A Few Words From the Author
In working with Brian on Lady
Cottington's Pressed Fairy Letters, I
wanted to explore some lesser known aspects of the Faerie world.
While Faerie's
more jovial side is most often emphasized these days, there are dark but
important currents that also run through it. So this book, for me, is about
that dichotomy. Laughter and tears both. So much of the old faerie stories are
about loss of some kind or another, so that's in there too. Letters. Words from
the past. Memorials. The search for loved ones. The desire to make human and
otherworldly connections. The honoring of the beloved dead.
The old stories
aren't afraid to talk about these things, and we shouldn't be either. If we
want to understand the world of Faerie in all its complexities, then we must be
willing to take the good and the bad, the joys and the sorrows both. So the book contains something of this tradition.
Of course, it also has a great deal
of humor, for Lady Cottington kept some very strange company indeed. Like all
the books Brian and I have made together, Letters is about truth and acknowledgement, about the desire to extend an open
hand to the good people around us. It is a book about our finding our families,
in this world and the Other.
