New Year in the Vale
reintroductions/invitation to the Beast's castle/more
Hello, friends, and welcome, new subscribers! My AuDHD brain is a bit scattered and prone to change things last minute, but here in The Purple Vale you can count on reflections on folklore, fairy tales, and the seasons from my little corner of East Tennessee–which is unceded Cherokee and Muscogee land. (Recently found out I’ve been spelling Muscogee incorrectly, or it auto-corrected incorrectly.)
This first post of 2025 is kind of doozy. Normally they aren’t this long or complicated, but I wanted to take care of some housekeeping. So in case you’re like me and really like to know what’s going on, here’s a little table of contents for ya:
reintroductions
the Vale in 2025
Beauty and the Beast course interest form
Reintroductions
I shared this picture last month, a birthday selfie taken post-Wicked and midst-fighting a headache. Despite feeling pretty awful physically, I wanted to commemorate turning 39.
So, hello from the author, Stephanie Ascough. I’ve published 5 books to date under my name, all of them fantasy, fairy tales, or poetry. In 2020, while trying to keep afloat as a parent of four with a spouse working in prison healthcare, I stumbled upon a free, mini fairy tale course. It reignited one of many lost loves, and ever since then I’ve been studying fairy tales on my own.
Here’s a little more, if you’re interested:
The Vale in 2025
When I thought about what I wanted to share this year, I didn’t want to make a lot of changes. It’s been interesting reading the reasons why people decide to use the paywall or not, and most, if not all, are entirely valid reasons. (I started offering paid subscriptions a while ago and am pleasantly shocked every time someone decides to pay me.)
I decided to keep valuing generosity in my writing and to value my work as much as possible. The Purple Vale has 96 posts to date plus a repost, the majority of which are paywall-free. I’m not able to work full-time right now for a number of reasons1. Putting my energy into writing in one thing I can do and am doing. Quite simply, writing this newsletter takes a good bit of my time and I think it deserves to be valued. 2025 is the year I want to share some exciting things I’ve been working on for a while, and to acknowledge the labor and joy I’ve put into these projects.
So here’s a non-exhaustive not-list of what you can expect in this new year:
For free subscribers, I’ll continue to share Folklore Fridays and monthly love lists. You’ll also receive the occasional post featuring a short story, flash fiction, or some other enchantment, and I’ll let you know whenever I’m publishing a new book or course offering.
Paid subscribers who have yearly subscriptions will receive quarterly snail mail with a personalized gift, such as a poem. You’ll also receive previews and/or discounted rates on my other courses, such as my upcoming Beauty and the Beast course (more on that below).
If you want to just drop in as a paid subscriber on a month-by-month basis, that’s awesome, too. Besides Folklore Fridays and monthly love lists, you’ll receive an additional monthly post that includes a short story or flash fiction, poem, journal entry, writing resource, or some other enchantment. (Yearly subscription-ers get this post as well.)
However you choose to be here, I’m so grateful for you. In fact, I’m a little baffled by how many of you there are now, and I don’t take for granted your choice to spend some time in the Vale!
So, how about that invitation to the Beast’s castle?
What if the rose was a doorway to self-discovery for Beauty? What if the Beast’s whole castle was a mirror, offering glimpses into shadowed corners full of secrets? What if Beauty and the Beast are two sides of the same whole?
Rose and Mirror is my upcoming Beauty and the Beast course that I plan to release this spring. You can read a little more about it in this post from October:
Regarding this course, here’s a gentle, necessary note to you, dear readers: I am not a therapist. I’m all the things in the above picture (story lover, fairy tale nerd, and writer/author). This will not be trauma work. I’m including the self-integration lens because that is one way in which I experience this story, because whatever we write comes from within us, because we are made of stories, and because I don’t believe there is such a thing as separation between life and art.
With that out of the way, how about a little preview of the contents?
In February I’ll have a cost finalized to share with you, if not more information as well.
If this is something that excites you, it would be super if you could fill out an interest form regarding Rose & Mirror. This in no way commits you to anything. It simply helps me better understand how I can serve you through this course.
I promise I am not going to do anything bizarre like make you join the class against your will just because you clicked on a link or ask you to marry me every night if you sign up.
IYKYK.
If you made it this far, a million thank you’s!
Want to say hi in the comments? I’d love to chat.
Meet you over the orchard wall, friends.*
*One of my wonderful early readers for The Secret Heart of Maeve MacGowan started signing her emails like this. I like it.
I could write a whoooole post about those reasons, from parenting needs to ND needs to physical limitations, plus there’s the immense privilege of not being in a position where our survival depends on me working a 9-5…maybe I will write that one day.