The Worlds of Ashley Stangl

Here I am again! I was tagged for the Quotation Tag by Rachel at Hamlette's Soliloquy. Thanks, Rachel! Now it's time for Day 3. Once again, the rules: Thank the person who nominated you  Nominate 3 new bloggers every day  Post a new quotation every day for 3 consecutive days.  Today, I'm continuing my theme of quotations by G.K. Chesterton, because there are just too many good ones to share. The first quote is from his book of apologetics, Orthodoxy , and specifically from the chapter "The Ethics of Elfland" , in which he outlines how fairy tales affect his understanding of the universe. Follow the link to read the whole thing, but I'll just share a lovely bit explaining the sense of wonder that fairy tales invoke.  This is proved by the fact that when we are very young children we do not need fairy tales: we only need tales. Mere life is interesting enough. A child of seven is excited by being told that Tommy opened a door and ...

I was tagged for the Quotation Tag by Rachel from Hamlette's Soliloquy. Thanks, Rachel! Here are the rules of the Quotation Tag again. Thank the person who nominated you  Nominate 3 new bloggers every day  Post a new quotation every day for 3 consecutive days.  Day One went well. Now it's time for Day Two, five days later. I understand that this is not following the rules of the tag, and I am humbled and ashamed. Nevertheless, I have returned with quotes for you!  Today's quotes come from this man. G.K. Chesterton, the man, the myth, the legend.  A writer in the early decades of the twentieth century, Chesterton wrote everything. Novels, poems, epic poems, plays, detective stories, biographies--the man was a fountain of words.  Reading Chesterton can fill a writer with sheer delight and awe at what you can do with words, and with despair at knowing that you yourself will never write anything to compare. I've read only a small fraction of Ches...

I was tagged by Rachel at Hamlette's Soliloquy for a tag meme with the following rules: Thank the person who nominated you  Nominate 3 new bloggers every day  Post a new quotation every day for 3 consecutive days The first step is easy. Thanks, Rachel! This looks like fun. I'm even going to steal your idea of sharing three quotes per day instead of just one, because I have a few ideas for themed quotes, and it'll be easier to narrow it down to three quotes per category. Today, I've decided to share quotes from the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries by Dorothy L. Sayers, as an excuse to gush about the series.  I've been working my way through these books, and a recent look at a short story collection reminded me of just how wonderfully quotable these books are.  In the 1920s and '30s, Dorothy L. Sayers wrote a series of mysteries about Lord Peter Wimsey, the second son of the Duke of Denver, who picks up a hobby of amateur detective work, and who obscures his ...

"Finding Nemo" is possibly my favorite Pixar movie, so I was skeptical when "Finding Dory" was announced. "Finding Nemo" needed nothing more. A sequel would only dilute its power. But the more I heard about the film, the more I believed that this wasn't just a cash grab, that Pixar might just have a good story to tell.  I wasn't disappointed. Though "Finding Nemo" remains a perfect film in and of itself, "Finding Dory" adds a new angle that enriches the story in ways I'd never considered. The plot is simple: A year after the first movie, Dory is living happily with Marlin and Nemo, when her faulty memory suddenly allows her to remember the parents she lost years ago. The three fish cross the ocean and search for her parents in the Marine Life Institute, a fish hospital in California. They meet new characters and run into several mishaps along the way, all of which are very amusing, leading to a glorious, over-the-top cli...

Rachel, one of my fellow Five Magic Spindles authors, is conducting a series of interviews with all of us authors on her blog, Hamlette's Soliloquy.  My interview was posted today. Check it out here if you want to see me fangirl about G.K. Chesterton and Agent Carter and other book and entertainment-related topics. You can check out last week's interview with Michelle Pennington, the author of "Spindle Cursed" here , and interviews with the other authors in upcoming weeks.

A couple weeks ago, Hamlette at Hamlette's Soliloquy nominated me for a Liebster Award, with the following rules. 1. Answer the 11 questions given by the person who nominated you. 2. Nominate other bloggers (up to 11) and give them 11 questions to answer.  The questions look fun, and after a busy couple of weeks, I finally have the time to answer them, so here goes! 1.  Are there any movies you like better than the books they were based on? I first watched the 1995 Sense and Sensibility not long after I'd read the novel, and I was obnoxious in hating on all the ways it differed from the book, but a couple of years ago, I watched the movie again and adored it. Sense and Sensibility is my least favorite Jane Austen novel, and the movie improves upon the book in so many ways. The romance between Elinor and Edward feels real, important and emotional.  Colonel Brandon gets to perform a big romantic gesture for Marianne that outdoes Willoughby's, and their ma...

Each of the five stories in the Five Magic Spindles collection starts with its own title page, and mine arrived today! When I wrote this story, I entertained no hope that my story about alien tomb robbers would make it into the collection of "Sleeping Beauty" retellings, but I still allowed myself to daydream about a title page. When I unexpectedly won, the title page was the prize I was most excited for. What sort of image would a publisher choose to represent my story?  Now I know, and it's surprisingly perfect. They've made Tanza, my main character, come to life. The alert, tough, no-nonsense stance, the practical clothes, the pockets bulging with supplies--that little silhouette is entirely recognizable to her author. And the plants around the border!  No spoilers, but a few key scenes involve areas with lots of plants, and I'm so delighted they made it to the cover. My biggest fear was that publishers would look at a sci-fi story and make a cover with...