03 July 2010

enter the Cabinet des Fées, and get sticky with The Honey Month

First, Cabinet des Fées has an enthralling new website, with much to drag you away from what you were supposed to be doing.

Next, their Journal of Fairy Tales has a sparkling new issue out with twelve fresh stories by tellers diverse, and this gorgeous cover art by Charles Vess.

edited by Helen Pilinovsky & Erzebet YellowBoy

The reason I like this journal is that it is never content to leave anything alone. It intelligently uses brooms, picks, tweezers, spoons, potions and comestibles to confect new takes on old tales. Also, the people involved in the editing are some of the finest honers of today, with taste to spare.

As for Erzebet YellowBoy, who is also a delicious writer (get the upcoming Haunted Legends anthology edited by Ellen Datlow and Nick Mamatas), I highly recommend her own publishing house/special bookbindery, Papaveria Press.

Papaveria's latest production (in two editions) is this collection inspired by a variety of honeys, and written by an inspired poet worthy of her awards:

Read her Rhysling-winning
Song for an Ancient City
here in Mythic Delirium.


(A tacky and tasteless [very unhoneylike] self-indulgent aside: If you've read my latest novel Crandolin, you'd know that I am also besotted with honey – and those who get sticky professionally from it: Ekmel, the honey merchant; his donkey who drools for honey nougat; and the great Burhanettin, Master helvassia-i-dukka (honey confectioner). But of course, you can't have read Crandolin unless you live on Asteroid *. On Earth, honey gets more venerable with age. Some fairy tales do, too. As for Crandolin, the manuscript might see light as a book, but might become more valuable yet, as it is becoming virtual oil as it rots in the primordial swamp called "submissions". Ah, well. At least my portraits of sleeping bees have taken flight to be enjoyed – and I hope you do, though I'm sorry that I couldn't tape their snores.)

No comments:

Post a Comment