Katy Towell's Childrin R Skary
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Buy some art! Help some kids!

November 21st, 2011

It's the holiday season in the US and many places around the world. It's also getting pretty cold in the US and many places around the world! Then again, it's also neither in many places around the world. But every place has children in need, and you can help them out while getting a little something for yourself.

Now that 31 Days of Halloween 2011: The Truth About the Glass has finally ended, you have a chance to bid on all the illustrations. All of them! For you (if you win)! Signed, too, if you like. And 100% of the winning bid will go to Children International.

Click here to bid. The auction ends in ten days!

 

The Truth About the Glass, Part 31

November 18th, 2011

Constance ran down the several flights of stairs and out to where she saw the beast fall. But when she got there, she found in his stead a skinny, pale, weaselly-looking fellow.  “But where is the...?” she began, and then, “Oh, don’t tell me it was you.” “Ta-da,” said the skinny fellow sarcastically.  “I thought you’d be handsome or something,” said Constance. “I don’t have to be handsome. I’m a prince. I can be whatever I want,” said the prince, whose name was Crucio. “But how did the spell break? I certainly didn’t break it.” “You most certainly did. I suppose it means you like me. Haha! What a funny thing.” Constance pouted childishly. “I only liked you when you were a beast, and even then it was only because you were so unpleasant, and you liked all the same unpleasant things that I like.”Prince Crucio stooped and picked up an expired goblin. “Just because I’m a prince doesn’t mean I’m charming,” he said in a high-pitched voice while puppeteering the goblin’s jaws. “I like all sorts of unpleasant things. I don’t have a respectable bone in my body. Just ask the witch who cursed me!” Constance turned her back to the prince and folded her arms across her chest. “Prove it,” she said. “Well...” said the prince as he discarded the goblin. “I like frightening children. Poisonous flowers. Funerals. And you.” And this, dear reader, is where our tale becomes wretchedly sweet. It happens even to the worst of us. Yes, those two awful characters returned to the kingdom, where the prince’s father welcomed his son again. They married quite soon after, which made the king’s ball their wedding reception, which might explain why so many of the guests - all of those who drank the wine, in fact - came down with the same stomach virus at exactly the same moment. And why Constance’s stepsisters both broke out in the most horrifying case of projectile acne anyone has ever witnessed. But that’s another story for another time.

The important facts are that Prince Crucio and Princess Constance would one day become king and queen, and they would go down in the history as the worst monarchs who ever lived, and they would live rottenly ever after.

The Truth About the Glass, Part 30

November 17th, 2011

One final part remaining after today!

“Why, you ugly, evil old hag! I ought to admire you, but you killed my father, and you’re killing the only other creature I kind of maybe respect!” Constance spat, and with a scream, she ran at her stepmother with violent intentions. But the power of Agatha’s glass slippers repelled Constance with such force she was knocked a good six feet back!</p>
<p>“Dear stepdaughter, you have so much to learn about the dark arts,” laughed Agatha. “It’s a pity you’ll never have the chance!”</p>
<p>And that was when, all of a sudden, two very curious things happened at once. Outside, a team of men (or perhaps women? One couldn’t tell) dressed as Japanese ninjas swooped in from above on invisible ropes attached to nobody-knows-what. They were Mirrors, of course. The beast’s own spies. Those ninja Mirrors snatched the goblins right out of their magical slippers before the goblins even realized they were dangling unprotected. In fact, it happened so fast, they never realized it at all because their necks were snapped with a snickety-snack.Inside the castle, all of the household ghosts formed a misty soup as they darted this way and that in utter confusion because ghosts, I hate to say it, are rather like a herd of goats at times. Agatha couldn’t see an inch in front of her nose and soon stumbled over a fallen broom. First she tripped out of her slippers and then she stumbled backwards onto one of them, and her full weight (which wasn’t much but was just enough) cracked it into shards. Constance, following the sound, was quick to find a shard which she then used to...</p>
<p>Oh, it’s too gruesome. I can’t say it.</p>
<p>Let me put it this way, then: Agatha always wanted a ruby necklace, and she finally got one she could afford.</p>
<p>What about the beast? Constance worried.</p>
<p>But what worried her just as much as the condition of the beast was why it mattered to her at all.

The Truth About the Glass, Part 29

November 15th, 2011

Agatha was craftier than even the Mirrors had suspected, for up from the bushes popped the seven goblins, now on her payroll. And on their feet - and Agatha’s, too - were slippers made of a magical glass that would protect them from injury and make their weapons useful against the cursed beast. The beast, for all his horrible might, didn’t have a chance. He was instantly captured by those nasty goblins-for-hire who commenced to jabbing and stabbing with their tiny knives. All he could do was groan with pain and bleed. Oh, how rapidly he weakened!</p>
<p>“No!” gasped Constance from the castle window, and she was alarmed to find little drops of water coming out of her eyes.</p>
<p>“Stepdaughter, dearest, is that you?” Agatha mocked below as she peeled off her peddler disguise. “How thoughtful of you to send your pet to greet us. Why, just earlier someone tricked me into dawning a costume before coming here, and my friends here were thoughtful enough to explain that this was to confuse any witnesses to my apparently planned disappearance! It’s been a day simply brimming with thoughtfulness, hasn’t it?”“You... you’d better watch your back!” was all Constance could think to say. She glanced around the room for a weapon.</p>
<p>“Don’t trouble yourself with coming down here, dear!” called Agatha. Then, in a puff of smoke and some really spectacular lightning effects, Agatha was suddenly in the room with Constance.

The Truth About the Glass, Part 28

November 14th, 2011

“When I was a prince,” said the beast, “I had my own network of secret guards and spies to protect me. Sometimes, however, they served more to report my behavior to my father. I will admit I was something of a wayward lad. After I was cursed to beasthood, my father banished me, for which I can’t blame him. I had begun eating people, you know, and it was unbecoming. But he wasn’t heartless. He did have this small castle built for me, and he left me my secret guards.”</p>
<p>“Right, so, castle. Guards. Spy network. What does that have to do with that racket going on outside?” Constance prompted impatiently.</p>
<p>Is there a lady so lovely and fair? I also have ivory combs for her haaaaaaair! sang the peddler outside. She was up to the door now.</p>
<p>“Well, protecting a banished, bloodthirsty and hirsute animal such as myself isn’t as exciting as one might suspect and, after my father cut their pay, they all decided to use their skills for profit while still reporting to me,” the beast explained.“It just so happens that one of their clients was recently widowed and desperately seeking bereavement of a stepdaughter as well.”</p>
<p>Constance gasped. She gasped again! And then she laughed. “That cow! That conniving, twisted old cow!” she exclaimed. “So, the woman outside right now--?”</p>
<p>The beast grinned in that awful toothy way of his, for he did enjoy a wicked plot. Constance was dumbfounded.</p>
<p>“But... how did they get her to come here alone? And dressed in those rags?” she asked.</p>
<p>“Later!” growled the beast, and then he jumped out of the window with a ferocious roar.</p>
<p>But Agatha, it turned out, was not alone after all.

You like it! You really like it!

November 14th, 2011

As of this post, there are over 9,000 fans on my Facebook page, almost 25,000 YouTube subscribers, 2200+ Twitter followers, and 200-some folks have me in their Google+ circle. Let's not get started on the messages in my inbox right now. ;-) I'm not bragging - okay, I'm totally bragging, but I'm also saying thank you to all of you for following along, and for interacting with each other and me! You all continue to make it worth it.

Here's a look at what's on my project list right now:

 

The Truth About the Glass, Part 27

November 13th, 2011

The beast returned from his latest hunt and slumped down into a plush but mildewed chair by the fire. Constance was carving a likeness of her stepmother into a log with the idea of throwing it on the fire soon after. </p>
<p>“Where’ve you been all day? Looking for more girls to steal and lock in a dingy tower?” she said.</p>
<p>“I feel like we got off to a bad start,” said the beast, picking a string of bloody stuff from his chest hair and eating it.</p>
<p>“It took you three days to realize that, huh?” Constance commented.</p>
<p>“Maybe we could start over. I haven’t even told you my name.”</p>
<p>“Look, I came here to propose a business arrangement, not to propose.”</p>
<p>“Well, I feel bad about it is what I’m saying,” the beast sighed with irritation, “So, I’d like to make it up to you. When I was a prince I could have hired a hundred men with trained beasts to get rid of your stepmother.Perhaps all you need is one beast with a mind of his own?”</p>
<p>Constance dropped her pocket knife and clapped her hands gleefully.</p>
<p>“So, you’ll help me?” she asked. In her joy, she was as radiant as one of those green storm clouds just before a hailstorm. </p>
<p>The beast grinned toothily. “I’ve already begun,” he said. </p>
<p>He rose and moved to the nearest window, checking for any signs of life amongst the gnarled trees.</p>
<p>“The trick, you see, is to get our target to come to us, and to do so by herself,” he said somewhat distractedly. “I may be strong, and I may be vicious, but there’s only one of me.”</p>
<p>Constance clasped her hands together. “And? And?” she prodded.</p>
<p>Before the beast could answer, he ducked back from the window. From below came the awful sound of an old woman trying to sing. </p>
<p>Aaaaapples! Aaaaaapples for sale! Apples as sweet as a fairy tale!</p>
<p>“Have you heard,” began the beast, flexing his claws, “of a little network called the Magical Mirror Society?”<br />

The Truth About the Glass, Part 26

November 12th, 2011

“Tell no one of this, not even the girls,” Agatha hissed to her horrified servant, “or I’ll change my disguise to a maid.”Day 26

The Truth About the Glass, Part 25

November 11th, 2011

And what do you know? Around the same time Constance began to find her prison slightly tolerable, Agatha found relief from her anxious waiting when the maid rushed into the parlor in a frenzied state.</p>
<p>“Ma’am! Ma’am! There’s a man come for you! He gave me a message but was gone soon as I turn around! I don’t know he got in, ma’am! Oh, he gave me such a fright!” the maid rattled on.</p>
<p>Agatha, irritated, grabbed the maid by her wrist so forcefully that tears sprouted in the woman’s eyes.</p>
<p>“What did he say?” Agatha demanded.</p>
<p>“First he just said, ‘a castle with no name.’ That was it! Then I-I-I asked for his name, but all he would say is to tell you that he wouldn’t go there as himself if he was you.”</p>
<p>Agatha released her wincing servant. “Is that all he said?” she asked.</p>
<p>The maid nodded vigorously.“Are you sure?”</p>
<p>“Yes, ma’am. I’m sure because I thought it odd how he made such a point of saying as himself,” the maid insisted. “I think it was a hint, ma’am, though I can’t think what for. Oh, who was he, ma’am? He wouldn’t come out of the shadows!”<br />
“He was insurance that you’ll continue to be paid,” said Agatha with a wicked smile.</p>
<p>Just then, there was the sound of an old woman’s singing outside the door.</p>
<p>“Oh, that’ll be that old peddler woman again. I’ll go and get rid of her,” the maid groused as she turned and went back to the door. “Go away, old woman! We don’t want any of your rotten fruit or your singin’!”</p>
<p>“Wait! Bring the peddler inside,” Agatha commanded, for an idea had suddenly bloomed in her mind, as fragrant as an apple blossom.

How well do you remember Carousel?

November 11th, 2011

Check this out! Thespiralhill has created a Skary Childrin and the Carousel of Sorrow quiz on GoodReads. Have you read the book yet? Test your knowledge and tell me how you did!

Carousel of Sorrow quiz by thespiralhill


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