Warm welcome and many blessings. We had this little magical chime to open up with. This is Ayn Cates Sullivan, and you’re listening to Wisdom of the Ages where myth and magic and chimes, it seems, are never far away. So, if you love Fairy Tales, you will adore this episode, but let me start from the beginning. I love going to literary events and meeting new authors, bards from around the world, and this is how I met today’s guest, Marc Clark. I think it was in 2018. Is that correct?
Yes.
2018. Okay, so my book, Legends of the Grail, had won a gold with the London Book Festival and your book had won the gold for children’s division.
Best children’s book, yes.
Yes, best children’s book. So, I was looking at the award-winning books and I was drawn to this black box. It looked like a jewelry box. It had gold lettering and it read, The Princess & the Parakeet by Marc Clark, so of course I wanted to meet you. When you open the box up, there’s this beautifully designed book with a colorful cover and a purple ribbon that’s precious, and I’d say it’s definitely a fit for royalty. Later, when I read the book, we say don’t judge a book by its cover. It could have looked beautiful, but the story inside is just as beautiful. So, I’m really, really happy that you can join me on this show today.
Oh, thank you.
But before I introduce you, I want to read to you my favorite quote. Is that okay?
Yeah, sure.
Okay, so the protagonist is Princess Brooke and she says, “How silly of that sorcerer to think that he could keep us in prison when we’ve got keys to unlock the universe between the covers of every book.” I loved it. I absolutely loved that.
Thank you.
Yeah. So please tell us about yourself. I’d love to know more about you. I know you were born into an acting family, and you started off writing plays and then books. Tell us what’s going on.
Yeah, that’s pretty much where I started. I guess I started writing right out of high school, and because I was in an acting family, I started with writing plays, and went to New York, and after a while had a couple of them produced off Broadway and was done a couple of things at regional theaters.
That’s so fun. I love that. Yeah, that must’ve been great.
It was fun. One of my favorite moments in New York was a reading of one of my plays. It was very black, dark comedy, and I like pacing around in the back during the reading. It was like a full house because it got in the paper somehow, and people started walking out, and it made me so happy because the play was really kind of offensive.
You’re like.
… the bad falling.
Maybe I should shift to fairy tales. Was it that moment?
You can see how I got there because I went dark first, but I still have a sense of humor all the time, so I think that breaks up.
So, is that the sorcerer, or is that the inner darkness there? He appears in the story. I love him.
That’s what I’m learning when I go back and read anything I’ve written. And I should put a post-it-up that says read what you write, because it turns out everybody is you in the story, and working out details of what you’re struggling and what you’re trying to go through.
So, we’ve got the mini voices of our psyche at work.
Yeah. I tell people, if you want to know an author really well, he’s hiding on every single page of everything he’s written.
That’s beautiful. I love that. It’s so true, too. I just finished a novel and my friends that are reading it right now are saying, “Wait. This really sounds like an autobiography.” Actually, it’s a fairy tale. So, is there a larger story behind Princess & the Parakeet? I remember you telling me something about a girl in a story. Can you tell us more?
Sure. I was working on my second book. It’s a collection of fairy tales called The Royal Fables.
Ah, yes.
It’s Stories from the Prince & Princesses of the Texas Children’s Hospital. While we were in my first book, The Princess Fables, we wanted to be present more on the Internet and on social media and stuff, and my friend who’s helping me with my… Sort of my publicist friend said, “Well, you really have to be strong on the social media.” And I said, “Well, I don’t want to just talk about myself, or books, or sell things, so let’s find a way to give back. Since we write for children, why don’t we find a way to give back for children?” She said, “Well, I happen to be on the board of this foundation called The Ready or Not Foundation, and they support pediatric cancer research at Texas Children’s Hospital.
So, we went there with her friend who runs the foundation and talked to kids in the cancer centers, and asked them to come up with a title for a prince or a princess story. And I picked five of them and wrote stories based on their titles. And then we had them do illustrations for it and gave it to schools and stuff to help us with illustrations. And one of the young girls I met was this young girl named Brooke Hester, and she came up with a title and did some of the drawings for it too, and we became friends. And she was seven at the time, eight, I guess, and she came to New York city where I was living at the time to Columbia Presbyterian, I think. And I went to visit her and I said… And she was really not doing well. We had to wait with her father for an hour or so where like a crash cart came in and stuff like that. But as soon as it was all done, she sat up like nothing had ever happened.
Oh my gosh. Then she sort of does that in the book, too. Brooke in the book. Brooke in the book sort of has the… Yeah, that’s interesting. We’ll get back to that, but that’s… Gosh, what a beautiful service, Marc. Thank you so much for doing that for the world. It’s so important. I don’t know if people even realize how important art and literature and music is, and how healing it is, and how important it is to go into hospitals to… I mean, read to your own children, but also to go to hospitals. I have another friend, Mike Daniels, who’s doing an episode also, who has books that go into animal shelters, and they read to animals also.
Oh, cool.
It’s such a great thing. So, can you give us your website, and we’re going to take a short break, and we’ll go on with Wisdom of Fairy Tales.
Sure. My website is thefableskingdom.com.
Brilliant. Okay, so we’ve been talking with Marc Clark. When we come back from this short break, we’re going to explore more about the Wisdom of Fairy Tales. So, stay tuned and we’ll be right back.
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