Defying Expectations
By Danielle Ackley-McPhail
I can’t really say when I became a
writer. I can tell you it started with reading. Voraciously. I remember the
feeling of never wanting my favorite books to end. I remember telling myself
bedtime stories in my head, continuing the story with myself inserted into the
plot.
I will never understand how I was ever
able to fall asleep. Talk about counterproductive…waking my brain up when I
should be sleeping. Anyway, I survived my wild and crazy childhood ;) and
somewhere along the way I began to tell my own tales.
Then I grew up and went to college, and
by the time I got the hang of adulting and finished my degree, it was several
months after I graduated and finally managed to get a job that I realized I had
stopped writing.
I tried getting a friend to give me
writing prompts. Big mistake.
That is when I discovered, having just
joined AOL, that there was a site there just for writers. The Amazing Instant
Novelist. What? Never heard of it? I am not surprised…this was a LONG time ago
and the site, as far as I know, is long gone. It was there when I needed it,
though. I dare say that if it wasn’t for The Amazing Instant Novelist I would
not be an author today. Eventually, I volunteered for the site and began my
first novel there. What drew me in to begin with, though, was their weekly
themed contests. For one, you had to write a story in 250 words or less; the
other you were given all of 1500 words.
I lived for those contests.
Each week, I would wait to find out
what those themes would be and then I would come up with the most unexpected
way of meeting that theme. You see, a lot of people entered, and the prize was
to have your internet service free for that month. (Yes, that is how far back
this goes…AOL wasn’t free and I was on dial-up!) I was determined to stand out from
the sometimes hundreds of entries, knowing that the majority of writers would
take the same approach to that week’s theme.
I know…a long build up to get to the
point. But there is a point. Those contests not only gave me confidence that I
could write things people wanted to read, but they also set my mindset when it
comes to writing. There are no new stories, just new approaches. I have striven
to defy expectations in my writing ever since.
My novels, The Halfling’s Court and The
Redcaps’ Queen, are prominent examples of that. A decade or so I ago edited
the Bad-Ass Faeries anthologies.
Those books blazed the trail when it came to taking the fairy back to it dark
and dangerous roots. See, the Great Mouse had soft-pedaled the fae so
thoroughly that most people had forgotten they had ever been anything else but
bright and cheery and pleasantly magical. Far cry from the fae of lore.
Mischievous at best, murderous at worst, malevolently indifferent or
dangerously mercurial. To aid us in our campaign to de-disnify the fae, authors
were given one guideline, they had to take a faerie (generic, of their own
creation, or one from lore) and pair it with something people automatically
thought of as bad-ass. Having had the awestruck pleasure of witnessing a biker
stampede only months before we formulated the series, I claimed bikers for my
very own. I have been having fun defying expectations ever since.
Three of the four anthologies finaled
for awards, two of them won the prize. The series was cited in the New York Times
as an excellent example of the (then-new) trend in faerie fiction. Over the
many times the books had been reviewed, my own stories about the biker fae were
often highlighted in the reviews. This gave me the idea of a spin-off series.
Novellas based on the most popular stories from the anthologies billed as
Bad-Ass Faerie Tales. Sadly, only three books were ever written, The Halfling’s Court, The Redcaps’ Queen,
and Three Chords of Chaos, by James
Chambers. I have not given up hope on their being more. Actually, I have
already begun to write the third installation of my faerie tale, it will be
called The High King’s Fool, but
don’t ask me when that will be done…Too many tales to tell…I may have to go
back to writing in my sleep.
The
Halfling's Court
A
Bad-Ass Faerie Tale Book 1
by
Danielle Ackley-McPhail
Genre:
Urban Fantasy
Get
Your Bad-Ass On!
The
rumble of a Harley...
The
gleam of black leather...
The
shine of polished chrome...
The
freedom of the open road....
Motorcycles
meet magic and mayhem as Lance Cosain, the halfling leader of The
Wild Hunt MC, protects his turf and his people from attacks ordered
by Dair na Scath, the high king of the fae.
Holding
his own against rogue fae, redcaps, and pissed-off road gremlins, all
Lance wants to do is settle down with his lady. Instead he goes
toe-to-toe with the high king's champion over an ancient dagger and
his claim to the throne.
Who
will triumph? The king of the road or the king of the realm? Either
way, the Hunt is on!
The
Redcaps' Queen
A
Bad-Ass Faerie Tale Book 2
The
Hunt is On!
When
strength becomes weakness…
And
hope becomes doubt…
As
the past collides with the future…hard…
Can
Suzanne—Wild Hunt biker chick and one-time member of the fae High
Court—stand strong as her world falls apart? She survived an
assault by redcaps, an all-out battle with the High King’s armies,
and her first encounter with roller derby… but how will she fare
against her inner demons? Caught in the midst of a transformation she
scarcely realizes and does not understand, her hard-won convictions
are tested as never before.
Suzanne
is left with only one question—what if they’re wrong?
The
truth could mean the difference between saving her sanity and losing
her soul…
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