Thank you for having me on your blog!
Castella of the Hedges, heroine of Bad Fairies, is a halfbreed in the fairy world. Her father is the dashing dramatic King of Roses, but her mother is a plain garden fairy. Cassie was the fairy equivalent of a teenager when her father’s wife, the Rose Queen, adopted her as the legitimate heir. But Cassie has never been fully successful at pretending to be fully a flower fairy.
What’s the difference, you ask?
Flower fairies are the ones you probably visualize when you think of fairies: pale and golden, with gossamer wings, devoted to drinking nectar and dancing amid the roses in the moonlight. They are adept at spells of illusion — at glamour — and spend much of their time absorbed in dresses, banquets, and riding to the hunt. They are prone to casual cruelty and random pettiness.
Garden fairies are muich more low key. They are fond of growing things and are not afraid to get down on their hands and knees in the mud. Their wings are shorter and sturdier. Their magic is of the sensible sort, communicating with the plants they grow and understanding the ways of nature.
All fairies are tightly tied to the green world. Many of them can enter into a flower or tree and live in its form for a time. Cassie’s half-sister Ash is especially adept — hence her name — and has gained great power through roots that reach deep into the earth.
There are other kinds of fairies as well, living in all corners of the modern world: brownies, house fairies, kelpies, water sprites, nymphs and sylphs, tommyknockers. I wouldn’t be surprised if by now some of the mine fairies have evolved to be automobile fairies and airplane fairies — and in a few hundred years, spaceship fairies as well!
You can find Alice online at The House At the End of The Road, on Twitter as @AliceMCole, and on Facebook.
Her debut book, Bad Fairies, is available directly from Torrid Books, from Amazon (Kindle), and from Barnes and Noble (Nook).
