I want to thank Kersten for stopping by today to share with readers her inspiration behind writing about Goblins.
Kersten Hamilton is a prolific children's writer known for her fast-paced, dramatic storylines. She is the author of twenty-four books for children and works with the house church movement in her home town of Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Kersten Hamilton is a prolific children's writer known for her fast-paced, dramatic storylines. She is the author of twenty-four books for children and works with the house church movement in her home town of Albuquerque, New Mexico.
TYGER TYGER is in stores today!
GOBLINS
Yep. In this age of handsome, yearning vampires and hunky, shirtless werewolves, I wrote a book about…goblins. Are there sexy beasts in Tyger Tyger? Oh, yes. And love, and danger, and courage, and much, much more…but I wasn’t searching for the next Big Thing, or casting about for a creature group which had gone largely un-exploited in the current paranormal pandemonium when I wrote Tyger Tyger.
I was remembering a goblin that crept out of the dark and slipped her paw into my hand. It happened when I was just a child. The creature’s name was Lina, and she came to life in a book by George MacDonald.
Lina was a dog–like creature with green eyes lit by amber fire, and a huge mouth with icicle–like teeth. Curdie, the hero of the story, could feel the real hand of any creature inside its flesh glove, and when Lina put her paw in his hand: “a shudder, as of terrified delight, ran through him… instead of the paw of a dog, such as it seemed to his eyes, he clasped in his great mining fist the soft, neat little hand of a child! The green eyes stared at him with their yellow light, and the mouth was turned up toward him with its constant half grin; but here was the child's hand!”
When I read those lines I felt it. I felt the child’s hand, and I knew I wanted to pull a child out of a goblin one day. That was the moment Tyger Tyger started growing inside me. Through the years, many stories, poems, myths and legends lent elements to the growing story: Tam Lin, the story of girl who must muster all her courage to save her love who has been taken by the Sidhe; The Lords of the Grey and White Castles, a fairytale by Francis Brown, Ireland’s blind storyteller; and even a hint of the goblin from Harold Monro’s poem, Overheard on a Salt Marsh:
http://thereaderonline.co.uk/2009/10/19/featured-poem-overheard-on-a-saltmarsh-by-henry-monro/
Many reviewers have commented that Tyger Tyger is different from anything they have read in the market lately. It is.
But…different can be good.
Kersten Hamilton
Thanks so much Kersten! For more information about Kersten and her books, please visit her website here.
Check out the book trailer!
