{Flash Fiction} "Well Behaved Mermaids Rarely Make Fairy Tales" by Alethea Kontis

Check out the Splash into Summer Main Pages at 
A Backwards Story, and Mermaid Vision Books 
where you can access the schedule!
You can also go here to get involved!

I've previously reviewed ENCHANTED, interviewed author Alethea Kontis, and interviewed ENCHANTED cover designer Christine Kettner!

I've also reviewed Alethea's innovative version of The Little Mermaid, BLOOD & WATER!

I love both of these ladies so much, and they've collaborated to bring us a beautiful, splashy treat.
I hope you'll love it as much as I already do!

~*~

New York Times bestselling author Alethea Kontis is a princess, a goddess, a force of nature, and a mess. She’s known for screwing up the alphabet, scolding vampire hunters, turning garden gnomes into mad scientists, and making sense out of fairy tales. Alethea is the co-author of Sherrilyn Kenyon’s Dark-Hunter Companion, and penned the AlphaOops series of picture books. Her short fiction, essays, and poetry have appeared in a myriad of anthologies and magazines. She has done multiple collaborations with Eisner winning artist J.K. Lee, including The Wonderland Alphabet and Diary of a Mad Scientist Garden Gnome. Her debut YA fairy tale novel, Enchanted, won the Gelett Burgess Children’s Book Award in 2012 and was nominated for both the Andre Norton Award and the Audie Award in 2013.

Visit Alethea's website, YouTube Channel, Facebook, and Twitter!

  ~*~

Fair warning?
Reading this will make you wish it wasn't quite so short! ^.~

Well Behaved Mermaids Rarely Make Fairy Tales

by Alethea Kontis

           Every mermaid's mother warned against the dangers of rescuing humans. Obviously had Nerissa's mother ever attempted such a thing, she would have mentioned the smell. Men stank of sun, fire, earth and something that made Nerissa's scales crawl. They were heavy, too, not made for swimming, for all that they splashed around madly in the surf like they were. And all that strange raspy breathing!

            Thankfully, seawater seemed to stop their bleeding quickly.

            Nerissa stared at the fiery wreckage of his ship still aflame on the horizon. The man in her arms was the spitting image of the one from her dreams...minus the webbing between his fingers and the fins...and the inner eyelid. Waking, he stared up at her with eyes as blue as the sky.

            "I love you," he said with foul breath. He clutched at her black tresses, limp now in the dry air.

            Nerissa could not return to the waves fast enough. From now on, she would listen to her mother. She would never speak of this event. And should she ever again be tempted back to these jagged rocks...well...there were always more humans on the sea. 

O F F I C I A L   I N F O:

Title:  ENCHANTED
Author: Alethea Kontis

Release Date: May 8, 2012

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Children's Books

SUMMARY:

It isn't easy being the rather overlooked and unhappy youngest sibling to sisters named for the other six days of the week. Sunday’s only comfort is writing stories, although what she writes has a terrible tendency to come true. 

When Sunday meets an enchanted frog who asks about her stories, the two become friends. Soon that friendship deepens into something magical. One night Sunday kisses her frog goodbye and leaves, not realizing that her love has transformed him back into Rumbold, the crown prince of Arilland—and a man Sunday’s family despises. 

The prince returns to his castle, intent on making Sunday fall in love with him as the man he is, not the frog he was. But Sunday is not so easy to woo. How can she feel such a strange, strong attraction for this prince she barely knows? And what twisted secrets lie hidden in his past - and hers?

~*~