Anya Bast

I hope everyone had a nice holiday. My daughter was off for five straight days, so I didn’t do much writing. She’s five and it’s possible to get work done with her around, but I wanted to spend some quality time with my girl, so I took the time off.

We saw Arthur Christmas in 3d (super cute, btw), had Thanksgiving at my aunt’s house (first time in eight years I didn’t host/cook…and it was SUBLIME), baked snickerdoodle cookies (our fav), and took her ice skating for the first time.

Growing up in Minnesota, back before global warming caused temps there to grow milder, my life was filled with ice and snow. I was on my high school figure skating team and can remember getting up at five in the morning in the dead of winter, temperature fifteen below zero, and heading into the rink for practice before school. These are good memories from good times.

So I was excited to share the joy of skating with my daughter and a bit scared too. I hadn’t strapped on a pair of skates in years and my daughter…well, she’d never worn a pair. Together we hobbled out onto the ice. My daughter turned to me immediately and said in an accusing voice, “You didn’t tell me ice was so cold and slippery!” Erm, yeah, I guess I just assumed she’d know, but she is only five.

We clung to the boards the first two times around, my daughter learning how to balance on the skates and me trying to remember. When she fell on her butt the first time and exclaimed about how the ice wasn’t only cold and slippery, it was !!!hard!!! too, I thought it was over. I thought she’d say she’d want to quit, but instead she pulled herself up (okay, I helped) and continued on.

Slowly I got my legs back under me. Muscle memory is an incredible thing. And, slowly, my daughter figured out how to keep her balance and move forward. She fell. A LOT. Over and over. Hard thumps onto her butt, sometimes onto her knees. Every time she fell, I thought, this is it. She’ll want to quit now. But every time, she pulled herself up, more determined than ever to learn how to skate.

By the end of the session, she could skate all around the rink by herself, completely unafraid of falling. I was so proud of her. It’s important to learn how to fall, important to be okay with falling. It’s even more important to be able to pick yourself up after a fall and move on. She showed an incredible amount of perseverance on the ice that day, and she loved skating. She’s already bugging me to go back. 🙂

So, what did you do on your Thanksgiving holiday? (…if, of course, you celebrated it.)

Both Yasmine Galenorn and I have series that delve into the world of the fae. It’s a rich area, perfect for fiction writers, and a place not as often explored as, say, vampire or werewolf lore.

My series draws mostly from Irish myth, but I definitely put my own slant on it. I didn’t use any of the actual fairy tale characters in my world, like Little Red Riding Hood or Snow White, although I’m really fascinated by the dark symbolism in those stories. So, I was pretty interested in two new TV shows that recently started, Once Upon a Time and Grimm.

I’m not much of a TV watcher at all. We don’t have cable or satellite and any show I follow I get from Netflix a season late. For these two shows, though, I’m making an effort to tune in.

Once Upon a Time is from the producers of Lost, which I really liked (even though the story arc was pretty shaky). The premise is basically this: Evil witch (Snow White’s stepmother) pulls fairy tale characters through to our world and strands them in a town called Storybrooke without memory of their enchanted otherlife. When an adopted boy tracks down his bio mom, he’s sure she’s the lost daughter of Prince Charming and Snow White and is the only person who can break the witch’s evil spell.

This show has a soap opera sort of feel, which can work as long as the characters are compelling and the plot is layered and interesting. Lost had that same sort of feel. The main characters are all female, which I love. But I’m not sure what to expect from Once Upon a Time. Selfishly, because it uses fairy tales, I’m hoping people will like it and it will stay on the air. I’ve only seen the first ep so far…and I don’t know. We’ll see.

Grimm also draws from fairy tales, but it’s a much different show. The main characters of this one are male and it’s visually darker and more action-packed. The premise of this show in a nutshell is: Descendants of the Brothers Grimm are able to see the monsters among us and must fight them. The first episode features a pretty creepy spin on the Big Bad Wolf.

I want to like Once Upon a Time more (female main characters!!), but, honestly, after the first ep I prefer Grimm.

Have any of you seen these shows? If so, what do you think of them?