Desperately Seeking Faeries

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Desperately Seeking Faeries

I'm welcoming awesome author Jacquie Rogers (no relation!) to my blog today in an author exchange. Not only do we share the same last name, but we're also both fascinated with faeries and dragons. You can find MY guest post (Got Dragons?) on HER blog HERE. We're also giving away digital copies of Faerie Special Romances by Jacquie Rogers and The Last Great Wizard of Yden by S.G. Rogers. Leave a comment, below, to enter the drawing. The winner will be selected Sunday, March 11th, midnight EST. Good luck! ~ S.G. Rogers

Finding Faeries by Jacquie Rogers

(author of Faery Special Romances & Faery Merry Christmas)

We storytellers have lots of choices when it comes to picking faery lore. Depending on when and where the story is set, the Fae World can differ drastically: Norse, Irish, Scottish, Bavarian, French . . . each pre-Christian region and era developed its own belief system. Faery lore has only one universal truth: Tinkerbell is an invention of L. Frank Baum and Disney.

I found several sites that helped tremendously when I was building my world for Faery Special Romances. Maybe you will find these sites interesting, too.

Here's one of my favorite starting-off sites, Faerie at Monstrous.com. Not only is there an image gallery and links to other great sites, you can also find brief essays on these topics:

Existence of faeries

Definition of faeries
Description of faeries
Faeries across history and cultures
Organization of faeries

. . . you get the picture. Lots of info (although not in-depth) on this site.

Here's a faery good site: The Fae. You'll find a terrific recap of general Fae history, and then links to other pages, which get more specific. For instance, there's a listing of the various categories of faeries, from Pixies to Goblins. Another site, pjentoft.com, has a couple pages of Faery Herbs and Charms. Browse around and you'll find all kinds of good stuff on this website.

For instance, you could find out (like I just did) that faeries didn't get wings until the Elizabethan period. Oh well, my medieval faeries have wings. I made them up so I can give them wings if I want to. (That's what's so great about being a writer—you can create any world, and populate it with anything you want to!)

The Faery Crossing is a beautiful site, and can give you pointers on such things as "The Care and Feeding of Faeries." You might want to head straight for A Compendium of Faery Folke, where you'll find very nice listing of all types of Fae from A to Z. Here's a sample: "Gean-canach: Ireland. "Love-Talker"; a solitary faery who personifies love and idleness. He appears with a dudeen (pipe) in his mouth. It is very unlucky to meet him." (Check out this dude on other sites—he's known for seducing young women.)

When I first began gathering information to create my faery world, I soon realized that many of the internet sites combine the old mythologies with the contemporary. Even though the new are based on the myths of, say, the Tuatha de Danann, be aware of modern influences. Lots of gaming sites add their own nuances to the myths.

All these sites help, but as a writer or a reader, you can imagine faeries any way you want. I mixed mythologies from at least five regions, including Russia and Africa, to create my faeries. The Norse, Celtic, and Gaelic traditions are strongest in the USA, but other regions have faeries and elementals just as intriguing.

I hope you have a faery good time surfing the 'net! If you find some good sites, please let me know!

~ Jacquie Rogers

♥ ♥ ♥

Jacquie Rogers is the author of the popular western historical romance series, Hearts of Owyhee (Much Ado About Marshals, Much Ado About Madams); a contemporary western, Down Home Ever Lovin' Mule Blues; and two faery fantasy romances, Faery Special Romances and Faery Merry Christmas. She lives in Seattle, loves baseball, cooks up a storm (but hates doing dishes), but is utterly hopeless at singing or drawing.