If your tastes lean less toward the dark horror than I have something you might be interested in. The Meep Sheep is my ode to the classic fairy tales of the past. I am really proud of the two Meep books and hope you like them as much as I do.
An excerpt from The Meep Sheep
Manda and the Pandas
Amanda was mad.
No, she was furious.
She looked out into the cold, dark night and saw nothing but green grass and green trees and green, green, green.
This was ridiculous.
It was Christmas Eve and there was no snow in sight. Not a bit, not an inch, there was not even a glimpse of any sort of snow anywhere and it didn’t look as if that was going to change anytime soon, and that was just ridiculous.
Welcome to Willow Falls, the smallest province in the Kingdom of Man and a place where you could have snow every day for a year and then have three weeks of sunlight with no night in sight. This sort of weather kept things interesting, to say the least, but it didn’t make things easy if you wanted to make plans. Amanda had been working on assignment taking pictures for the Kingdom Times for the past three weeks, covering the first national tour of the newly crowned Queen Messy and had been looking forward to her winter vacation. Winter was the time of the Renewal Festival which was a time of family and friends and where people would decorate their homes to give thanks to the gods of old, the gods of new, and to all the magic that made their world possible. For Amanda, the Renewal Festival meant that she’d get a much needed week off to see her boyfriend, her family, and to spend time with her dog. Ah, but things weren’t working out the way she’d hoped, not in the least.
None of this was to say she hadn’t enjoyed her tour, and she’d taken advantage of her travels with the Queen and her small entourage and had done some shopping in the more exotic shops and had gotten some gifts that really seemed to speak to the people she was buying them for. She was proudest of the Burping Bumberbash, which her mother was bound to love. She loved this time of year and as the days turned colder, her mind turned more and more to Renewal Eve and thoughts of her loved ones. All across the lands snow was beginning to fall, getting Manda giddy with excitement over the coming holidays. It seemed that everyone was getting into the spirit of things too as Messy herself had come to Amanda’s room as she was packing to bring her a special gift. The Queen had been much impressed with the talent of the young photographer and wanted to give her a gift that she might get some use from. Messy had gotten some clay from the village of Perrian, a place known for its fine potters and sculptors, and had made a simple enough looking bowl but one which, when it was filled with water, became something very powerful when the time was right.
Amanda didn’t quite understand why it was that Queen Messy was giving her this bowl which, though pretty and all, was an odd sort of gift, but she took it, thanked her highness, and packed it away. Amanda hurried so she could make it in time to the vanneroo she had rented. The driver seemed delighted though to be surrounded by the Queen and her aides and didn’t mind that Amanda was so late and even helped her with her bag. Content that she was going to have the sort of Renewal Festival her boyfriend always told her about, and which she’d heard tell of in the songs that people sang on their tour, Amanda fell into a deep sleep and dreamt.
~
@@@@@In her dreams she was with her friends, family, and boyfriend, sitting around the great, magical flame that would be conjured for all to tell stories around and to share the things they’d seen and done since the last time everyone had met. It was a wonderful dream but it was ended by the driver as he shook her awake.
“We’re here Miss, we’re here in Willow Falls.”
Amanda smiled and stretched inside the cab of the vaneroo as she got her backpack and slung it over her shoulder. The driver stood aside and let Amanda out and she stepped out into what she expected to be snow. When there was no corresponding crunch to her step she looked down and saw grass, and beyond that more grass, and grass, and grass, and grass.
Everything was green.
Winter hadn’t even made it yet and festival was only a day away.
Amanda’s heart sank.
She didn’t see the driver as he took her bag off of the vaneroo and didn’t hear him as he bid her a happy festival and didn’t notice at all when he drove off into the night.
All Amanda knew was that it was time for Renewal and there was no snow in sight.
Every story Amanda had ever heard about the festival told about how beautiful the snow was, and how it made everything seem so perfect. This was the first time she’d be celebrating the Renewal with anyone other than her mother and dog and realizing that she wasn’t going to have snow for her first Renewal with her boyfriend brought tears to her eyes.
She made her way home and saw that her message globe was blinking with messages but ignored it. She didn’t want anyone to know she was home yet. She had a day, a day to make things right, to make it snow, and whatever it took, she was going to do it.
Amanda sat on her couch and her dog nuzzled up alongside her and put his head in her lap. She petted him, as they both lay there, but her mind was somewhere else.
It was late when Amanda decided she had a place to start, somewhere she might find an answer, but as much as she wanted to get something done, she knew she had to get some rest.
So she slept.
And she dreamt.
And in her dreams it snowed.
The next morning Amanda got up early and dressed quickly then made her way to the office of the town elder. Her name was Iridor and she had inherited her mantle from her brother, who had been lost in a long ago battle with a tribe from the Great Thicket, but she had become the voice of reason in an age that had been very troubled until recently. Amanda came to Iridor and asked her one question and one question only – why?
That was all it took Iridor because she had seen Amanda coming to her in a Seeing Stone and had heard similar questions from the others in town. Why wasn’t it snowing, they all asked.
Why?
“It is the pandas, my dear. You see, they have always been jealous of our Renewal Festival and the things we share with one another in this time. They have no such customs and they resent that we do.”
Amanda frowned.
“But Iridor, how can they do this? What power do they have over the elements? How can they stop it from snowing?”
“Their elder possesses the Winter globe, one of the four globes the Narcissan kings had made for them so they might control the weather. The other three, Spring, Summer, and Fall, are lost, but the Winter globe came into the possession of the pandas and it seems they’ve decided to finally use it.”
“But what can we do to make them stop this? How do we convince them that this is wrong?”
“I would imagine that if the new queen were too…”
“There is no time for that though, madam Iridor. Tonight is Renewal Eve.”
“Then I guess for this year, there will be no snow. I am sorry child.”
Amanda’s frown deepened, but beneath it, there laid a smile waiting to be born.
The Meep Sheep – read the entire book on your Amazon Kindle for only $1
The Spooky World of Chris Ringler 