Congratulations to the 13 amazing writers published in this imaginative new anthology – Villain or Hero?, edited by me!
The idea for this anthology started at last year’s NBWG writers’ retreat, where a group of us were discussing how unfairly some characters had been represented and judged over time. The conversation became quite detailed, discussing famous villains such as Medusa, Circe, and various Shakespearian villains, to examining more contemporary criminal masterminds and their henchmen, then more broadly considering villain character types as a whole – such as witches in fairytales who might have just been intelligent women, jungle beasts that might have had an honourable purpose, and sea monsters who might have simply been defending their own homes. We asked ourselves, could one person’s villain be another’s hero?
Our answers inspired this anthology – delving into the pasts, thoughts, and alternate worlds of character types we’re supposed to hate!
In Villain or Hero?, you’ll get to meet the real witches and scoundrels of our childhood tales, the archetypal religious fanatic, the brilliant mastermind, the evil ex-spouse, the meddling housekeeper, even those monsters of myth and legend we discussed at the retreat. The anthology explores the transformative power of perspective, challenging archetypes, reflecting contemporary sentiments, and retelling stories we thought we knew…
Here’s a list of the stories:
Burning Bright – Aislinn McKenzie
Stone Hearted – A.R Kelly
Avengement – Susan Steggall
A Bloodied Tail – Zena Shapter
Curse of the Finest – Mandy Munro
Mr Smith’s Bad Day – Mark White
The Great Fish – Sue Osborne
Myth or Real – Howard Reid
Circe – Elise Robertson
Dottie Calls The Inspector – Rosalie Horner
Botox and Bats – Megan Rohleder
Three Hearts – Sonia Zadro
Hezze: The Gingerbread Hag – Avi Vince
The anthology even includes a story by me, ‘A Bloodied Tale’, which poses the question: when is a sea witch not a sea witch? In the original story of ‘The Little Mermaid’ by Hans Christian Anderson (1837), the mermaid’s father is a sea king who ‘had been a widower for many years’, but there’s no explanation about how, when or why his wife died. It’s as if she’s purposely excluded from the story. There is, however, a sea witch who lives nearby and, although fearsome, the little mermaid hopes the witch ‘can give me counsel and help’. So I started to wonder, what if these two women were one and the same? What if the sea witch wasn’t as evil as the sea king might want us to believe? What would have been his reasons for doing so, and what would be the result…
Find out in Villain or Hero?! It’s now available for sale at most online bookstores (please just search for the title or ISBNs: 9780645539615 for print, 9780645539622 for ebook), as well as through the NBWG over here.
Thank you to all the authors for joining in the fun, and everyone who came to support the launch on Saturday – it was wonderful to have you all there.
Now it’s time for everyone to participate – each story includes an after-thought explaining the villain character type that inspired it, but let’s see if readers can guess the archetype before the story ends!
