From Beyond the Veil.

Looking into the world from Beyond the Veil and the folklore that surrounds it.

To my dearest friends and followers,

Over the course of the next 10 weeks, I will be taking a deeper look into my novel The Story of Hollyhocks (Tales from Beyond the Veil book 1) and analyzing certain aspects of the world I created and the folklore that inspired it, along with how sections in the first half of the book relate to the second half. I will try my hardest to not give away major spoilers for those of you who have not read it, but focus on smaller sections rather than the broad picture.

To start things off, I want to talk about the opening chapter of the book. It really is for the purpose of letting the reader know what kind of setting the story will take place in, while also introducing a wide cast of different fairy creatures, and introducing the main character of the book.

Within the first 3 paragraphs, the reader is given a hint of the year. Since the story later revolves around the young Edward V, it can be assumed that the child being born who is "destined to one day reign over Great Britain" is none other than Edward (who was born in 1470). Most readers wouldn't catch this, but I thought it was a fun hint for myself and those who also enjoy historical England.

Later on in the chapter, the reader is shown the night sky, with the moon and stars being personified. One star is too excited and accidentally shoots himself from the sky, falling to the earth, and his light going out. We are told, that "some didn't care, some simply didn't notice, and some will miss him." Though I was unaware of this at the time that I wrote it, it was pointed out to me that this foreshadows an event that will happen later in the story.

In the next several paragraphs, the narrator speaks of the Forest as a living thing, and then proceeds to tell the reader about the different fairy creatures who live there, including dryads, hobgoblins, pixies, and sprites. Each fairy creature in my book was carefully written about in a way that I hope reflects the old folktales and lore about them, instead of the poorly misinterpreted fairies so commonly seen in pop culture today. 

To read more about the fairies, I have written several articles about them and provided the links at the bottom of this post.

In the 4th chapter, Hollyhocks and her friends visit a human who "summoned" them. This section was so much fun for me to write. I actually spoke with several people who truly believe in the existence of fairies, as part of my research. I wanted to know how they knew if they had seen one, what it felt like, and how they "summoned" one in the first place. The series title of my book, Tales from Beyond the Veil actually came from part of this research. The phrase "Beyond the Veil" comes from a chant, saying something along the lines of, "Beyond the veil, please let me see." It was allowing a human to see into the fairy world, but my book is more so allowing a fairy to see into the human world.

The character in the book who wished to see the fairies is noted as having lavender flowers outside her home, and baking a lemon tart. I was told that lavender and sweets (such as cream or lemon treats) were common in pagan beliefs for summoning fairies.

Thank you so much for reading!!

Yours truly,

Me

Additional:

The Sprite: An Autumn Fairy.

A Cyclopedic of Fairies: Pillywiggins, Pixies, and Sprites.

A Cyclopedic of Fairies: Dryads, Hobgoblins, and Banshees.

Check out my novel The Story of Hollyhocks (Tales from Beyond the Veil book 1).

Pre-order my novel as an ebook on Amazon!!