PUBLICATION UPDATE
“Once Upon A Blog: Fairy Tale News” is Transforming into “The Wondering”!
From 2009 to 2023 and beyond
NOTE: This announcement is mirrored on the old blog, updated for 5–10–2023.
If you have received this announcement via email, then you were (at some point) a subscriber of Once Upon A Blog: Fairy Tale News. Your address has been magically migrated to the new system for your convenience, but as always, if you no longer wish to get fairy tale and Wonder news, you can easily unsubscribe at any time.
Wishing you Wonder every day,
Gʏᴘsʏ Tʜᴏʀɴᴛᴏɴ
Eᴅɪᴛᴏʀ: Oɴᴄᴇ Uᴘᴏɴ A Bʟᴏɢ: Fᴀɪʀʏ Tᴀʟᴇ Nᴇᴡs & Tʜᴇ Wᴏɴᴅᴇʀɪɴɢ
I see you reading the headline and thinking: “Oh no. What is going to happen to Once Upon A Blog? It’s barely been functioning the last few years and now it’s going to change?!”
Don’t worry. Unlike most social media “rebranding”, I’m doing this the fairy tale way, and transforming the blog to be more of what I intended when I began it.
That means I’m staying “on mission” with the Once Upon A Blog content you’ve followed me for, for years, while allowing myself a little more flexibility to explore other avenues of Wonder.
You might be wondering, isn’t Gypsy Thornton all about fairy tales? That remains true, but it’s always been more accurate to say I am Wonder-tale-focused. I see Wonder in many places and the influence of fairy tales everywhere. If I can then share that insight and connection, and bring that Wonder into peoples’ lives, it feels like I’m making a positive difference in the world. And I’ve found a way to have both a fairy tale hub and a way to reach out beyond that hub from time to time to spread a little Wonder wherever I go. It’s the reason I’ve renamed the blog The Wondering.
Here is the new description:
Gathering the curious uses and influence of fairy tales and folklore, from pop culture, current events, and the woods beyond to bring Wonder to your doorstep.
It’s been 14 years since I created Once Upon A Blog: fairy tale news and it’s high time it transforms into what I always intended to create, as well as be a little more reflective of this post-pandemic and AI-emergent era.
It also needs to be in a form in which I, with all that I have been through the last few years, can manage and keep active. After a good year of researching options, I think I have finally found a way to do this.
The biggest differences are:
Title
Once Upon A Blog: Fairy Tale News is now called The Wondering
The header will include a reminder that this is an updated version of Once Upon A Blog: Fairy Tale News.
Online location for new posts
The main new content will be published at https://medium.com/the-wondering
While this blog will remain live and available to read at the old blogspot address, as long as technology allows, (with almost 1800 articles in the archive!), the above is the new main address. There will be occasional posts published there too, but they will most likely be quick updates, letting you know what you might have missed on the main platform if you choose to only continue visiting there.
Blog to publication
The blog is now officially a publication and I am now welcoming submissions from writers of all kinds to be published in The Wondering! (No submission fee.)
This also means it will function in many ways as a magazine, with the main page for The Wondering laid out as such. Each article is kept very clean, ad-free, and easy to read by Medium’s uniform standards, which should make for a better reading experience, both for desktop reading and on your mobile device (the old blogspot site is having increasing issues with this).
Being a publication also means other folks, who join and write on Medium — which you can do for FREE — can submit articles, reviews, and even art, short fiction, or reflective pieces to The Wondering, if interested! Current fairy tale news, events, and influences will continue to be the priority but I will consider a wide range of submissions (see guidelines in The Wonder Writer’s Hub for ideas and for a short list of things that won’t fit here). I remain Editor and will review all submissions. The guidelines are linked in the tab under the main header for anyone interested in submitting.
I would love to build a stable of fairy tale writers and voices, to have a diverse, and regularly publishing fairy tale newsroom!
What’s Available To Read Right Now?
As of today, The Wondering already has four “stories” available, with more added all the time:
- Cravings — a short story based on Rapunzel
- What If Your Dad Is the Animal “Bride”.. and More Beastly Than The Beast? — a spoiler-free book review of “The Crane Husband” by Kelly Barnhill
- The Black Folklorist Who Accurately Predicted the Science in Voodoo & Unearthed Tales We All Need To Hear — an expanded, updated profile, and tribute to Zora Neale Hurston
- Fairy Tales vs fAIry Tales (I) — the first installment of a multi-part article and experiment using AI and fairy tales. (I asked ChatGPT to write me an original fairy tale, analyze it, then adapt it per the Great Fairy Tale Tradition… oof!)
The old email subscription no longer works!
Google has made some quiet changes in the last couple of years to their blog platforms and a big one is that FeedBurner, which enabled my readers to receive email subscriptions for over a decade, no longer works! Not being able to send updates directly to readers from fairytalenewsblog.blogspot.com has been a big motivator for me to update things.
In order to get updates sent to your inbox as they are published again, you’ll need to be subscribed to The Wondering. I am looking into the tech side of things to see if I can migrate the subscription list over to The Wondering for your convenience. If you were a previous OUABlog subscriber and you got this announcement in your email then it worked! If you’re reading this via Medium, you may need to follow (FOLLOW is under the main header) and subscribe again to get any new pieces sent directly to your email — my sincere apologies if that’s the case. Tech is tricky.
Subscribe to be sent just the free fairy tale news, or more — your choice
I aim to spread a little Wonder and magic around in different places, and you can come with me by “following my little chicken-legged mug”.
Your choices are:
1) just fairy tale news, articles, and stories from The Wondering, by me and other writers whose work I publish
2) only be sent everything I personally publish, both on my personal profile and in any publication on Medium, including The Wondering, by clicking the envelope under my profile pic or on my personal subscription page here
3) or subscribe to both!
Subscribing to either or both is completely free.
Some articles in The Wondering will have a paywall but not all
I am still working on seeing how many pieces I can publish each week across Medium, but there will be free content every couple of weeks on The Wondering. You are welcome to just read and/or subscribe to the free stuff, or upgrade to being a Medium member to have access to everything.
If you join through my referral, you support Once Upon A Blog/The Wondering and me directly! And you still get access to everything by everyone on the platform.
The $5 Medium membership gives readers 100% access to ALL STORIES ACROSS THE PLATFORM — not just what you’re joining for and to read the work of whomever you join through. Medium reader memberships support every writer you read. Put very simply, if you have a membership, every writer whose articles or stories you read, benefits by you just reading through their stories. Your membership fee is distributed between the people you read.
There is a LOT of free content across Medium by individual writers and via publications of all types. From science, to film, to history, to AI, education, and more, the focus of different publications ranges widely, and includes many professional journalists. (There is some fiction, creative writing, and poetry too.) The Wondering is the only publication I am aware of that has fairy tales, Wonder, and fairy tale news as its focus, but there are a lot of fascinating articles and publications. Like all other publications, The Wondering will have a mix of free and subscription-access content.
Support me without spending a cent!
There are also ways to support me and my work here for FREE. Medium takes note of how many articles are read, how much of that piece is read/scrolled through, if it is being “clapped” (similar to the “like” button, except you can give up to 50 claps! — the more claps, the more support), if sections are being “highlighted”, and if folks leave comments to engage with the authors.
Linking to pieces both from inside Medium and outside the platform is also helpful! All these actions can positively affect how much authors earn here on Medium, including me.
And that’s the news!
I hope you’ll follow my wandering, chicken-legged coffee mug to its new home and stomping grounds.
We’d love to see our longtime fairy tale folks and new Wonder friends together here!
Aʟʟ ᴡᴀɴᴅᴇʀɪɴɢ, ᴡᴏɴᴅᴇʀɪɴɢ ғᴏʟᴋ, ғᴀɪʀʏ ᴛᴀʟᴇ/ғᴏʟᴋᴛᴀʟᴇ ʀᴇᴀᴅᴇʀs ᴀɴᴅ Wᴏɴᴅᴇʀ ᴡʀɪᴛᴇʀs ᴀʀᴇ ᴡᴇʟᴄᴏᴍᴇ.
Small disclaimer: I am getting this up and running as quickly as possible so expect some refining of the site over the first few months to make it clearer and easier to navigate, but the publication is live and active! You can already subscribe to the newsletter, and the submission guidelines are on a dedicated page for potential writers. (If you’re a Medium Partner, getting published in The Wondering is another chance to get more views and earn cash for your writing!)
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Gypsy Thornton (she/her) is the Guardian of a chicken-legged coffee cup with a mind of its own. A night owl forced to get up with larks, she often describes herself as liminal and is forever trying to do impossible things before breakfast. She can only be seen in her true form after midnight.
