Author Guest Post: Once Upon a Time and Ever After...

I heard about this book and knew I had to share about it with you. I'll have a series of posts to go with this new release coming our way May 29, 2016. Stay tuned for mini interviews about the stories you'll find in Gaslight & Grimm.

Today, I have Danielle Ackley-McPhail. Please give her a warm welcome!


Once Upon a Time and Ever After…

By Danielle Ackley-McPhail

From the moment the first story was told it was destined to be taken up by someone else and retold the way they thought it should be. That has not stopped since. Why else do you think there are so many variations on the classic tales? Same stories, only regional differences, cultural differences… There are no new tales, just new perspectives. Don’t get me wrong. This isn’t a bad thing. Think of the insight this gives us on our fellow man if we pay attention.

Gaslight & Grimm continues that fine tradition. Fairy tales have been around for as long as parents have tried to explain the world to their children, but they became popular as a story form in the 19th century when Charles Perrault elevated them to the status of literature. People have been retelling them ever since, but for us there was no more natural transformation than to take fairy tales back to the era where they came into their own and mod them out with the elements of the age of steam.

Steampunk and fairy tales are perhaps not a natural pairing, but they are a harmonious one, allowing authors to show the same ingenuity in their story crafting as a tinker would in his invention. Some of the tales in this book seem merely to swap out the magic of the tale for early science, some meld the two, and yet others have been torn down to their foundations and rebuilt into a fantastical inventiveness that captures the essence of the classic but elevates it to something new. Sometimes shiny…often Grimm...always engaging.

We hope our readers will enjoy these new interpretations and if they aren’t familiar with the original, perhaps they will search them out so they can fully appreciate the transformations we have presented to them.

Author’s Aside: In keeping with the spirit of the project, all illustrations used in Gaslight & Grimm are linocut prints, modern interpretations of the traditional woodcuts that would have been used in such books back in Perrault’s time. Likewise, the cover was digitally created from another linocut print and enhanced to give the impression of an embossed, leather-bound book, with gold-foil accents.

Image based from Christine  Norris's story: When Pigs Fly.

RELATED BOOK/PUBLISHER LINKS
Blog - https://especbooks.wordpress.com/
Website - http://www.especbooks.com/Projects/GaslightAndGrimm.htm
Kickstarter - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/e-specbooks/gaslight-and-grimm-steampunk-faerie-tales
Kindle - http://www.amazon.com/Gaslight-Grimm-Steampunk-Faerie-Tales-ebook/dp/B01E6C03OA/
Print - http://www.amazon.com/Gaslight-Grimm-Steampunk-Faerie-Tales/dp/1942990316/
NOOK - http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/gaslight-grimm-jody-lynn-nye/1123660280?ean=9781942990321
GoodReads - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28522644-gaslight-and-grimm
GoodReads Giveaway – https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/183549-gaslight-and-grimm

TWITTER HANDLES
@Jean_Marie_Ward @danny_birt @ElaineCorvidae @jywriterguy @brni_x @kellyaharmon @GailZMartin @JodyLynnNye @davidleesummers @cnorrisauthor @jonahofthesea @eSpecBooks @DMcPhail, @LNMartinAuthor

BIO
Award-winning author and editor Danielle Ackley-McPhail has worked both sides of the publishing industry for longer than she cares to admit. Currently, she is a project editor and promotions manager for Dark Quest Books. In 2014 she joined forces with husband Mike McPhail and friend Greg Schauer to form her own publishing house, eSpec Books (www.especbooks.com).

Her published works include five urban fantasy novels, Yesterday's Dreams, Tomorrow's Memories, Today’s Promise, The Halfling’s Court: and The Redcaps’ Queen: A Bad-Ass Faerie Tale, and a young adult Steampunk novel, Baba Ali and the Clockwork Djinn, written with Day Al-Mohamed. She is also the author of the solo collections A Legacy of Stars, Consigned to the Sea, Flash in the Can, and Transcendence, the non-fiction writers’ guide, The Literary Handyman, and is the senior editor of the Bad-Ass Faeries anthology series, Gaslight & Grimm, Dragon’s Lure, and In an Iron Cage. Her short stories are included in numerous other anthologies and collections.

She is a member of Broad Universe, a writer’s organization focusing on promoting the works of women authors in the speculative genres.

In addition to her literary acclaim, she crafts and sells original costume horns under the moniker The Hornie Lady, at literary conventions, on commission, and wholesale.

Danielle lives in New Jersey with husband and fellow writer, Mike McPhail and two extremely spoiled cats. She can be found on Facebook (Danielle Ackley-McPhail) and Twitter (DMcPhail, BadAssFaeries, eSpecBooks, and TheHornieLady).

To learn more about her work, visit www.sidhenadaire.com, www.especbooks.com or www.badassfaeries.com.
Websites: www.sidhenadaire.com, www.badassfaeries.com, www.especbooks.com
Twitter https://twitter.com/#!/DMcPhail, https://twitter.com/#!/BadAssFaeries and https://twitter.com/#!/eSpecBooks
Facebook http://www.facebook.com/#!/danielle.ackleymcphail
https://www.facebook.com/E-Spec-Books-768052066586116/
https://www.facebook.com/TheHornieLady/
Amazon author page http://www.amazon.com/Danielle-Ackley-McPhail/e/B002GZVZPQ/
Goodreads http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/989939.Danielle_Ackley_McPhail
Blog: https://especbooks.wordpress.com/