Publisher: Eric Alan Westfall
Release Date: Monday, September 7 2020
Cover Artist: Karrie Jax
Genres: fairy tale, fantasy, MM(M), Russian fairy tale
Keywords/Categories: Russian fairy tale, fantasy, magic, magick, shifter, fairy tale, gay, queer, LGBTQ, fairy tale, new release, announcement, giveaway
Book Blurb:
Dear Reader,
What do you get when you combine a greedy Great Tsar, his two cheating, bullying older sons, his youngest esser (shh! no saying that aloud) son, stolen gold apples, a Firebird quest, A. Wolfe who has the power t’assume a pleasing shape, a magickal sandstorm, as well as two bands and a full Symphony of Gipsumies?
A rollicking, roisterous Russian Fairy Tale, with vigorous esser activities in tents, halls, bedrooms and alcoves, with and without the assistance of PSTs. Plus princely parades, a duel over Gus, new lyrics to an old drinking song, and the possibility of bits of blood, gobs of gore or moments of mayhem. As required by CORA (the Code of RFT Authors), should these occur, your author will give you timely warning.
Ah. Still not ready to part with your kopek-equivalent? Consider the fun you’ll have reading chapters like:
“To Kvetch, Or Not To Kvetch? A Reader’s Choice”
“Ivan Has A Close Encounter Of The F-Word Kind”
“Second Direction Questers vs. The Caliph’s Sayer Of Sooths”
“Will Sasha Succeed In Seducing Prince Ivan?”
“Bad Prince Ivan! No Touch Cage!”
“A Travel Pause For Gratuitous Sex In The Tent—Which Does Not Advance The Plot—At The Insistence Of The Characters”
“A Necessary Interlude To Consider The Age-Old Questing Question: What The [Expletive Of Your Choice, Dear Reader] Do We Do Next?”
If you buy it and try it, you’ll like it, or so says your most talen…er…humble author.
p.s. If Karrie Jax and I have covered you and blurbed you to buy, look for “Dear Reader, Along The Way, Did You Happen To See The Allusion To Olivier?” in the TOC. It’s a spot-the-allusions chance at gift cards of $25, $15, or $10.
179,768 words of fun and frolic in this true tale, plus a 2162-word teaser from another MM fairytale: The Tinderbox
Amazon | Smashwords | Universal Buy Link
Why all those allusions?
Because I can’t help it?
I’m on the way downhill slope to eighty, so I grew up watching the great movies from the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, that are a mainstay of Turner Classic Movies™ now. Television, of course, for the earliest decades, but a great many of the second two decades in movie theatres. I am a stereotypical gay man in that I love musicals, and Garland, Streisand, and it naturally follows, Jim Bailey.
But I’m also an avid reader. I started when I was five with a book of fairy tales, and for the last twenty years or so I’ve averaged at least a book a day, sometimes two or three. And yes, I do mean books, not short stories of the 5-10-15K variety. I have a theatre background, which includes a love of Shakespeare—the “main” plays like R&J, Hamlet, some of the Henry plays, and others.
So I found that as I’m writing, an allusion to a play, a movie, a book, a song, just…pop up. I’ve never expressly tried to come up with an allusion at a particular point in a book. No “Hmmm. An allusion would work here. What should it be?” kind of thing.
My first fully allusionary work was a 5800 word story called “Sranjir in the Night,” written about thirty years ago. (You can find it in my Deus Ex Story Collection, at friendly retailers lots of places.) I think it has something like 50 allusions, with the title being an obvious one, but others hopefully more subtle.
Unless I’m absolutely certain of the wording of the source I’m allusionizing (*s*), I go to Google to check it out. Particularly song lyrics, which are being…parodied, I believe is the no-copyright-infringement word. Then I play with the language until I get something which suggests the original, and ideally has the same rhythm, and similar rhyme.
So…are there bunches and bunches of allusions in IWF?
Well, deities-bless (as IWF folk sometimes say), yes.
Do your characters try to make like bunnies and create ever more convoluted plots for you? Or do you have to coax them out of your characters?
I’ve never had to coax a plot out of my characters. Normally, when I start writing an original story, which is to say, one thunk up by me and only me, I have the title, the opening and ending, and a pretty good idea of how I’m going to get between those two points.
Sometimes, the ending is just a…feeling, as in knowing I want it to end on a particular emotional note. More often, I have the last line of the book written, perhaps even the last chapter before I start full-on writing. Sometimes I have the opening line—“no way out” in the book of the same title—or opening paragraph(s).
The point of all this being that I know what the plot is and so no “coaxing” is involved. On the other book, a couple of years back, in the tour for no way out, I was asked this question, and I blithely responded as follows:
“I know writers who have had characters do just that…demand more, different, you can’t do that, you have to do this…but it’s never happened to me. What takes the plot off in a new direction is usually an idea that occurs to me, and once I start writing, the story expands to explore the logical (my logical, not necessarily the world’s “logical”) consequences.”
I didn’t know I was delayed-jinxing myself.
Let me give you some examples of plot-hijacking here, with some chapter titles:
“A Brief Interruption For A Restrained Expression Of The Author’s Justifiable Outrage,” in which I discuss how the characters altered the happenings in the original Russian fairy tale from which I sto…borrowed this plot. What they changed was what was supposed to happen after the meeting of the prince, his horse, and the wolf.
To paraphrase that great philosopher H. Dumptoyevski, when an author puts down words in a particular pattern for the plot, they must mean what the author decides they mean, and events must unfold as the author envisions. The question is, which is to be master, characters or the writer who writes them?
Alas, this true tale was a frequent struggle to determine which would be master. One character with whom there was particular difficulty, actually inserted the customary fairy tale prince—tall, blond, gorgeous, endowed with more than manly muscles—into the plot in a spot where an ordinary prince was required.
However, once I wrested firm control back, that was that. Okay, all right, there were some negotiations, such as:
“A Travel Pause For Gratuitous Sex In The Tent—Which Does Not Advance The Plot—At The Insistence Of The Characters”
“A Travel Pause For Gratuitous Sex At An Inn Of Reasonable Quality, Which Is To Say, The Closest One, Which Also Does Not Advance, Et Cetera”
“A Travel Pause For Gratuitous Sex While Staying Overnight In A Gipsumy Caravan, Which Again Does Not Advance, Et Cetera, But Which Is Also The Last Travel Interruption, At The Author’s Insistence”
But overall, I was in absolute, firm control of the plot and all its developments.
Truly. I was.
What are your future projects?
I was asked this question on a 2018 tour, when I had just released three books in fairly short order: A Cocky Confession Story Collection; Of Princes False and True (a gay retelling of a fairy tale from the well-named Andrew Lang 1910 collection, The Lilac Fairy Book) and no way out (Regency, third in the Another England series).
However, two of my confident three predictions for late 2018, into 2019, are still languishing: Christmas at the Baths and The Truth About Them Damn Goats (in which the troll sets the record straight on a live TV show). Only 3 Boars & A Wolf Walk Into A Bar… made it into pixels.
I give up on predictions, much less promises.
However, I did make a semi, sort of, commitment to getting The Tinderbox out by Christmas of 2020. I was informed that some of the role-players in The Tinderbox, who have writing-of-the-book contracts with me, were unhappy because the story was started in August of 2018 and still isn’t finished. (That’s one of the contracts authorized by the Characters Equity Association, and it bars the role-players from appearing as characters in another book until theirs is done.) My decision has nothing whatsoever to do with the possibility a complaint might be filed against me with the CEA. Nothing. At. All.
Really.
Eric is giving away a $20 Amazon gift card with this tour. Enter via rafflecopter:
“I am not a wolf, Prince Ivan, I am A. Wolfe.”
Ivan lifted an eyebrow, in his long-perfected “inquiring princes want to know what you mean” mode, while wondering what effect it might have on such an enormous beast. Well, not a beast, exactly, since it could talk.
No reaction, except the bright gold eyes—so like one of his father’s apples, well-polished after plucking, or the gold circles in the Firebird’s tail—stared back, unblinking.
Since his eyebrow inquiry failed to a verbal response, it was Ivan’s turn to talk. Politeness had worked with the Firebird, when used in place of “I am royal, hear me roar” arrogance, and might be best for Ivan’s well-being in the current situation, conversing with a wolf, the top of whose head was above Gus’ shoulder.
“‘A wolf who talks,’” yes. My exact words, Sir Wolf.”
The wolf opened his mouth. Wide. No mere flash this time. Ivan was fully fanged. As they had only just met, he could not tell whether he was being fang-grinned for a reason he could not fathom, or fierce-fanged to frighten him. If it was the latter, there was a glimmer of starting-to-work happening.
But the wolf’s voice was neither fierce nor fun-filled when he hid most of his fangs and talked again. His tone was a goblet of great size, filled not just to the brim but overflowing—with more coming from somewhere so the over kept on flowing—with…patience. The kind of patience you use for, with, and on, those who are not very bright. Indeed, those who are so dim that if their brains were used to provide light for reading at night they’d be as effective as an inch-tall stub of a quarter-inch wide candle, set in a candlestick in the bowels of a cavern on the far side of a mountain range five-and-a-half eighths of a continent away.
“When you bathe, do you clean your ears, Prince Ivan?” [See above for how he said it.]
“Uh…what?”
A sigh was heard.
Ivan wished he’d brought along a sigh that big, but then, since it was a large wolf letting it loose, accompanied by, Ivan was almost sure, a hint of a scent of pasta, pesto, garlic and butter, Ivan might not have been able to use it with the same effect. The sigh might almost have been designed to complement the show-patience-to-the-afflicted voice.
“Do. You. Clean—”
“I heard you the first time, Sir Wolf. I just don’t understa—”
It was the wolf’s turn to interrupt. “It’s clear you don’t understand, young prince. I was trying to ascertain whether your inability to understand plain Russian was based on a physical defect—stuffed ears, whether unclean or for another reason, bad hearing, something of that sort—and if not, on some mental lack which in theory requires me to be considerate and gentle.”
There was a tiny pause, so infinitesimal Ivan would have had no chance to get a syllable of a word in edgewise, sidewise, upwise, or downwise, even had he tried. “You do understand kindness and gentleness are not traits associated with a wolf, and especially not A. Wolfe?”
At the end of this series of insults, the Great Tsar would have raged, calling on his ever-present Imperial Guards to “Rid me of this wolf!”
Anatol would have ranted about the presumptuousness of peasants who did not know or stay in their proper place, probably forgetting who had just offended his sense of propriety.
Vlad would have grabbed his sword, and whether from horseback, or following a grandiose leap to the ground which displayed his awesome athleticism for the admiration of any viewers lurking in the vicinity—it was his policy to always act as if he was being viewed with admiration—would have started hewing and hacking away.
In part because Ivan suspected the outcome would have been the same with all three of those scenes—dead soldiers, dead royal family, likely including bystander youngest prince—Ivan chose the fourth door…and laughed.
He couldn’t say why he saw—thought he saw—a twinkle of humor in the great golden eyes. But he must have been right, because the wolf didn’t leap up, all howling, growling and slavering, and drag him off Gus before doing the devouring which would logically follow offending laughter.
Ivan forced a halt to his own humor. With gasps interrupting his initial words, he said, “My apologies, Sir Wolf. I was not laughing at you. It was an image in my head of my family’s reactions to your words, and yours to theirs. However, with all the respect to which you are entitled, which seems to be at least a reasonable amount”—Ivan was willing to be reasonable, but not obsequious—“I have no mental or physical defect which interferes with my hearing or my understanding. Perhaps the, ah, flaw lies in your explanation of what you mean? Or, you might consider, the lack of one?”
Ivan gave the wolf a princely grin of satisfaction with his response.
Wolfe gave the prince back a wolfeish huff. “I’ll entertain the possibility you might be right, if you’ll entertain the possibility you are not listening as well as you should.”
Ivan nodded.
“Very well. Repeat after me, ‘A wolf is not the same as A. Wolfe.’”
“A wolf is not the same as a wolf.”
Wolfe sighed again. He apparently had an inexhaustible supply, in a wide range of sizes.
“A wolf is an animal, Prince Ivan. It resembles me, but is far smaller, roams the forest, howls from time to time for various reasons, and at times for no reason at all. Perhaps because it doesn’t reason. I am a wolfe—with an ‘e’ at the end. Which means I have magickal skills. My name is: A…full stop…Wolfe.”
Ivan grinned again. “Your first name is Afullstop? What an unusual name. Not Russian, is it?”
“No. Not an ‘uh’ sound, but a long a-sound, which rhym… You’re teasing.”
Ivan learned another lesson in wolfe-prince relations. A wolf-with-an-e-at-the-end could grin, without his fangs looking all fearsome.
Ivan widened his own grin. “I am. So what does long-A stand for?”
“Aleksandr.”
“A handsome name for a handsome wolf-with-an-e.”
Ivan paused. He shouldn’t, he really shouldn’t, but he decided he would, anyway. “Sir Wolfe, now that I know your name is A. Wolfe, and since we are being so precise with our pronunciations, are you really quite certain I shouldn’t call you ‘A. Wolfie?’ To be sure the final ‘e’ gets its just and proper due?”
Ah. So that’s what a Wolfeish glare looked like with a fillip of fang.
Starting then, he’s published 13 novels and novellas, 1 poetry collection, 2 short story collections, and 3 short stories. God willin’ and the crick don’t rise, 2020 will also see The Tinderbox out and about. But since real life is, as we all know, a pain in the (anatomical site of your choice)…no guarantees.
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