(Click image above for unaltered artwork, The Queen, by Melissa Nucera, used by permission)

“I felt a curious thrill, as if something had stirred in me, half wakened from sleep. There was something very remote and strange and beautiful behind those words, if I could grasp it, far beyond ancient English.”

~J.R.R. Tolkien, on reading the Cynewulf lines about the star Earendel

What reader hasn’t recognized that “curious thrill” at one time or another? It is the opiate that we so often chase whenever we pick up the next book, that readiness to experience something, to connect on a level deeper than mere ink on the page. That chance for something “remote and strange and beautiful” is what repeatedly draws me back to fantasy, folklore, fairy tale, and mythology. Tales of this ken are built upon foundations of storytelling that date back to our most ancient ancestors. There is just “something” about this kind of story.

For the past four years I have hosted the Once Upon a Time Challenge, an opportunity to band together as a community to celebrate story, in this case the kind that fits roughly under one’s own personal definition of four categories: fantasy, folklore, fairy tale and mythology. As spring rapidly approaches in the Northern Hemisphere, the desire for these stories threatens to overwhelm, and with that, it is time to make the fourth annual Once Upon a Time Challenge official.

But first, please follow the jump and allow me to tell you about a wonderful sponsor for this year’s challenge:

Continue reading Once Upon a Time IV →