't have abandoned the series. It's just too good. 

Within the first tale is where the group of misfits begins to learn about and tentatively trust one another, discovering individual secrets and conflicts, and becoming committed to each other as well as their cause. A gnole named Grimehug (who's been captured by a demon-possessed herd of runes) joins their company once they escape and he helps them. Anuket City has been pervaded by countless gnoles trying to rebuild their lives and culture beside humans who tolerate, basically ignore, but also oppress them. I love the complicated and colorful gnoles! What a cheerful addition to this medieval fantasy world.

In The Wonder Engine, Book 2, the story continues right where it left off in Book 1 with the band now inside Anuket City and on the lookout for Learned Edmund's counterpart there-- Brother Amandai, who's disappeared. The two had corresponded prior to that, and Learned Edmund's knows the scholar kept detailed notes about the wonder-engines he encountered. Learned Edmund has also secured the help of a master artificer, Ashes Magnus, who adds more comic relief and vigor to the story.

The romance, as usual for Kingfisher, was mostly annoying between Slate and Caliban because, like angsty teenagers, they just kept telling themselves they couldn't be together (I didn't find their reasons for refraining legitimate, let alone persuasive)…until they finally got it over with and just did it. Up until the end of the story, when the romance becomes more authentic and compelling, the basis for their relationship seemed to be built on Slate thinking Caliban was pretty and doable, while Caliban seemed to need to replace the god that abandoned him with someone to worship and follow. Slate wasn't the type of girl who expected poetry and roses, and she was uber-sensitive about being treated like a frail girly-girl. In her past relationship with Brenner, they both took what they wanted from each other--nothing more and nothing less. They understood how the game was played in that regard. In contrast, Caliban is a knight by profession, and he's something of a prude about sex because of his innate chivalry. T. Kingfisher is known for marvelous humor in her stories, both in the interactions between the story people and in the character dialogue and introspection. Instead of this silly angsting she falls back on like she doesn't really know any other way to develop a valid romance relationship, I wish she'd made the in-your-face sexual tension something that Slate and Caliban bantered about with each other and within their team until the bond grew between them honestly and cohesively. While the trope of a romance triangle is clichéd to death, I felt there was enough intrigue in this one, considering the late-developing curveball, to warrant and make it fresh. The events in the wrap-up chapters did manage to pull off a satisfactory romantic conclusion, which I was grateful for.

The steampunk "horror" in this fantasy novel was some of the best I've ever read in what I consider an otherwise hit-and-miss subgenre of science fiction incorporating industrial steam-powered technology. I really enjoyed every aspect of that and the tension as our merry band of broken villain-turned-heroes figure out how to take down terrifying magical siege machines. The group dynamics and all their built-in internal conflicts meshed wonderfully and were fully fleshed out. This is a solid strength evident in nearly every story I've read by this author. I also adore her medieval worlds, and this one has become a particular favorite. The twist at the end was well-worth even the eye-rolling angsting Slate and Caliban elicited from me for most of the two books.

Ultimately, I was pleasantly surprised by the story told in Clocktaur War. I was anticipating a kind of young adult weird steampunk thing I probably wouldn't enjoy. Instead I was treated to an adult (but still mostly a clean romance), high-stakes, fun, steampunk medieval fantasy with lawbreakers that stole my heart after I realized they were honorable, despite their crimes. The mix of well-developed characters that played off each other's strengths and weaknesses was flawless. Clocktaur War kind of reminded me of the Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves movie, but I believe this one would make an even better film, if someone wisely chose to undertake it.

The author apparently spent a decade writing these two books, and, in her author's note, she said she intended to write Learned Edmund's adventures--with Slate and Caliban (and hopefully Grimehug) dropping in. We'll see what the future holds, but as it's been eight years since the publication of The Wonder Engine, she may be too far away from the series to feel capable of revisiting it.

~*~

As I said about The Saint of Steel series in a previous review, if you're looking for something unusual and unconventional in your reading, written as if the author actually lived in medieval times, these books that make up The World of the Rat umbrella series could be right up your alley, as they definitely are mine. Darn, now I wish I'd bought paperbacks of Clocktaur War instead of too-easily-lost ebooks.

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website and blog here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog and her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/