Oh, Hanwyn Castle. This was the first short story I wrote with the intention of someone actually one day reading it. It was written in 2020, when I needed a break from my first novel (still unpublished – but coming 2026!). Needless to say, I am quite fond of it as a result.
It is a Fairy Tale. It’s a genre I feel has been poorly represented for decades (at least), for a myriad of somewhat legitimate reasons. The reason this one works, I think, is because it retains the classic Fairy Tale tropes and characters, but injects them with a fresh, more modern, dynamic. I realise this is a blanket statement, and many of my contemporaries would argue that they have successfully done the same – and I’m not about to fight them over it; good luck to them, I say. Anyway, I’ll say no more on the matter; you’ll just have to read it.
I was “studying” the Brothers Grimm at the time of writing – though for the purposes of the aforementioned novel, not this particular story. The idea of Gwen and the other – ahem – characters, stemmed from that, as is probably obvious in some parts. But perhaps the main inspiration for the Castle itself was drawn from The Secret Garden. That was a novel I dived into with absolutely no idea what it was about and, while I thoroughly enjoyed it, it was not the world of magic I so ludicrously envisioned. That niggle lay dormant within me for years, until the notion of a magical castle in the sky hit me like a young giant while reading one of the Brothers’ lesser pieces.
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