"Better The Thorn"
1. It was originally conceived as being set in the late ‘60s and told from the POV of a young (10-ish) girl running away from her mother through their back yard rather than go to her father’s funeral. Her father was going to have died in Vietnam, and she was fantasizing about being a goblin evading her faerie pursuers, using all manner of human weaponry against them.
2. BB-39 is the naval registry number of the battleship Arizona, the removed superstructure of which did indeed reside on Ford’s Island, HI for many years.
3. My original name for fae steel was “weemite” before changing it to “impervium.” Weemite is a reference to an old Donald Duck comic book gag.
4. The mines Lash activates at the end of the story are real. They are commonly called “bouncing betties.”
5. The place on Earth Lash is sent to by Halueth is real. I was stationed there as a young Marine from 1984-1988. The specific mag group she appears in (#25) holds a certain personal significance to me.
6. One of Lash’s taunts to the fae is from “A Clockwork Orange.”
7. The setting of Stockholm for the last act is a reference to Stockholm Syndrome, of which Lash clearly suffers.
8. “Keckberrish” is Scottish slang for, basically, a dingleberry.
9. Lash’s trick with the hand grenades is one borrowed from the Viet Cong, who collected cast off American LAAW rocket launcher tubes to use as booby traps.
10. I like to include a reference to my Dragon’s Treasure Series in each of my short stories. In this one, Lash’s birth name, Breesha, is taken from one of Cerys’ granddaughters at the very end of the series.
BONUS: 10 Fun Facts About "Miss Hattie and The Hoppers" by Mary R. Woldering
*Edited for clarity
2. I’ve always loved the Appalachian Mountains where I was born, even as a child. I never actually lived there after age 18 months. I wrote several stories set there. One was “Virgo Boy”, about an orphan boy raised by women on an island in the mountains. It was never published but it's now gaining some further development in the mythos of Dionysus.
3. [Another of the aforementioned stories] was “Last Stop Neva Land” a romance about a model with a bad breakup in her recent past who has taken the train to the Last Stop. I later discovered that there is an unincorporated place called Neva, TN.
4. This story involves a Brigadoon-like or High Elf world where people die but on burial, rise in another world of immortals.
5. My parents last home was in Piney Flats, TN where my father built two houses on a property by the river. A nearby town was historical Blountville, near the homes of Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett. A battle was fought there in the Civil war and there’s an Inn which used to be a coach stop, and is now a tourist destination. Best of all there are Appalachian Caverns known for quartz and quartzite as well as manganese.
6. In about 2016 my local Writer’s Group challenged us to write out of Genre. No one was writing steampunk and no one was writing crime. We would write Steampunk crime for an anthology. I remembered my Hattie idea and thought it could be reorganized into a steampunk crime. I was the only one who responded to the project, so it went away.
7. While I was deep in the writing of my Children of Stone series, I realized I wanted to write time travel and spinoffs of my series. My characters being very bright and semi-immortal might have gone on time journeys after the events of the series.
8. I hatched the idea. It was a little bit “Bill and Ted” in concept and a tiniest bit “Dr. Who” Take two characters who started out hating each other in the series and throw in about four thousand years in which they’ve begun to not only tolerate each other but are almost friendly time-travelling companions.
9. Hattie has now become a schoolteacher rather than an adventures (In 1876 few opportunities existed for women of high moral character who had not snagged a husband by age 25 – especially in a rural community. She’s 26) Like the original Hattie, she longs for adventure and to solve the mystery of her sister Caddie’s murder, though no body was ever found, just bloodstained clothing.
10. When the mysterious gentlemen arrive, they are immediately shunned as either Yankees or foreigners or something subversive. They meet up briefly and then later to discover their lives actually DO cross. AND THE STORY BEGINS.
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If you found these facts interesting, be sure to look for "Better The Thorn" and "Miss Hattie and The Hoppers" within the covers of Dreamtime Damsels and Fatal Femmes, by the Dreamtime Fantasy Authors!
I could add fact #11...The male half of ABBA also make guest appearances at the end of Better the Thorn. :)
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