A Fey Tale: End at the Beginning

As we settle into this new year, I’d like to welcome author Karen J. Carlisle to the Web Journal to tell us about her latest novel A Fey Tale. Karen and I have appeared together on the pages of a handful of anthologies, plus, even though she’s in Australia, the rise of virtual cons has allowed us to meet and get to know each other at some events. She is a talented author and a great person. Please welcome, Karen J. Carlisle.

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David asked me to do an ‘Introduction to Aunt Enid’ for my post. At the time, I didn’t know his post would be last official stop on my blog tour. So I thought: why not end at the beginning?

Of Origin stories and Inspirations.

It’s fitting in a way. A Fey Tale is the second book in The Aunt Enid Mysteries. In book one, Aunt Enid: Protector Extraordinaire, we meet (Great) Aunt Enid for the first time, through the eyes of her great niece, Sally who finds herself plunged into a hidden world of magic and fantastical creatures. Enid Turner is ‘your average seventy-something year old. She loves to cook, is a regular at bingo and spends hours in her garden, talking to her army of garden gnomes and fussing over the colour of her hydrangeas…’

In book two, Aunt Enid is back, but something’s different, but with the same premise: daemons, fairies, and magic are all real.

This time, there’s a deal with fairies to solve a mystery and prevent a war… and it’s up to Aunt Enid and the Protectors, with a little help from the self-appointed Fairy Hunter, to solve the mystery, return the kidnapped heir and save the humans from Otherworldly retribution. It’s now a race to save the Earth from becoming a battleground for a magical war.

A Fey Tale is a prequel, set one hundred years before the first. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is visiting Adelaide for a lecture tour. Enid Turner – and friends – are invited to a picnic in his honour, only to be caught in a web of treachery and betrayal from the Otherworlds.

In this tale of beginnings, we meet past Protectors, Olive and Sylvia, and discover the origin stories of other characters and a little more about Enid herself – such as: why she doesn’t drive and why she took up crochet.

This series really began with childhood memories and new memories of my adopted home of Adelaide, South Australia. I melded them into a fantasy world, blurring the familiar with the speculative:

When I was a child (less than eight years old) we owned a purple Wolseley car. We called it the Purple People Eater. It broke an axle going down the steep hill where we lived. I can still smell the massive metal stove my own Great Aunt Enid used when we made lemon butter. It had a multitude of doors and stove tops. It seemed to fill the entire wall. She had hydrangeas at the base of the wooden stairs of her old Queenslander house.

Many times we stayed at my grandmother’s house in Nambour. There was a huge frangipani tree in the front yard, and chokoes and persimmons out the back. There were large rooms with wooden floors and long wispy curtains.  These were happy memories of a less complicated era, embedded in darker memories of my childhood.

My grandmother had spunk, kindness, and a sense of humour. She was my hero. And still is. These women of a certain age deserved to honoured. Together, they inspired Great Aunt Enid – a beacon of light and strength in my fantasy world.

But, I only know one side of the family. Of my father’s side I know next to nothing – no relatives, no history. I’ve often wondered: what hidden truths I would discover?

In book one, Sally embodied my fearful curiosity as she discovered the truth of her mysterious great aunt and her own destiny.

In A Fey Tale, we travel back in time, in the wake of the Great War and Spanish Flu, to (almost) the beginning of Enid’s story. We discover past relationships and how they shaped her. We meet creatures from the Otherworlds desperate to prevent their own Great War – and other creatures determined to encourage it. As a Protector, it was, is, and always will be Enid’s duty to defend our world. And duty always has a cost.

As always, there will be tea and scones with lashings of Enid’s award-winning lemon butter.

But this is not the end for Enid. There’s more books planned. There are many more Otherworlds and legendary creatures to endanger our world. I already have plans for book three. But first, I need a lighter project. Next on the ‘to-be-written list’ is book two of The Department of Curiosities. Aunt Enid’s third mystery currently scheduled after that.

Get your copy of A Fey Tale at book blog special price

• eBook: 50% RRP (via Smashwords only) – https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1119230 . Use VOUCHER CODE: YH63W (Expires: January 13, 2022)
• Paperback (post to Australian addresses only) AUS$18+post (RRP us$22.99) – https://karenjcarlisle.com/product/a-fey-tale/

To visit other stops on the book blog tour, visit: https://karenjcarlisle.com/2021/12/17/a-fey-tale-book-blog-tour-schedule/

BIO

Karen J Carlisle is a writer and illustrator of steampunk, Victorian mysteries and fantasy. She was short-listed in Australian Literature Review’s 2013 Murder/Mystery Short Story Competition. She is currently writing the second book in her cosy fantasy mystery series, set in Adelaide. Her short stories have featured in the 2016 Adelaide Fringe exhibition, ‘A Trail of Tales’, ‘Where’s Holmes?’ and ‘Deadsteam’ anthologies.

LINKS

• Website: www.karenjcarlisle.com
• Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/KarenJCarlisle
• Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/karenjcarlisle
• Newsletter: https://karenjcarlisle.com/sign-up-email-list/
• Books2Read: https://books2read.com/ap/nmAy7z/Karen-J-Carlisle

Social Media

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