If you choose to download a copy from Smashwords (not that I’m hinting or anything) I hope you will too. Rereading it nine years later, I still feel pleased with it. I think this one sold fairly quickly, with fewer rejections than most, and came out in Challenging Destiny in 2004. Only of course, there’s some fine print Jack wasn’t aware of …. It’s his mother who’s determined he become a fairy-tale hero, which is why she’s so upset he traded the magic beans for a mere cow.Įnter a mysterious venture capitalist who offers Jack the financing he needs. He’s a young man who more than anything doesn’t want adventures, he wants to set up a safe, sensible, mundane business. Suddenly Jack was no longer a boy wishing for a destiny. I figured that as nothing was working, I’d try that with Jack even if it didn’t work, perhaps the shift in perspective would lead to a break-through. So I wrote, and rewrote, and rewrote some more …Īnd then by chance I was browsing an old volume of the Datlow/Windling Year’s Best Fantasy and came across a story setting the Snow Queen fantasy in the present day (I don’t remember who wrote it). Or how Jack was going to win without a destiny. The trouble was, I couldn’t see where to go from there. Then he meets a princess who does have a Destiny, but of course it’s of the “sit in a magic tower until someone rescues you” so she’s rebelling against it. Despite which he sets out on the road to adventure, but it doesn’t go well.
My concept was that Jack was a boy born without a destiny-the guy who isn’t going to get the princess or the golden egg or the magic McGuffin no matter how hard he tries. Checker's witchy laugh is heard a few times in the sequel 'Let's Limbo Some More,' the nursery rhyme 'Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack jumped over the candlestick,' is altered with the line: 'Jack go under Limbo stick. I wrote and rewrote, and then rewrote some more, but nothing seemed to work. There is also a drum riff between some of the verses and choruses, including the one that ends the song, too. Though immediately is perhaps too strong a word. I immediately set about writing a story to go with it.
That was the opening line that came to me, I don’t remember from where. ‘How could you trade our precious magic beans for a useless cow?'” “‘Stupid, worthless, miserable boy!’ The belt lashed Jack’s back, emphasizing every word. Covering the first of the four stories in Philosophy and Fairy Tales, Jack Be Nimble. 'Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, and Jack jump over the candlestick.' New York Public Library Digital Collections.
0 kommentar(er)
