I’ve always been a fan of these types of stories… books that claimed to tell the real story of the Three Little Pigs, Neil Gaiman’s hard-boiled (heh) detective story about Humpty-Dumpty, and so on. I even liked the dark ones, such as Tanith Lee’s excellent story, “The Reason for Not Going to the Ball.” But sometimes I wonder about re-revising these stories, and making them magical. Or what about turning the Internet’s endless supply of urban legends and “Friend-of-a-Friend” stories into a new collection of folk and fairy tales?

Once upon a time, my friend’s friend’s uncle’s roommate was riding in his carriage around the lake with his girlfriend. It was late, and even though the King’s crier had told everyone that a mad Ogre with a hook for a hand was roaming the countryside, he decided he wasn’t going to let that stop him from enjoying the evening…

I think a few of those might wind up on my “Fifty Stories” page…