☆ONC 2021 Honourable Mention and Shortlister☆
☆One of Round Two Top Five Winners☆
☆Multiple times featured☆
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☆This is a story about H. Ch. Andersen, about how he became a writer and why most of his stories are so sad and melancholic. Also, about why he never found real love... Yes, that's what I read about him (among other things)-- he kept falling in love with unatteinable women.
My story portrays Hans Christian Andersen as a young, fourteen-years-old boy. It's set in Odense, Denmark, in the late summer of 1818-- soon after Hans' mother, a poor washerwoman, remarried (two years after his father's death) and shortly before he was sent to a school for poor children where he had to support himself. Where he became, to be able to afford his schooling, first a weaver's, then a tailor's apprentice, a singer, an actor and finally, once his excellent soprano voice changed, a writer.
Hans and Louise, his (fictional) step-sister, seek refuge from a summer storm in an old shed. There, they meet Rosalind, a lost Flower Fairy. When they decide to help her find the Butterfly Fairy boy she loves and intends to marry, she takes them into a fantastical world of Terra Sonalis, her home. A land of dreams populated by fairies, goblins, elves, mermaids, talking animals... All those mysterious creatures that fuelled Andersen's imagination for the rest of his life.
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There is an unexpected turn in the story that drastically changes the course of events and, in the long run, even the lives of those involved. Magpie, the first to be involved, suddenly finds himself in the world so unlike his own.
Will he find his place there or will he be at least able to go back home?
He seems to find his way back from this new world of giga-dimensions but something unwanted happens, and things go worse.
The cultural differences, together with a challenging personality traits of another involved in the events, suck Magpie and his friends into a downward spiral.
The story challenges you to see the world differently from the perspective you are perhaps too used to and narrowed by.
Life can be an adventure if you don't narrow it with a bigotry that forces you to be rooted in your trenches and behind your dividing walls. This doesn't mean you have to accept others' views without standing your ground. However, to be able to share our lives in this one and only world we need to make compromises, on both sides. Are you the first brave one to set this positive trend in motion?
So read on and let the foundation of the story be laid. From the end of episode 1 on, the story really picks up, finally reaching its climax at the end of episode 3 with quite a surprising finish.
Your participation in solving this shared challenge of coexistence and cooperation is highly appreciated. Remember those who cooperate make more progress than those who don't!
The ideal audience for my first book is actually between 12 and 16, but anybody older and interested in adventures, cultures and in getting more understanding into our multifaceted world is sure to enjoy the story.
(The whole story has now been published, the only thing I'll still add is the final epilogue but the story is already available in its entirety.)