Jacob Answers Questions

1. Where did you come from? A little village called Runtford, near the castle.
2. How old are you? I don't know -- you will have to ask Rachel. She remembers ages and birthdays and other similarly useless facts.
3. What are your strengths and weaknesses? Quick mind. Impartial judge of people. Reader of men's characters. Able to spot a lie. Strong sense of right and wrong. Not a lot of patience for silliness. Prone to action (regardless of logic or insurmountable odds) if my sense of right and wrong dictates it.
4. How did you meet Rachel? When I was a boy, there was a bull in a fence behind the blacksmith shop. Everyone knew to leave that bull alone. I was heading home one day, and I saw the bull pawing and snorting. Then I saw this little girl, smaller than myself, standing in the pen like fool. I looked at that pale face that should have been rosy, the dark curly hair, and the big frightened eyes. She was going to get trampled for certain. I couldn't leave her there. I darted into the pen and dragged her to safety.
5. How did you meet the princess? I had been in a cell for weeks, plotting some way of escape. The best I had been able to do was locate the resting place of a set of cell keys. How I was going to retrieve them was a different story. It seemed impossible. Then I heard shuffling footsteps of someone feeling their way through the dark; I was sure one of the prisoners from another tunnel had gotten free. I could hardly believe it. If only I could convince this prisoner to get the keys, we might both have a better chance. But then it turned out that the footsteps did not belong to an escapee after all. They only belonged to a wandering princess. Ha...I knew I couldn't expect much help from that quarter. So that's how we met.

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Goodbye and God Be With You

It's rather fitting that some things come to a close on this day -- the last day of the year. I submitted my last entry into the Rooglewood contest this morning. I can hardly believe it took me until the day of the deadline to send it in because I'm usually earlier than that. And, even with the extra time I took, I still felt a little bit like maybe I could have done better if I had more time. But there was no feeling of regret when I hit "send." Mostly it was just a prayer that Rooglewood would hear the heart of the message when they read it and that maybe, if I win, they could help me bring the full potential out of my little story. And there was also a feeling, after working on these stories for more than six months, that it felt good to close that chapter and move on to the next one. I did it. I wrote them. And I'm really proud of them. Last year, the act of hitting "send" on my contest entry catapulted me into an anticipatory state....

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For the next 12 1/2 days, as we do our final countdown until March 31st, I'm going to do 4 posts asking about something you would like to see in the Snow White collection. There are so many ways all of us, writers and readers alike, can win in this contest. Maybe a familiar name makes it into the final five -- hurray! Maybe a story in your favorite genre ended up in the collection this year -- woohoo! Maybe you finally get to read a winning story about an evil king and his Snow White son -- how awesome! So, in celebration of all the many things we can root for, I want to know some of the things that you think would be cool to find in this year's set of winners. Without further ado, here is my question for the day: What is a point of view you would like to see in this collection? Would you like a story written from the prince's perspective? A story from Snow White's p...

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