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Cathleen Townsend: Dragon Hoard; And Other Tales of Fairie

Featured on my blog today is a charming little story of the origins of this book from author Cathleen Townsend. Enjoy...

Dragon Hoard and Other Tales of Faerie came out of a desire for more fairy tales that felt true to the spirit of the original stories I’d read as a child.

We were poor when I was young, and any book given to me was a treasure. One day, when my parents were visiting friends, the kind hostess noticed me sitting quietly in the corner with nothing to do, and she gave me a marvelous book. It was old, published in the Forties. The binding was fragile, but it had over a thousand pages, printed on thin paper with double columns like a Bible. It was a collection of children’s literature, with all the old standbys—Mother Goose and the Three Little Pigs and such—but it also had poetry by Shakespeare, and whoever had compiled it had chosen versions of folklore that required me to stretch to read it.

It became my most treasured possession. I pored over descriptions of Thor and his mighty hammer, the terrible tragedy of Troy, and of course, a wide array of folk tales.

I never saw that lady again, and I’ve often wished I could thank her. In her casual kindness to a seven-year-old girl, she lit a fire in my mind that never went out.

Dragon Hoard has a dozen tales, and they all have an encounter with the bewildering world of Faerie. Some embrace it eagerly; others pay with their lives. Faerie has never been completely safe. Cinderella might have found her prince, but the little match girl died of exposure.

In the spirit of the gift that I was given, I’m offering this book for free. Or at least, mostly free. Amazon won’t let me give it away, so it’s $.99 there. But everywhere else—Smashwords, iBooks, Kobo, Barnes and Noble—you can read my belated thanks for the same price I was charged. My dearest hope is that it will touch someone the way those other stories did for me.


You can find out more at cathleentownsend.com.

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Many thanks to Cathleen for guest posting on my blog today. If you or any writers you know would be interested in sharing your fiction, your stories, your articles, or anything at all, do get in touch. Thanks again, Cathleen!

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