indie – Lyndsey Hall

One Fair Eve: a Goblin Market inspired short story

Hello lovely bookish humans! How are we doing this fine October day?

I spent this weekend watching some of the Escape the Plot Forest summit, especially Kristen Kieffer’s seminar on narrative potential and the three act story structure. Kristen is one of my biggest and earliest inspirations as a writer, having stumbled across her blog She’s So Novel way back in the day, before it became Well-Storied.

As a thank you for signing up to the summit, the organiser sent out a really handy guide to plotting short stories with impact, and I spent some time going through it and compiling my thoughts and ideas for One Fair Eve into a coherent outline. I plan to draft it in November while The Solitary King is with my editor, and I’m really excited about it now I’ve got a strong outline. I really think you guys are going to enjoy it!

So, shall we find out a little more about this Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti-inspired tale?

One Fair Eve by Lyndsey Hall

Hartwood, 1880

Pip is an accomplished harpsichord player, but his dreams of travelling the world, playing with an orchestra, are dashed when his application to a prestigious musical fellowship is rejected.

On the Spring Equinox, Pip visits Hartwood market to buy a new string for his instrument and discovers that old Master Dobson sells more than just instruments and sheet music at his stall. He offers Pip the chance to achieve his wildest dreams and ambitions, in return for one thing…

On the day Pip turns eighteen, he must return to the market and accept his fate. Pip must take the place of the current Goblin King when the time comes.

Will Pip take the chance for fame and fortune, sealing his fate with the hobgoblins? Or will he resist the temptation to cheat his way to success?

Find out in One Fair Eve, a short story set in the world of The Fair Chronicles, in the Enchanted Forests anthology, coming July 2022!

What do you think? Are you a fan of fantasy stories that feature musicians and unnatural pacts that promise to grant your deepest, darkest desires? If you loved Wintersong by S. Jae Jones, then you might like this goblin king origin story.

Preorder Enchanted Forests for just 0.99 for a very limited time! This price will be going up in December so don’t hang around, and next July you could be diving into not only this story, but eleven other enchanted tales of woodland creatures and forest-dwelling witches, faeries, dryads, unicorns, and even a talking raccoon.

Lyndsey

Interview: Epic fantasy author Kala Merseal

Hi friends! How are we already half way through July? This year has absolutely flown, especially after last year seemed to drag so much.

I’ve been a busy bee this month, making my new story A Fair Deception available on Amazon (if you’ve read it I’d absolutely love it if you left a review on Amazon, Goodreads and/or Bookbub!), drafting my new 2k word flash fiction story for an anthology coming out next year with a group of 20 fellow authors, and ramping up the marketing for my new release, Enchanted Waters, which comes out tomorrow!

In between all of that though, I made time to chat with the lovely Kala Merseal, author of The Guardians of Altana series. Come along and see what we talked about…

Hi, it’s so lovely to be speaking to you! Why don’t you start by telling us a little about yourself?

Hi, I’m Kala! I’m an indie fantasy author that lives in southeast Missouri. I’m married, with three furbabies. I love books, comics, anime, and Asian live-action dramas, as well as playing The Sims, Skyrim, and Summoners’ War!

Aw, I have two furbabies and now I want another one! I used to play a lot of Assassin’s Creed and I actually miss it, I’ll have to start playing again when my son is asleep. So, what are your favourite genres to read and write?

My favorite genre hands-down is fantasy. Epic/high fantasy, dark fantasy, urban. I’ll take any of it. As for tropes, I do love the “enemies to lovers”, the “bad guys are actually good guys”, the “bad guy becomes redeemed”, and finally the “good guy spirals into corruption” tropes. The Guardians of Altana has redemption for the antagonist in the end but doesn’t follow any of my other absolute favorite tropes. I would say GOA’s main theme is redemption though.

I do love a redemption arc, but “good guy spirals into corruption” sounds really interesting, you’ll have to give me some recs! Tell us about your first published book, was that a fantasy novel?

My first published book was actually back in 2016 and it was called Purge, a vampire horror novel. I have since unpublished and buried it deep in the backyard.

In 2020, I published my first epic fantasy novel, The Shadow Curse, embarking on a new journey as an indie author. At the end of this month, exactly a year since I published the first of my series, I’ll be publishing the conclusion, The Dark Realm!

That’s so exciting! Congratulations on having a complete series, that is the absolute dream for any author I think. Where do you find inspiration for your characters or settings?

My latest series (my first officially published and finished series) is from a dream I had a few years ago.

I’d love it if story ideas came to me in dreams, mine always seem to be from podcasts! Random, I know. And I’m always driving or doing dishes so I can’t write them down. Do you consider yourself a plotter, pantser or plantser?

I am a plotter all the way. I can’t keep my head straight if I don’t have a voluminous amount of notes for my stories and their worlds.

Same! Although I’m more of a plantser, I love a big story bible with character profiles, magic rules, geography and flora and fauna, and a chapter by chapter list of what needs to happen, but I do leave some room for discovery writing. What are you working on right now?

I just released the last book of my series, The Guardians of Altana, on June 29. So exciting! In my spare time, I’m outlining my next series, The Hunted Duology.

That’s so exciting, I hope your release went well! That’s amazing that you already have another series to get stuck into, I need to think about what I’m going to do after The Fair Chronicles is complete. But that’s a problem for 2023 Lyndsey!

Thank you so much for chatting with me today, Kala, it’s been lovely! Before you go, what one piece of advice would you give aspiring authors?

Don’t give up. I think that’s the best thing that needs to be constantly drilled into writers and creatives in general. It’s so easy to stop doing what you love just because life gets in the way.

Absolutely, it’s not the easy choice, especially if you’re an indie, but it’s so worthwhile and there’s room for all of us on the bookshelf! How can we find out more about you and your books?

You can join my newsletter or join my Facebook group! I send out emails twice a month but I’m frequently on Facebook.

Website: www.kalamerseal.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kalamersealwrites/

Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/KalaMersealAuthor

Twitter: https://twitter.com/KalaMerseal

If you’re anything like me, you feel absolutely spoiled with incredible new fantasy books to add to your TBR now! It’s going to be a long, hot summer of reading friends.

Lyndsey

Interview: fantasy and myth-obsessed author Ben Lang

It’s been a good week in the Hall household, me and my husband both got our first dose of the vaccine! And we’ve seen a few friends and been for a couple of meals out, so it’s safe to say life is starting to return to normal, and it feels really nice.

This week I’ve been chatting with another fellow Brit, and a local boy at that – the myth-obsessed fantasy author Ben Lang.

Hi Ben! I’m so excited to chat to a fellow Notts-based author! Why don’t you start by telling us a little about yourself?

I am from London, but my family moved around while I was growing up so I spent a few years living in Beijing and a couple in Singapore. I live with a hamster called Zarniwoop (after the Hitchhiker’s guide character), and a human called Megan (name origin unknown).

I traveled to Singapore a few years ago and absolutely adored it! I’m so jealous you got to live there for a while. When did you start writing and who inspired or encouraged you?

I started having ideas for stories very young. My parents strongly encouraged it, especially my mum who helped me write many of them. Alice Ivinya and I have been friends for years and showed one another a lot of our early stuff. I was inspired by her example of getting some of her wonderful stories published, and she gave me the first encouragement to get something to a state to show people.

Alice is such a wonderful supporter and mentor, you’re so lucky to have her as a friend. And your parents sound so encouraging! What are your favourite books?

My favourite genres are science fiction and fantasy. My favourite book at the moment is probably Hyperion (Dan Simmons), but I have a wide range of things I really like. Growing up The Hobbit was my favourite for years, along with some Narnia. The Tombs of Atuan is probably my favourite short story.

I love The Chronicles of Narnia, and I need to read The Hobbit one of these days! Tell us about your upcoming release.

My first published story will be The Bridge, a short story appearing in a collection called Enchanted Waters. The story opens with a chance encounter between an elephant-riding preacher and a lonely young woman. The “vibe” is vaguely South-east Asian, although I cheated a little with one character who would be more at home in Camelot. I didn’t realise until more than a year after the story was finished, but it has a lot of elements in common with the Monkey King adventure involving the Golden Rays monastery.

That sounds fascinating, I’d love to read more fantasy stories set in or inspired by South East Asia. Where do you tend to find inspiration for your stories?

Obviously other books can be a good inspiration. Strangely I find the stories people tell at a dinner-table can be a good seed. These are often based on something strange that someone thinks is noteworthy. They are real, and therefore usually quite devoid of tropes and standard structures, but they are polished a little by the speaker. Really good seeds.

That’s genius! Like people watching on a much closer scale. Would you consider yourself a plotter, pantser or plantser?

Had to look these up! Certainly a pantser. When I sat down to write The Bridge I knew nothing about what was going to happen except that I wanted an elephant and that my first line was “They met at the edge of the river”. I didn’t know who either of the “they” were until I got to the next line. This worked out well for The Bridge and I think the “making it up as you go” technique has the nice side effect of making it feel like a spoken story.

Winging it this way was a bit of a revelation as everything else I had tried previously was more planned, and a lot worse. I have tried the “know nothing” tactic a few more times and learned it doesn’t always work out as well, although its generally better than planning for me. Recent attempts have been a hybrid.

I find a hybrid to be the best way for me too, I do love to plot and plan but I also leave room for a bit of discovery writing along the way. What are you working on right now?

I have half a short-story about a tortoise which is looking for a second act. I also have one about some cowboys that kind of spirals into nowhere because winging it didn’t pan out – I would like to fix it at some point although maybe it belongs on the dead heap.

Never delete anything! You never know when a scene or snippet from an old trashed story will be the perfect addition to your new WIP. What one piece of advice would you give aspiring authors?

Try writing a short story with no plan.

I had been revising my fantasy novel for years and it was by that point built on foundations laid when I was a decade less able. It was overburdened with stuff, was never actually going to be finished and was certainly never going to tie together. Plus, whenever I sat down to work on it I knew where things had to go, but somehow characters would say and do things I hadn’t planned and I had to either abandon the plan or not use the new text.

Writing something short gives you more freedom from plans and a better chance of finishing it. Once you have one finished thing you can show people and that adds momentum to write another.

That’s great advice, free writing can be so good for creativity, and I’ve definitely found writing short stories to be a totally different challenge to novel writing.

Thank you so much for speaking to me today, Ben, it’s been so much fun! How can we find out more about you and your books?

Check out my Amazon page: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ben-Lang/e/B08RXHZPSH?ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vu00_tkin_p1_i5

Ben’s story The Bridge will be included in Enchanted Waters alongside my short story Daughter of the Selkie King, coming out 16 July. Another one of Ben’s brilliant short stories, A Junk Out of Cinderbar, is going to members of the EW street team as a thank you for joining and agreeing to support our anthology with reviews and social media posts. Interested in joining?

Click here to join the Enchanted Waters street team!

Lyndsey