Books

Dancing in Silver Lands, now available from Neon Hemlock Press, December 2021

A tiny collection of ten flash fairy tales, including reader favorites “The Ceremony,” and “The Fox Bride,” along with original tales.

Spellbinding from page one, Dancing in Silver Lands opens a portal to a fairy-tale world of yearning, wit and beauty. This collection of short but impactful stories is a captivating tour de force.  Darcie Little Badger.

Resistance and Transformation: On Fairy Tales, now available from Aqueduct Press, February 2021.

A frequently snarky essay collection on the French salon fairy writers. 

….the best thing about this collection of Ness’s essays is her irreverent voice. She’s obviously knowledgeable in both the period and the stories, but what I loved the most was the tone of her delivery. Rather than a dry treatise on fairy tales, Resistance and Transformation is more like sitting in a pub with a friend having a chat over a few beers.

Charles de Lint, Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, July/August 2021.

Accessible, smart, and well worth a read for its discussion of some obscurer stories (like “Bearskin”, which I knew almost nothing about!)

ElleThinks.

Buy from Amazon here. 

Through Immortal Shadows Singing. April 2017, Papaveria Press. A novella-length epic poem about Helen of Troy.

Available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Indiebound and other outlets.  Trade paperback and ebook.

From the opening line ‘My mother taught me the use of drugs …’ the reader is swept up in this enthralling re-telling of a classic tale, winding their way through a landscape carved from the mythology of the ancients. Ness brings this landscape to life with a quality of writing not usually witnessed in a writer’s debut effort. Fresh and inventive in her use of metaphor and imagery, Ness submerges the reader in Helen’s story of love and glory….Comparisons to Milton and Sappho aside, I cannot stress how impressed I am with this novella.

Daniel C. Smith, Star*line  (link to full review)

In the Greenwood, A Tor.com Original. Fantasy, December 2013. Fantasy. Ebook only.

Available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, iTunes, Indigo and other online outlets.