Seven Miles of Steel Thistles: How a blog turned into a book - guest post by Kath Langrish
It was back in 2009 that I created a blog on all things to do with fantasy, fairy tales, folklore and children’s literature – and named it Seven Miles of Steel Thistles . The phrase is borrowed from an Irish fairy tale in which the hero gallops his pony over ‘seven miles of hill on fire, and seven miles of steel thistles, and seven miles of sea.’ To some people this seemed a strange name for a literary blog. ‘Shouldn’t the title have something about books or reading in it?’ one friend asked, anxious for my success. But for me, ‘seven miles of steel thistles’ was evocative not only of what sometimes seems the endless struggle of writing a book, but of the trials of everyday life too. Some Scottish fairy tales have a phrase with a similar lilt which tells how the characters must cross ‘seven bens and seven glens and seven mountain moors’ – but the imagery isn’t quite so expressive. Here we go, all of us: dancing the flames, kicki...