Elizabeth Hopkinson's Hidden Grove

  I recently read Ell Huang's excellent essay  Interview with the Vampire and Asexual Loneliness  In it, Ell does an asexual reading of all versions of Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice - the book, film and recent TV series - talking about how the loneliness of Rice's vampires speaks to the asexual experience.  I don't intend to reiterate all the points Ell makes (you can read the essay yourself). But there were many aspects that resonated with me, even though Ell is aromantic, single and childfree, and I am heteroromantic, married and a mother. Some of the points that grabbed me most stongly were: Queer Time. The idea that queer folk typically discover themselves and come of age later in life than non-queers. Or maybe we feel ourselves in a perpetual coming-of-age, a perpetual adolescence. Feeling like a child ("girl" always seems more fitting a word for myself than "woman" although I an currently 51) but not wanting to be infantalised. The vampir...

  Our Lady of Montevergine by Anna Hopkinson Please note: This article does not intend to appropriate the lived experience of Black or Romani people, gay men or traditional Third Genders. Please read the linked articles for wider perspectives. Night was drawing on fast, and with it temperatures none could survive. The ground was covered in a crust of snow. The lovers’ extremities began to turn blue. By morning, if the wolves didn’t hurry, early walkers would find two bodies encased in blocks of ice. But it was not the wolves who came. It was the Madonna. The Black Madonna, they called her. Our Lady of the Shadow-Side.  It’s Pride Month and - aside from posting rainbows and reminders that the A in LGBTQIA+ isn’t silent - I’m crowdfunding a book of Diverse & Inclusive Saints called Legends from Lindisfarne.  One of the most obviously Pride-centred stories in the book is called “Our Lady of Montevergine: Affirmer of Same Sex Couples”. It’s a retelling of a medieval legen...

 The “Merry month of May” has been filled with myth, legend and folklore for me. Here are some highlights. 1st May On May Morning, following the rare Black Moon, I walked the Pilgrim’s Way with my family, barefoot across the sands to the Holy Island of Lindisfarne. That evening, we created a fantasy version of the island in a game of Wanderhome . 2nd May A visit to the amazing Barter Books in Alnwick, where I bought two books: Celtic Pilgrimages and Folk Tales of the British Isles , both of which I’m working my way through. Also that day, our crowdfunding campaign for the third Asexual Fairy Tales was successful. The book will be coming out in October! 5th May A visit to the new Centre for Folklore, Myth & Magic in Todmorden, with its excellent folklore library. Can’t wait to go back and do some proper research! 11th May Bought this book ( Storyland by Amy Jeffs) which I’ve just finished reading. I highly recommend it. She retells - with notes - all the medieval “origin myths” ...

It’s that time of year again, when people start posting “spooky” Hallowe’en blogs, pics and videos. I famously detest the modern Hallowe’en, but am all in favour of the more recent rediscovery of the season as a time to honour the dead, perhaps via the Mexican Day of the Dead. Last night, I watched the classic Ingmar Bergman film The Seventh Seal for the first time. (The one where the knight plays chess with Death.) Contrary to common belief, the film isn’t wall-to-wall bleakness, and Death actually has a sense of humour. I love his deadpan - excuse the pun - delivery when he is sawing down a tree in which a man who has just escaped death is hiding.  Yep, I’m Death. I’m just sawing down this tree because your time is up. Nothing to see here. As you were. (I paraphrase). Anyway, it got me thinking about literary portrayals of Death, and how Death in books is often anything but bleak. Or even final. Here are my top choices: 1. Discworld by Terry Pratchet ...

I hate the modern Hallowe'en, but I love the idea of a "Season of Remembrance", running from All Saint's Eve on October 31st to Armistice Day on November 11th.  In my opinion (and experience, as someone who has provided the music for a lot  of funerals) death isn't spooky or morbid (if that's not nonsensical).  It's natural, as natural as leaves falling from trees and the year turning from summer to winter.  The dead are not to be feared.  They are our ancestors, our relatives, our family.  It's good to spend time remembering them, praying, or simply lighting a candle. Neither must Death be a figure of fear or horror.  Death can be kind.  We have only to think of the late Sir Terry Pratchett's wonderful character of Death, who always spoke in capitals, and walked with Sir Terry at the end.  Or the compassionate Death, narrator of The Book Thief , who gathers children's souls in his arms during the air raids. In that vein, I g...

I recently picked up a second-hand copy of Nigel Cawthorne's The Strange Laws of Old England.   As a source for story ideas, this is a brilliant resource, full of all sorts of strange legal goings-on, not just in Old England, but also in Wales, Scotland, the Isle of Man etc. One thing that caught my attention as a fantasist was a short paragraph saying about Henry III - the king responsible for the re-issued version of Magna Carta I was fortunate to see myself this year in Lincoln.  (There is more than one copy, in case you are about to protest that it is somewhere else!)  The book says that Henry signed a law making it a capital offence to kill, wound or maim a fairy. This sounds almost as if Henry III was making the fairy a protected species, as we would do nowadays with endangered animals.  However, although Henry III had a menagerie, I doubt the fairy was considered an endangered species in the 13th century.  In fact, as a super-pious king, and one who passe...

Back in January, I wrote about the Renaissance belief in spontaneous generation and "giving birth to hairy worms'.  The worms, incidentally, will be making a welcome return at Swanwick Writers' Summer School in August, in my workshop on "Prince Lindworm."  But you may also remember Mary Taft, who gave birth to 17 rabbits in 1726.  Recently, I read a wonderful article by Terri Windling on the symbolism of rabbits and hares [ read it here ] that brought me back to those rabbits once again. Terri mentioned a couple of things in this long and fascinating article that leapt straight out at me.  (Like a bounding hare, dare I say?)  On the first page of the blog, she says: In Egyptian myth, hares were also closely associated with the cycles of the moon, which was viewed as masculine when waxing and feminine when waning. Hares were likewise believed to be androgynous, shifting back and forth between the genders—not only in ancient Egypt but also in Europea...

For Christmas, my brother gave me a book called The Manly Masquerade: Masculinity, Paternity and Castration in the Italian Renaissance  by Valeria Finucci.  I am probably one of the few people in Britain (or the world) who would be pleased to receive such a book for Christmas - one because my current novel, Cage of   Nightingales , has a castrato as one of its main characters, and two because I find androgyny endlessly fascinating. But the book also turned up some strange beliefs which, as a fantasist, I find just as intriguing.  Or maybe not so strange.  Science is only based on what people can observe.  If food goes off, you come back to find it full of maggots.  Where did the maggots come from?  Without a microscope, it's not unreasonable to conclude - as our Renaissance ancestors did - that some creatures could be born spontaneously of putrefaction. However, the spontaneous birth theories didn't end with maggots.  Here are som...

Nothing could have excited my imagination more than the Guardian' s recent reports on the alleged discovery in North Korea of Kiringul (unicorn's lair), associated with ancient king Tongmyong who, according to Korean legend, rode on unicorns. A king rode unicorns in Korean legend?!?  Why did I not know of this before?  I find this especially interesting because in the Korean graphic novel series Bride of the Water God by Mi-Kyung Yun there is a character called Lynn, who appears to be a unicorn.  In fact, he has two forms.  In one, he is a winged unicorn.  (He looks like a horse but with more of a cow's tail).  In his other form, he looks like a human, but with pointed ears and a unicorn-like horn in the middle of his forehead.  He is ridden in his horse form by another character, Huye. According to the Guardian , Korean unicorns are called kirins or qilins.  They are described either as a 4-legged beast with a dragon's head (does...