Tessa the Awesome

Visit her at tessagratton.com!

Tessa is an awesome writer of blood, gore, and the dead, she rides dinosaurs, is a pirate in her spare time, does Shakespeare, and is going to conquer the world! Oh, and she also writes. Her first book BLOOD MAGIC is coming soon! Make sure to check her out!

Favorite Story by Maggie: The Wind Takes Our Cries

As mentioned earlier, the Merry Sisters of Fate are hosting an AMAZING contest. Here is my favorite story by Maggie. I love how much emotional depth there is in just a small story. And it is about knights. Who doesn't love knights? Check it out here!

The Wind Takes Our Cries

My Eoin was sixteen years when they rode through. Eoin, I loved him, he was my seventh, and the others nearly killed me coming out, but not him. He slid out like a fish through a fisherman’s hands, and like a fish, he never did cry, just twisted in the goodwife’s arms. Later, when he was older, my husband and master did his part to beat a tear from Eoin’s blue eyes, but he wouldn’t cry for him either. I did the weeping for him, while I listened from the other room, and the wind took my cries away. My husband beat the others as well, but when he beat them, it was steady, methodical, rhythmic sound, like weaving, or intercourse, or raking up hay. When he beat Eoin, it was the unpredictable scrabbling of a foal standing for the first time, or the chaotic crashing of the ocean on cliffs. The beating would stop whenever Eoin stopped getting up, but Eoin never seemed to learn to stay down, any more than he learned to cry.

Eoin was like a stubborn green willow wand, he would bend but never break. I was proud of all my sons, but I was proudest of Eoin, partly because I was the only one who was. And love means more if it is hard to do.

The day they came in on their horses was summer at its end, ripe and crisp as an apple, the sort of day that makes lords long to be chasing foxes to ground and maidens to bed. There was no mistaking them. Who else had chargers like they, their coats every color of oak leaves? Who else, in this season, had brilliant caparisons draped round their horses’ shoulders and cloaks pinned on their own? Who else rode with the faerie-woman on her chestnut palfry, her face proud as a man’s?



My sons all watched the knights process along the edge of our fields, their horses pressing up against each other and then dancing away, restless with their own strength. My daughters watched them too, but like me, they were not fair of face, so I told them to keep their eyes to themselves. That the knights of the table would not want to be ogled by maidens without flowered cheeks and bee-stung lips, by my daughters with hog-chins and hair fine as an old-man’s. They paid me no mind, and all labor ceased while everyone waited for a glimpse of Arthur.

Here he came then, on a mighty dappled gray stallion draped in green, a faerie’s color, and he was more splendid than they had said. His bearing -- proud! His face -- kind! His mouth behind its trimmed ginger beard was set with both good humor and with the weight of responsibility, a face every mother should wear. I was in love with him at once, but everyone is. It is easy to love Arthur. Still, I flattened by skirt and pressed my hands to my girl-flushed cheeks and was glad that my husband was not about to see me undone so by the heroes.

I barely had time for this first glance when I realized they were coming this way. My son Aodhan was pelting toward the house, fast as a hound, and his voice carried well to me, full of terror and adulation. The king wants a drink. The king wants water.

My heart leapt inside me as I began to weigh the request -- the king could not have water, the king needed wine, did we have wine fit for Arthur, we had the mead that the Deutscher had brought -- and then, as the dapple grey horse approached, I realized with sinking heart that I could hear the uneven thunder of a beating from the house behind me. Though Eoin, as ever, didn’t cry out, my husband made up for it with grunts and bellow, insults and crowing, loud enough to hear outside the threshold. Oh! Eoin was never his son, not with eyes like that, oh, did he think that a king would want to look at him, a boy finer than a maiden, oh! a surlier son he hadn’t bred.

The shame stole my words as Arthur’s shadow fell across me and my doorstep. For a long moment there was silence, the king and I listening to the crashing inside. My husband had fallen quiet as well, and now there was only the sound of a beating in earnest.

“Lady,” Arthur said, after a space. His face was hidden in shadow, the afternoon sun a nimbus behind him and his commander beside him, tall as gods on their horses. No one had ever called me Lady. “Could I trouble you for water for our mounts?”

No one could say that we did not do well by him. Once I had stopped the boys’ mouths catching flies and dragged the girls out of Launcelot’s gaze, we watered those horses and we watered those men and I have to say that watching the knights drink, their hands young and unlined, their eyes grateful, I realized that they were just boys like my own.

Arthur thanked me then, but instead of giving a coin in return, he said, “I am needing someone to tend my hounds, Lady. I would ask you if you could spare one of your sons. We will be back through here, again, in good time, and I would return him again.”

And here I had given all our mead to his men, and he wanted my sons as well? What kind of deed was that in return, this king who was so known for his benevolence? I said, “I would be hard pressed to survive the harvest without my sons, my lord.”

The king’s eyes followed the vines up the side of our house, and he did not look at me as he said, “The hounds are skittish this year. They have given us trouble, staying with us as we travel.” His eyes returned to me. “I need someone quiet.”

And I understood the bargain he meant to make, the kindness he meant to offer. That is how Eoin came to join the knights that year.

Oh, I missed him. I missed him as we harvested and rolled hay. When the frost lightened the fields. When the snow covered the branches of the trees that edged the lane. When spring came and the thawed world smelled of animals rutting, flowers budding, carcasses rotting. I missed him every time I heard one of my other sons gasp in pain under my husband’s hand. I cried for him, too, and the wind took my cries and brought him back to me in summer.

There were fewer knights with Arthur this time, but they were no less splendid. His smile was magnificent in its benevolence. “Lady,” he said, as I wiped my eyes, “Did I not promise you I would return your son? I daresay he has refined his silence in our service.”

And there was Eoin, dismounting and making his way through the others towards us. He had become a willow tree rather than a wand, my Eoin, that year.

“Thank you for returning him, my lord,” I said.

Arthur merely smiled and turned his horse. Launcelot, however, remained, his horse half-turned away as he looked over his armored shoulder at Eoin. “Do not forget what I told you,” Launcelot said. And then he spat on my husband’s doorstep. “My apologies, Lady, no insult meant to you.”

Then they were gone, with nothing to prove that they had been there but this new Eoin. He was quiet as a churchman, steady as rain on the roof, and when night came, he cut my husband’s liver out at the dinner table. My husband made no sound, gutted like an animal. Eoin twisted the knife, however, and we both wept, as the wind took our cries away

Favorite Story by Brenna: Information

The Merry Sisters of Fate are doing an awesome contest and here is my favorite story by Brenna.

I love it because as your reading it, you are trying to figure out what is going on, and then when it clicks, you just kind of go WOW. Love it! Check it out here.

Information

It's two-thirty on a Sunday afternoon. I'm leaned way back in my chair, pulling my gum out of my mouth in a long ribbon and popping it back in. My supervisor would throw a fit, but no one's around, so it doesn't matter. I have afternoons because I hate getting up before eleven. I have Sundays, because no one has a pressing need for information on Sundays and I'm close to antisocial.

When the guy cuts through the lobby and stops at the map kiosk, I watch him for awhile. When he glances over his shoulder, the look he gives me is casual, not overly curious. No love for a girl as skinny and flat-chested as a boy.

After a minute though, he comes up to the desk. “Hey, is Macy around?”

Macy. The pretty one. Too blond to function. She wears bright rayon shirts and can never stop touching her bottom lip. I hate how she's always getting her lipgloss everywhere.

But fiddling with your mouth is a kind of mating ritual, and guys like him like that kind of thing. I stop torturing my gum. His hair is shaggy, falling artfully over one eye. His smile is the kind that melts glaciers off of bigger glaciers.

“Macy's only here on Thursdays,” I tell him.

When he leans his elbows on the information desk, the formica surface seems to shrink between us. I'm completely unimpressed by his orthodontically perfect teeth, but god help me, I want to kiss him anyway.

He smiles like the Texas sun. “I'll come back on Thursday, then.”

But he doesn't wait that long.

*****
On Monday, he comes over to me, carrying a black canvas book-bag and a little paper map.

“Can you help me?” he says, planting his elbows on the desk and spreading the map between us.

“That depends,” I say with a tiny, bashful smile. “Are you in the market for information?” and then berate myself when it comes out stupider than it sounded in my head.

He just hunches closer and smiles back. “Man, you're way friendlier than that girl yesterday. What was up with her?”

I roll my eyes and hope it seems natural. “You mean Kelsey? Don't take it personally. She's not really a people person. What can I help you with?”

“Look, I thought I knew where I was going, but now I'm not so sure. Macy—you know Macy?—I need to get to the science block, and she told me how, but now I'm not finding it.”

We lean over his paper map, considering the corridors and classrooms. He smells like running water and forgetting. He smells like a birthday party where you get just the right present.

“You want C-wing hall,” I tell him, drawing out the path with my finger. “When you get to this corridor that runs past the gym, take your second left.”

“Hey,” he says, sounding so offhand that it makes me feel fat and close to invisible. “Thanks. What's your name again?”

“Lesley,” I say, and don't point out that there is no again, that he never knew it in the first place.

*****
On Tuesday, he shows up just after the late bell, looking wide-eyed and harassed. He starts down the C-wing hall, then doubles back. “Hey, can you tell me how to get to the science block? I thought I knew, but now everything seems turned around.”

I close my book, using my finger to mark my place, and take a minute to admire the way he looks so crushable and cool, even with his hair standing up a little, like he can't stop raking his hands through it. “Yeah, it's easy. Just cut through the commons, and then take a right down D-wing hall. It'll be just past the library.”

“Are you sure? I swear the girl yesterday said to head towards the gym.”

“That was yesterday,” I tell him, wishing for Macy's easy smile. For her blond curls and her flirtatious way of tilting her chin or messing with her pen. “You need to turn right at D-wing.”

“Wow.” He shakes his head, grinning sideways at me. “And that other girl, Macy, told me something completely different. Looks like I'm going to have to give her a talking to when I see her. Maybe sit her down for coffee and give her a hard time about, you know, misdirecting me.”

I raise my eyebrows, opening my book again. “You do that.”

“Thursday, right? That's when she works next?”

“Yeah, she'll be here.”

His smile is so warm it makes my heart race, and I can't wait for Thursday.

Favorite Story by Tessa: The Red Hat

The Merry Sisters of Fate (aka YA authors Tessa Gratton, Brenna Yovanoff, and Maggie Stiefvater) are having a huge contest (lear about it here) and to enter, all we have to do is post our favorite story of there's. So here is my favorite story by Tessa: the Red Hat

I love this story because it is just such an odd combination: bloody, flesh-eating elves plus Christmas. Such an unsettleing combination that I haven't been able to get it out of my head! Enjoy it here or read it on their blog.

The Red Hat

They think I’m a Christmas elf because of my red hat and silver shoes.

***

She found the hat next to the highway, half way down the rocky embankment. Crumpled and smeared with dirt, it reminded her of an empty carcass, of road kill, of torn paper and old underwear.

With a damp stick, she lifted the hat up. It was months away from Christmas, but the lonely Santa hat seemed new. Except for being damp from the flood waters, the white fur was fluffy and thick. She’d take it home. Cleaned and dried, it would be a good gift for her nephew.

***

Because I’m pretty, they don’t suspect I want to eat their faces and soak my hat in their freshly spilled blood.

***

She kept it in the back of the coat closet with her other early purchase gifts. The week after Thanksgiving when she was digging in the old Macy’s sack to divide out the presents for family and friends, she found it again. The velvet had faded to a dull red, and perhaps wouldn’t be so thrilling for a 3 year old. Better to fluff it up and wear it herself. She had a jumbo-size lego set for her Justin now, anyway.

***

I know when I need to feed because the brilliant red fades into brown. A decayed color, dark and dead as burned summer grass.

***

“Merry Christmas!” she called, throwing open the door to her sister’s house. The hat pinched at her temples. As soon as she’d seen Justin, she’d stuff it into the bottom of her purse. From the canned Bing Crosby and chatter, it sounded like her family was crammed in the kitchen. She swung through the living room to drop her gifts under the tree.

Her stomach growled. The hat tightened around her head and blood throbbed behind her eyes. Dizzy, she knelt. She dug at the fur rim, pushing at the hat, but it gripped to her skin.

“Aunt Angie?”

“Justin,” she whispered, eyes squeezed tightly shut, fingers digging into her scalp. Her head burned, filling her body with hot pickling pain.

“What’s the matter?”

His little hands were cold on her cheeks, and she opened her blood-shot eyes. “I’m so hungry suddenly,” she whispered.

***

Children are my favorite. They’re so trusting. So soft. So compliant. Following me away from their mothers, into service hallways and bathroom stalls. They laugh and giggle until the very end.


Author’s Note: a little flash fiction in the Merry Fates Christmas spirit.

Beastly by Alex Flinn--A+

I am a beast. A beast. Not quite wolf or bear, gorilla or dog, but a horrible new creature who walks upright – a creature with fangs and claws and hair springing from every pore. I am a monster.

You think I’m talking fairy tales? No way. The place is New York City. The time is now. It’s no deformity, no disease. And I’ll stay this way forever – ruined – unless I can break the spell.

Yes, the spell, the one the witch in my English class cast on me. Why did she turn me into a beast who hides by day and prowls by night? I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you how I used to be Kyle Kingsbury, the guy you wished you were, with money, perfect looks, and a perfect life. And then, I’ll tell you how I became perfectly beastly.

I just finished this book and found it to be fabulous! I had already read A Kiss in Time by Flinn and loved it, so I had high expectations from the author. But she me them all. The voice was well written, the characters where likable, and the story was great. It followed the plot of the traditional story line of Beauty and the Beast (as seen in the Disney version), which makes it seem that it should be predictable. Somehow, it wasn't. It had the witch that turned him, the magic mirror, the trapped servants, the girl being forced to live with him, the mob... everything. But I didn't see a single one of them coming and was excited when I realized the connection. This is a book I would love to read again.

It is also going to be made into a movie. At first I was excited about it, but then realized that it was going to star Mary Kate Olsen as the witch and one of the Disney actresses from High School Musical as the nerdy/homely girl...not pleased. Not pleased at all. But then I was ever so slightly comforted by the fact that Neil Patrick Harris (of Dr. Horrible's Sing-A-Long Blog) was going to be in it. And the fact that the guy playing the Beast is hot.

Find out more about the author here.

Linger Give Away!

In Maggie Stiefvater's Shiver, Grace and Sam found each other.  Now, in Linger, they must fight to be together. For Grace, this means defying her parents and keeping a very dangerous secret about her own well-being. For Sam, this means grappling with his werewolf past . . . and figuring out a way to survive into the future. Add into the mix a new wolf named Cole, whose own past has the potential to destroy the whole pack.  And Isabelle, who already lost her brother to the wolves . . . and is nonetheless drawn to Cole.

At turns harrowing and euphoric, Linger is a spellbinding love story that explores both sides of love -- the light and the dark, the warm and the cold -- in a way you will never forget.

Comes out in stores everywhere July 20th. Pre-order here.

Enter to win an advanced review copies of LINGER, Sisters Red, The Dead-Tossed Waves, and The Replacement on Maggie's blog.

Contest!

There is an amazing contest going on at Lauren's Crammed Bookshelf! Thee signed copies of Lonely Hearts Club! I almost bought this book but put it back at the last minute. Maybe because I was destined to win it!