​Jessamy Corob Cook is an actress, writer and Londoner. She recently won first place in Writing Magazine’s adult fairy tale competition and second place in Caterpillar Magazine’s children’s story competition.

Guest Blog by Lissa Sloan

Depending on the fairy tale, Vasilisa may be a priest’s daughter, a despised stepsister, or even a frog princess.  She may be Vasilisa the Fair--or the Brave--or the Wise. But there’s another thing she is, no matter the story.  She is Vasilisa the Young.
 
For fairy tales are the domain of the young, aren’t they? There are exceptions, but most of the characters climbing beanstalks, riding white bears, questing after firebirds, or taking cake and wine to their grandmothers fall somewhere between child and young adult.  Their stories are about finding themselves and their place in the world.
 
In the story where she meets the baba yaga, Vasilisa does exactly that. She enters the wood a girl: beautiful, blessed, and a bit passive. But by the time she leaves it, she is a woman to be reckoned with. She very shortly dispatches her abusive step-family, finds a loving mother figure, and proves her worth to the tsar, ending up a queen in the bargain. 
 
But before I wrote my Vasilisa story, A Tale Soon Told, I had a good long think about what happens next for Vasilisa the Young. You know this one: Happily Ever After, of course.  But for how long? That’s my question. The reason I love fairy tales is that, despite their fantastic elements, they still feel so true.  But only until the end.  Happy, I can believe.  But Ever After is the fantasy.  That’s not the way life works. 

Yes, we go into the wood. We face witches, ogres, and wolves. We achieve independence; we find true love. We come out of the woods sadder and wiser than before. We get that job, that house, that baby, that whatever we are after. We win.
 
But only for a while.
 
Nothing is permanent. Children grow up, true love is not true after all, we move or change jobs, loved ones die. We lose. And then? Then we must go back to the wood and find ourselves all over again. Because fairy tales are for all of us, even those who are not so young as we used to be. 

So every now and then we must wrap our sore ankles and find a stout walking stick. We must pick up the basket or sharpen the sword. We must put on the iron shoes. And so must Vasilisa the Not-So-Young. We must all go back to the hut that runs on chicken’s legs, back to face the red-eyed witch with iron teeth. Our tale may be soon told, but it is not over yet.

Lissa Sloan’s poems and short stories are published in Enchanted Conversation, Krampusnacht: Twelve Nights of Krampus, and Frozen Fairy Tales. “Death in Winter,” Lissa’s contribution to Frozen Fairy Tales, was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Visit her at her website, lissasloan.com, or on Twitter: @LissaSloan.

She can be the enemy of your nightmares or the spirit guide to your dreams. Her hair is wild and gray. Her teeth are made of iron, and she travels using a giant mortar and pestle and lives in a shack on chicken feet surrounded by a fence of skulls and bones. She is Baba Yaga, a crone who ruthlessly uses the needy and greedy for her own devices. And in this anthology of new stories starring Baba Yaga, she lands in some spectacular scenarios.
 
A Jewish resistance fighter in World War II Poland must gain the help of Baba Yaga to vanquish three supernatural men and avenge the loss of her comrades. A young mother leaves her family to serve the witch in penance for committing a terrible wrong. One story delves into Baba Yaga’s tragic origins, while another re-examines the classic tale of Vasilisa, following the young girl who comes to Baba Yaga for fire on her own journey from maiden to mother to crone. One tale transports the witch from the forests of Russia to the swamplands of the American South, expertly weaving together Slavic and African-American folklore, and another brings her right into the modern day, as a young boy goes looking for a witch to put a spell on a school bully and gets more than he bargained for. 

SKULL AND PESTLE: NEW TALES OF BABA YAGA, featuring original stories by Kate Forsyth, Lissa Sloan, Jill Marie Ross, Charlotte Honigman, Szmeralda Shanel, Rebecca A. Coates, and Jessamy Corob Cook, is out in ebook and paperback today January 22, 2019.

​Kate Wolford is a writer, editor, and blogger living in the Midwest. Fairy tales are her specialty. Previous books include Beyond the Glass Slipper: Ten Neglected Fairy Tales to Fall in Love With, Krampusnacht: Twelve Nights of Krampus, and Frozen Fairy Tales, all published by World Weaver Press. She was the founder of Enchanted Conversation: A Fairy Tale Magazine, at fairytalemagazine.com.

K Bird Lincoln's unique urban fantasy series began in 2017 with DREAM EATER, a story about a college student in Portland who discovers she is a "baku," the legendary "dream eater" from Japanese folklore. We continued Koi's adventures in 2018 with BLACK PEARL DREAMING, where Koi and her new supernatural friends travel to Japan to meet with a council of beings who have their own plans for Koi and her powers. Now, we're thrilled to bring you the final installment of the Portland Hafu series: LAST DREAM OF HER MORTAL SOUL by K. Bird Lincoln will be available in ebook and paperback on Tuesday, March 19, 2019.

​K. Bird Lincoln is an ESL professional and writer living on the windswept Minnesota Prairie sustained by family and frou-frou coffee. Also dark chocolate-- without which, the world is a howling void. Originally from Cleveland, she has spent a couple decades living on the fringes of the Pacific Ocean. Her speculative short stories are published in various online & paper publications such as Strange Horizons. Her medieval Japanese fantasy series, Tiger Lily, is available from Amazon. Her multi-cultural fantasy set in Portland, Oregon begins with the book Dream Eater. She also writes tasty speculative fiction reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. Check her out on Facebook, join her newsletter for chocolate and free stories, or stalk her online at kblincoln.wordpress.com

GLASS & GARDENS: SOLARPUNK WINTERS
Anthologist: Sarena Ulibarri
Open for Submissions: January 1 - March 1, 2019
Expected Publication: January 2020
Story Length: up to 8,000 words
Payment: $0.01 per word + contributor copy
 
Solarpunk is a type of eco-conscious science fiction that imagines an optimistic future founded on renewable energies. Often aiming for a balance of nature and technology, and always inclusive and diverse, solarpunk stories show the ways we have adapted to climate change, or the ways we overcome it.
 
For this anthology, I want to see solarpunk stories that take place in winter. That might mean working together to survive extreme blizzards, or feeling the heat in places that no longer see snow. Which renewable tech works best during long winter nights? How do solarpunk societies celebrate the winter holidays? Keep it planet-based (Earth or other), and optimistic. Solarpunk worlds aren’t necessarily utopias, but they definitely aren’t dystopias.
 
We're a northern hemisphere publisher, but southern hemisphere winters are also welcome!
 
Need inspiration? Read New York 2140 by Kim Stanley Robinson, the Sunvault anthology, or Glass & Gardens: Solarpunk Summers.
 
Submission Method: Send your story as a .doc, .docx, or .rtf attachment to solarpunk[at]worldweaverpress[dot]com with Submission: [story title] in the subject line. Please include a brief cover letter, but DO NOT summarize your story in the cover letter. 
​
Simultaneous submissions: Yes, you may submit your story to other markets before you hear back from us. Please let us know ASAP if someone else accepts it.
 
Multiple submissions: No, please only send us one story for consideration.

About the Anthologist:
​
Sarena Ulibarri is Editor-in-Chief of World Weaver Press, and she is also a fiction writer who has been published in Lightspeed, Fantastic Stories of the Imagination, Weirdbook, and elsewhere. Her solarpunk stories have appeared in Biketopia: Feminist Bicycle Science Fiction Stories in Extreme Futures ("Riding in Place"), GigaNotoSaurus ("Chrysalis in Sunlight"), and DreamForge ("The Spiral Ranch"). She lives in a solar-powered adobe house in New Mexico, and can be found online at SarenaUlibarri.comand @SarenaUlibarri. She edited the anthologies Glass and Gardens: Solarpunk Summers and Speculative Story Bites.