Kingdom’s Ascension is the second collection of short stories about the fairytale land known as Kingdom. The book published on February 26, 2022.
What’s it about? From the back cover. Being a queen of a fairytale world isn’t a fairy tale. Just ask the sister queens who rule over the land of Kingdom. Kingdom’s Ascension offers tales of a fairytale world where happy, sad, and all endings in-between are possible.
The fairytale queens of Kingdom are central figures through many of the stories. To learn about the queens, who they are inspired from, and a bit of background. See Kingdom’s Queens.
If you’ve purchased the book, the bonus short story is here.
Eleven stories make up Kingdom’s Ascension. The first part describe the newly crowned queens trying to learn how to be queens. These lessons are acquired while living through some exciting adventures. Some stories are from the point-of-view of Kingdom’s residents.
From suffering of losses of cherished friends to ruthless, gigantic spiders. From cat burglars who are actually cats to skeleton guards and werejackals, the queens have their hands full in the first part.
In the second part of the collection, the queens are more comfortable in their roles as leaders, but their goal is to usher Kingdom into a golden age. For this, even more is expected of them. Again, a few stories are from the common person’s (or creature’s) point-of-view.
To enter a golden age, the steps to marriage must be executed flawlessly and with the proper decorum, or do they? Also, the queens must obey their own laws or become despots, but what happens if a villain finds a hole in those laws stealing something dear to the monarchs? And as the queens’ power grows, so does the power of their enemies. When a group decides to take one of the queen’s children hostage, who will stand between the abductors and the prince?
This is the fifth book of Kingdom I will be publishing, and I thought long and hard about releasing it to the public. Most people enjoy novels rather than collections. If they want a short story, they will seek one out in an anthology. And a short story of an established world is a harder sell. Nonetheless, in 2021, I read over the stories and thought, “These should be told.” They highlight the queens’ courage, depth of feeling, and in certain cases, their quirkiness. And they are enjoyable as standalone stories apart from the novels. If I’ve done my job right, the tales I’ve written will make you laugh, cry, or maybe even reflect. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I’ve enjoyed writing them! So from Cinderella the joyful queen, to Gilbert the despondent courier, to Farduuk the vicious ogre, to Julliard the musical bridge troll, to Grr the honorable groundskeeper, to Bruckner the elderly clockmaker, to me—we all wish you happy reading.
Artist Daniel Johnson, @artisticknack, provided the front and back cover as well as the interior illustrations for Kingdom’s Ascension. Visit the gallery for full illustrations, but below are smaller images of his work explaining the significance of each.
This is an illustration of Cinderella ready to go into battle from my first novel, Kingdom Come. The first story of Kingdom’s Ascension takes place less than three days after this illustration. The story “Fitting” wonders what would happen if Cinderella had become queen before she married, and if that would have influenced her decision.
The magnificently colorful depiction of my sarcastic and romantic queen is lovingly detailed in this illustration.
This work of art is an early depiction of another of my queens, Snow White, for the front cover. Dan gave me a number of variations for the painting of Snow White, until I arrived at the one on the cover. This one was actually too photorealistic for me. I wanted the painting to look like a painting, a little stylized. I still favor this view of Snow White, though my meekest and kindhearted queen looks like a badass in this painting. But, if you visit art museums and see pictures of past royalty, they are often frowning and serious.
This painting refers to the story “Meet and Greet” where the citizens of Kingdom are allowed five minutes with a queen each day. In this story, a family travels across the land to visit Snow White. While they wait for her, they marvel at a painting that changes to show various scenes from Snow White’s life. This is the final scene—one of Snow as queen.
I asked Dan to illustrate another scene from the collection well after it was published. I thought of all the stories and decided I wanted one in Part One and realized I don’t have many illustrations of Valencia, my Match Girl queen. Her story in the collection is called “Ticklish.” Naturally it features a feather. There’s a world of difference between what I described to Dan and what he gave me. This fantastic illustration mostly comes from his creative mind. The background is just stunning.
“Ticklish” describes what happens after a dear friend of Valencia passes away. Valencia is my go to queen of tragedy, perhaps because of her Match Girl origins—though she survives, unlike the original tale. Though some of these stories existed before I considered publishing them in a collection, “Ticklish” was a story I conceived of for the book. It’s a little funny, a little sad, and a little heartwarming. I’m very proud of how it turned out.
I wanted to write a humorous story in Kingdom’s Ascension, something where the laughs would come from the characters and not poke fun at anybody in particular. The story “The Damsel is not in Distress” is the story I came up with which builds from the relationships the queens have. And it was fun to place one of them in an uncomfortable position, again, without making fun of her.
This is one of two of Queen Helga’s stories in Ascension. Dan came up with the illustration and showed it to me, and while tonally it doesn’t fit the story, it does fit the ending quite well. The art here is amazing as always—look at that spectacular sky—and I was proud to include it in the book.
And the other Helga story? What happens when you plan and plan for your wedding day, and not just a few things go wrong, but everything goes wrong. As long as you love your betrothed, it’s still your “Fairytale Wedding.” No matter how you look, what you’ve fought in the back room while getting prepared, or even if you have to wear your father’s boots down the aisle to marry your espoused, it’s YOUR wedding day. That’s Helga’s attitude, and Dan’s illustration of her resolve to get married captures it perfectly.
I’ve always loved squonks and had a special place for them in my heart. These unfortunate creatures are hunted by everyone and their only defense is, if captured, they melt themselves in a pool of tears. They are the definition of a tragedy. If Kingdom is nothing else, it’s a tragedy turned comedy (The Little Match Girl, The Marsh King’s Daughter) and so I put my pen to paper to correct the injustices done to these poor creatures.
“The Squonk” is the result. It’s experimental and different from most of the stories in the books. Not told from one of the queens’ point-of-view, it tells the story of a squonk and how he changed Kingdom. Illustrated here is Kingdom’s version of the squonk, one of my favorite pieces of art by Dan.