#tall tales

Tall Tales Home

Tall Tales is a urban/paranormal fantasy webserial. It’s currently on hiatus as I get a head start on Volume Three to (hopefully) avoid the medical hiatuses I’ve had to take in the past.

What is Urban/Paranormal Fantasy?

Paranormal Fantasy is usually listed as a form of Urban Fantasy, but that isn’t strictly accurate. It has similar elements to UF (modern setting, real-world issues, etc), but it isn’t built around an urban setting and tends to rely more on the paranormal (ghosts, psychics, the occult, etc) than on the mythological (elves, dwarves, the fae, etc). Tall Tales blends elements of both. Tall Tales also includes horror elements or, at times, outright horror stories.

What is a Webserial?

A webserial is a story told through regular updates available online. This can be done in any format, either free or behind a paywall. Tall Tales, when it isn’t on hiatus, updates five days a week, once per week on five interconnected blogs. Every story necessary to follow the plot of Tall Tales is available in early draft form for free on the website.

What Are the Volumes?

The overall plot of Tall Tales has been broken into five volumes, each composed of a number of short stories. This usually has little impact on the website (except the short stories, which are used as the primary means of navigation); however, when I finish writing a volume, I then focus on putting it through final editing stages, adding additional stories, and then self-publishing the volume as a book. You can find Volumes One & Two on Amazon, I am currently writing Volume Three. I’ve taken this opportunity to go on a scheduled hiatus and build up my publishing queue in the hopes that my recurring migraines don’t cause me to add unplanned breaks going forward. This means that now is an ideal time to catch up on the story, as there will be no new posts added to the website until August 1, 2022.

Five Blogs?

Yes,Tall Tales publishes as five blogs. Each follows a different story and is told by a different POV. The blogs cross over, and each is moving toward a shared fate. They are as follows:

1. Narrator: An unnamed narrator who tracks events that impact the story but happen beyond the POV of the other blogs. Updates on Mondays.
2. Benediction: A multi-POV collection of in-world files relating to the trial of Father Benedict de Monte, a Catholic priest tasked with hunting a global mystery cult called the Brood of Nachash. The Brood uses murder and the summoning of ancient elder gods to achieve its goals. Updates on Tuesdays.
3. Matteson, P.I.: A mostly in-world blog written by John Matteson, a human who can interact with the metaphysical realm and serves as a living source of anti-magic energy. Follows his various investigations into the supernatural and the problems this causes in his life. Updates on Wednesdays.
4. Over the Hedge: A mostly in-world blog written by Jackie Veracruz, a witch receiving training from Hecate. She is heavily focused on understanding the nature of magic and how she and her friends relate to it. Updates on Thursdays.
5. Wonderland: A mostly in-world blog written by Alice Templeton, a biology student in Greater Pittsburgh who finds herself connected to the world of magic. Updates on Fridays.

Is There Minority Representation?

Most of the stories take place in the United States or Europe after 2000, so this will assume a definition of ‘minority’ that fits that setting. I am a white male, and as such am always open to input on how to make the following characters more accurate.

• John Matteson: African-American male. It has been speculated in-story that he’s asexual, but he personally hasn’t expressed interest in answering that question. His ancestry includes a spirit that took on human form and resembled a Native American; as such, he has physical traits that resemble that ancestry, but no actual or claimed ties to any tribe.
• Jackie Veracruz: Hispanic (Honduran) bisexual woman. Entered the US as a refugee from Nicaraguan/Honduran fighting in the 1980s.
• Akshainie: A naga who shares the spotlight in most of Benediction. Her human-looking half (and her human form) is that of a woman from the border region between Pakistan and India. Her sexuality has not been discussed.
• Supporting Cast and Spirits: Other characters that appear at different points in the story include John’s family, a nonbinary friend of Jackie’s, a gay male couple, and various spirits whose forms resemble the culture from which they originate.

Is there a Taglist?

Yes. The taglist gets notified whenever my monthly newsletter is released and when a new blog post goes up on the website. This amounts to 5 posts per week when the website is updating, plus one additional post per month. It is very rare that I use the taglist to make announcements beyond the newsletter, but occasionally circumstances require that. Please ask to be added/removed/edited on the taglist. If you have been removed without requesting it, chances are tumblr no longer allowed me to tag you and I assumed you changed your url but don’t know what you changed it to.

Basically Pinocchio but instead it’s a puppet named Pancakio whose nose is a stack of pancakes and every time he lies it grows so Geppetto constantly forces him to lie so he can have unlimited pancakes.

roachpatrol:

magica-tenore-regina:

lizthefangirl:

ademigodgirl:

rainbow-bear:

A king has no sons, no daughters, and no queen. For this reason he must decide who will take the throne after he dies. To do this he decides that he will give all of the children of the kingdom a single seed. Whichever child has the largest, most beautiful plant will earn the throne; this being a metaphor for the kingdom. At the end of the contest all of the children came to the palace with their enormous and beautiful plants in hand. After he looks at all of the children’s pots, he finally decides that the little girl with an empty pot will be the next Queen. Why did he choose this little girl over all of the other children with their beautiful plants.

The seeds were all dead (burned, fake, etc.).  The other kids cheated and got different seeds and planted them.  The little girl didn’t cheat and was not able to grow anything because the seed was dead.  She was the only one who didn’t cheat.

damn

Nothing like original fairy tales! 

i get the moral it’s trying to convey but that king is an idiot and the kingdom’s doomed. you don’t appoint an honest kid who will forthrightly admit a failure like that to leadership of a country, you put that kid in charge of like… the army, or something. the department of agriculture. 

i’d send out dead seeds, then appoint the kid with the biggest and most beautiful plant anyway.ideally the same kind of plant as the dead seeds were from. and ideally a kid with a really good pokerface. that kid knows:

a) how to perceive failure early (a well developed second plant means they knew how soon the first seeds should sprout and didn’t fuck around when they didn’t) 

b) how to fix the situation (a second plant of the same species means they got someone to help them identify the seeds and plant more, or are observant enough to do it themselves)

c) how to get the best people for a job in to do it (kids aren’t great gardeners. a beautiful science project probably means mom did all the work— just what you want from a child ruler and their regent)

all around, that kid (or their mom) is the kind of devious results-oriented bald-faced liar you want to go toe-to-toe with the lords of your country and the rulers of your neighbors. not a little kid who admits defeat so early and in a situation with such high stakes. ‘whoops i didn’t grow a plant’ sounds a lot less sweet when you phrase it like ‘i give up on ruling my country’. 

you know, i think i’d also send agents out to encourage the kids to destroy each other’s plants. let’s see who’s good at seige warfare, too.