Today is part one of two where we are talking to W.L. Brooks about her novels. Over the next 2 weeks you will hear about telling stories as a kid, writing your novels in a few short weeks, having your novel torn apart by your editor, getting published with a small press, learning how to market your book, making sure you only keep around the scenes that tell about the story or the characters, and her advice to just write!

Get Crossing a Fine Line

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W.L. Brooks was born with an active imagination. When characters come into her mind, she has to give them life- a chance to tell their stories. With a coffee cup in her hand and a cat by her side, she spends her days letting the ideas flow onto paper. A voracious reader, she draws her inspiration from mystery, romance, suspense, and a dash of the paranormal.

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Welcome to Freya's.

Fairy tales.

We believe fairy tales are both stories we enjoyed as children and something that we can achieve ourselves.

Each week, we will talk to authors about their favorite fairy tales when they were kids and their adventure to holding their very own fairy tale in their hands.

At the end of each episode, we will finish off with a fairy tale or short story read as close to the original author's version as possible.

##able I am your host.

Freya Victoria I'm an audiobook narrator that loves reading fairy tales, novels and bringing stories to life through narration.

I'm also fascinated by talking to authors and learning about their why and how for creating their stories.

We've included all of the links for today's author and our show in the show notes.

Be sure to check out our website.

And sign up for our newsletter for the latest on the podcast.

Today is part one of two where we are talking to W.

L.

Brooks about her novels.

Over the next two weeks, you will hear about telling stories as a kid, writing your novels in a few short weeks, having your novel torn apart by your editor, getting published with a small press, learning how to market.

Your book, making sure you only keep around the scenes that tell about the story or the characters and her advice to just write crossing a fine line.

The McKay series, book five.

Fletcher J.

McKay has been shot, driven insane and tortured by a madman.

So what's one more psycho coming after her?

But this foe's disturbing attempts to extinguish Fletcher's light leave her shaken.

Running out of options, she must consort with the enemy.

Fletcher is undoubtedly Sheriff Noah Reed's.

Nemesis.

Their discord began with an irrevocable outcome of an unforeseeable trauma.

But duty demands he keeps her safe.

The closer he gets, the more his loathing turns to lust.

Devastated by loss, Fletcher agrees to go into Noah's protective custody.

Passion takes them across the boundaries of their animosity but is their tentative bond enough or is the line between love and hate as with life and death fixed?

All right, so the name of the podcast is Freya's Fairy Tales and that.

Is fairy tales in two ways fairy tales are something that we either watched or listened to or read as children and it is also the journey for.

You to spend weeks months or years.

Working on your novel.

To get to hold that in your.

Hands is kind of a fairy tale for you.

So I like to start off with what was your favorite fairy tale when.

You were a kid and did that.

Change as you got older?

I have kind of a weird one.

The one I had my dad read to me the most was Goldilocks and Three Bears.

Okay, you're the first one to say.

That, so we're good.

That was my favorite one and I still love it today.

I don't know why though.

I'm petrified of bears.

Like, I have a fear of being mauled to death.

I live in the mountains.

And I'm like, valid.

I'm like, please don't.

Concern.

Yeah, but yeah, Goldilocks and the Three Bears was always my favorite.

I don't know, I guess it's partly searching for the right fit.

And that's life too.

Sometimes it's hard, sometimes it's soft, and you just have to keep going until you find the one that's just right.

Yes.

So at what age did you start writing?

Even if it was like short stories or whatever?

I started writing when I was little.

I told stories from before I can remember.

Like my grandpa used to tell tell us about the time I was really like, maybe three.

And we were visiting them and he put me up on top of the bar and I just told this weird story to everybody.

I was like, okay.

And I used to tell stories, like on the bus on the way home from school, like ghost stories or something like that.

And I tell my mom's stories.

She was a nurse, so when she would go to sleep in the afternoon, I would like, tell her stories.

And I started writing.

Writing probably fourth grade, actually, like writing stuff out.

And I was big into poetry for most of my life, ever since the minute I read Poe, I was all about poetry, poetry.

I was like, this poet was poetry and I'm there for it.

Some deep, dark, depressing poetry.

But that is what he does, right?

Yeah, I like the dark and twisty stuff.

I'm like, I prefer storm clouds to sunshine as far as, like, the weather, I just like the way storm clouds make everything so green.

I didn't start writing books until I attempted in high school.

I think I wrote a few pages because a friend was like, I wrote poetry all the time.

And she's like, you should write a book.

And I was like, okay.

And I started I got a few pages in and I don't know, that was on a computer somewhere 20 some years ago.

So then I hung it up.

And I wasn't a reader as a child.

TV was my best friend.

I wasn't a big reader until my mid teens.

One summer I got into reading.

And then when I got in my twenty s, I borrowed a book from my mom and it was Alinda Howard Philantel.

And I was like, oh my God, there's suspense and romance in the same book.

I'm like wait, what?

You mean they hide this kind of thing in books?

Where have I been?

And I hit the book hard.

After that, I would read three books a day.

I just sit and read and read and read.

And I was like, I could write something.

We took a creative writing class in college just to get the credit.

So I came up with my character, came up with Casey.

First I was thinking about oh, my gosh.

What's?

Linda Hamilton?

Yeah, in terminator two when she's doing the pull ups in the psych ward and stuff.

And I was like, dude, she's so bad.

I don't know if you can curse on here.

Oh, yeah, you're good.

I just have them all flagged explicit so that I don't have to worry about it.

But then I never tell anybody.

I'm like, trying to not because I have a potty mouth.

You're fine.

Go for it.

She was so badass, and I was just like, freaking.

What if it was a girl?

Like a young girl?

And that's how I got Casey.

And she was like the older sister.

And then I wanted different characters.

So next with Fletcher, who I did Vignettes for in class, and I did the voices and everything and lectures, started out it started out with Dear Journal because this ain't no d*** diary.

Pops wanted me to write a diary just because I got in trouble again breaking into the sheriff's office.

But this ain't a diary because I ain't assistant.

And that's how Fletcher started.

And then I was like, oh, I added Alexandra.

And then I added I was like.

So you were kind of building your characters before you actually started writing the story?

Yeah, and then I had Charlie, so I kind of knew I knew who they were.

And I was going to write them young and then have them be older in their books, like the backstory be when they were young.

But my dad was like, well, why doesn't Pops get a story?

Because Pops adopt was their adopted father.

And he's like, why doesn't he get a story?

And I was like, I can do that.

And so I wrote Pops story and then I wrote Casey's story and then I wrote Charlie's story.

And then I moved to Florida.

I packed everything in my car and moved to Florida from Virginia.

That's a big move.

Yeah, I lived with a friend there and moved in with her.

I was 24.

And so I had to get a real job.

And I was like, I want to finish these books before.

So I wrote Alexander's story, the Rough draft in two weeks.

And I wrote Fletcher's right after that in a week.

And how long were these books that you're writing?

Fletchers was the first draft was like 307 pages.

But of course.

And you wrote that.

It totally changed.

Yeah, in a week.

But it was like.

Writing, I imagine.

I was 24 and I could sit outside and I smoked then, so I could sit outside and smoke and write.

It was Florida.

So it was February.

But it was like 70, right?

I'm from Texas.

Yeah, I can't complain.

I finished it and then I packed everything away in a box and got a job.

And life happened for years.

I moved again and again.

So what year was it that you wrote the two books.

Was it just the two that you wrote that year?

Yeah, the two I wrote in.

It was 2005, and I finished it.

I started in 2003, and then 2005, the beginning of 2005, I finished them.

Okay, and then you packed them in a box, never to be seen again sometime.

So then what happened?

Yeah, I packed them in a box for years until I got the opportunity to work on my writing again.

And I pulled them out after years, and I found a professional editor and learned that I knew nothing.

So it was pretty she is an old school, like, in her 70s.

She'd been a writing teacher and creative writing teacher in college, and she did all this stuff, and she was like, yeah, no.

So I had to rewrite everything because I had what there's different kinds of POVs.

There's first person, second person, which is mainly in journalism, and third person, third person simple, which is just he said, she said, and then third person, omniscient, which is he said, she said.

But it's an all knowing.

Person narrative.

Like an actual sentient being who knows everything, and regular third person is just being able to you know everything the character knows.

You see everything the character sees, but they can't see it, experience it, or know it, then you don't either, so there's the difference.

And the third person omniscient is very hard because it's a fine line between that and head hopping, which is when you go from character to character to character.

Well, let me tell you, it was head hopping.

Like, you wouldn't believe in this thing.

I mean, it was just the whole time.

I want to know what this person's thinking right now.

I want to know what this person.

Is thinking right now.

I had everybody's point of view.

And now that most mainstream and traditional publishers won't take Omniscient unless you're a big name already.

Yeah, a big name.

Or you have I mean, there has to be a reason why they would accept it, because most of them will not accept omniscient.

So now I'm like, I probably could have if I would have gone Indy, and if I knew then what I know now, I could have fixed it.

But I think it turned out well after everything.

I got the first manuscript back, which is pops the story, and she's like, yeah, you need to fix all that.

So I fixed everything, and then I got this idea for another story, and I was like, I'm going to put this aside, and I'm going to write this new story.

I took, like, six months to write between Death and Destiny.

It was, like, 121,000 words, and I cut the crap out of it.

I think it ended up being 80 something.

Oh, gosh, yeah, I cut a lot, and I'm with a small press, so I got my submitted and query letters and submissions.

What year did you start with the editor with the first two books versus how long did the query process take you?

I started in, I think, 2013 with the editor.

I started querying in 20 I want to say the end of 2014.

Okay.

And got my contract in 2015.

Okay.

And then between Desk and Destiny came out.

Not insane time frame for querying?

No, not too bad.

But I wasn't afraid to go to a small press.

And some people only do like traditional houses, some people only do agents.

So I don't even know.

I probably put out like 30 queries, I think sometimes you don't even hear back from them at all.

Yeah, but yeah, so I got my contract and in 2015, towards the end of the year, and then Between Death and Destiny came out, december 2016.

I want to say I'm trying to think, I've so bad days, my memory is crap.

And so that was your first book to actually be released was in 2016.

So from 2005 to 2016, that's eleven years.

Yeah.

And this one, let your story comes out, the one I wrote in a week in 2025 comes out next week.

My gosh.

I came up with these characters for the Vignettes in 2003 and it had to be three so 20 years.

So you released the first book with the small press.

Was that one part of a series or was that one a one off?

It was a one off.

It's a paranormal romance.

Okay, so it was different.

It was a lot I mean, I was older, too, so it made a difference.

I love that book now.

I know a lot of different things, so I really like to get it and edit it.

There are so many things now that I know about filtering and all of these things that I'd like to go in and change.

But yeah, so that was my first book.

The second book was Pops story, let the Dead Lie.

And that's my McKay series.

Then the secrets that shape us unearthing the past, the truth behind the mask.

And now Fletcher is crossing a fine line.

And those are romantic suspense.

So you went with a small publisher for the first one.

Are they still the ones publishing your books or are you doing them different?

Yes, when they got the first book in the series, they have first dibs, so I had to query every time and send in a manuscript.

And sometimes I got that back and had to rewrite a bunch of things.

Charlie's story, which was unearthing the past.

I had to cut the first 40 pages oh, gosh.

Yeah.

And rework it.

So I did.

And I mean, it all turns out for the best, but yeah.

So you got this small press.

They have first dibs, which to my understanding, just means that you have to go to them before you decide to do anything else with it.

With that series, not with every book.

You ever write for the rest of your life.

Exactly.

Yeah.

With that series, they get first dibs on it to say the only way you could publish it separately from them is if they decline.

But luckily we worked and I had the same editor with the publisher each time.

So after working together for years, it's kind of like, okay.

And you learn to let go of a lot of things and you learn to cut a lot of things.

And I was really lucky.

Like, the small press that I'm with, it's all women ran and they're not stingy with information.

They'll tell you stuff they'll share with you.

They have chats every week and they'll help you as best they can.

But with a small press, it's just like small press is just pretty much the same as Nd, except the publisher does cover the formatting and they put out the book and generally it's wide.

Yeah, but I have to do all my own marketing, all my own stuff, and I have social anxiety disorder.

So it's like.

I noticed that you have a couple audiobooks.

Did they do the audiobooks or did you do the audiobooks?

They did the audiobooks and then it got with Axe, it got too, I don't know, complicated between publisher Axe and the narrators.

So they stopped doing audiobooks altogether and they're like, if you want to do that on your end, it's okay.

But I'm a scaredy cat.

So it was easy when I was like I was like, here I haven't even gone into a store and be like, hey, do you want to put my b*** yeah.

It takes me a lot to be able to do that.

I'm like, yeah.

Usually I have my beanie on and I can cover my face with my beanie because I get handle it.

So they handled the audiobook.

Did you get any say in who did the book or no?

Yeah, you put in the audition, you can put it out there on acts like what you are looking for, and then people can say, hey, I'm interested, and they'll send you stuff and you can decline and all, but it's like you don't want to only if you really don't like it.

Because if you can make it work, make it work because you don't know if someone's gonna if you're going to get more.

So are you are you talking about ACX?

Yeah.

Is that it?

ACX?

Yeah, I think that's what she means.

Okay.

Because you don't know.

And I've heard recently, I've had authors that I've worked with before tell me that they'll get auditions with like people will do like they'll play a song for their audition or it'll be AI for the audition.

Oh my gosh.

I mean, it's easy to weed out the crappy ones when it's like robotic sounding or it's a song, or like one person.

I've had two authors tell me the same thing.

One person will submit auditions for books.

That's, like, a totally different book, and it's like, I'm a professional, and this is my professional real, and this should be good enough for your audition, even though you clearly uploaded a script that you wanted me to audition with and everybody else is doing that.

The audacity.

I wouldn't know.

I'm so bad at.

Like, that would be an immediate no for me.

But I'd be like, oh, my gosh.

And, I mean, I hate to hurt anybody's feelings, and I'm trying to get over that and be like, well, just.

So you know, you don't have to say anything to any of the ones you don't pick the quantity of times I get a message from someone that doesn't.

So say I put out 20 auditions.

I might get one person saying, hey, we really liked your voice, but it's not a fit for this book.

Most of them don't say anything.

I just get the automated someone else has been picked for this book.

It is.

You could just listen and pick your favorite one, and they will get a contract, and everybody else gets an automated another producer has been picked for this book message.

I'm just oh, wow.

Yeah.

I don't know.

Things.

I was like, here, you want to do this for me?

Okay.

Yeah, I'm just going to hide.

So Stormy, who you know, that I'm narrating her books for her, whatever, she hadn't done any audiobooks prior to I did the Femme Audio Takeover with three of her books last year, and then afterwards, like, anyone that didn't have audiobooks already, of course I'm going to do the smart thing.

I'm going to message all of them and be like, hey, I really liked your book.

Well, the ones that I really did like their book because some of them I didn't want to touch, but I messaged them, and I'm like, hey, if you're interested, I'm like, I'm happy to answer any questions, but I would also love to be your narrator.

And she was one of, I think, two authors that did end up hiring me for their books.

So it works out well, right?

It does.

They're doing another one too soon.

Who I think the Takeover yeah.

On the 25th, which will be way before this episode airs.

But, yeah, they try it generally every two months, they try.

But, like, the person that does all the scheduling, it's been a while since the last one, the 25th.

I vaguely remember that.

This goes the same for authors on TikTok, right?

So when things start, any social media of any kind starts up.

You have these small groups of people.

That are like, oh, let's go try it, right?

And then it takes hold, and then you end up with, like, billions of authors or narrators or whatever doing this.

So when the Femme narrator thing started, I remember it being Ruthie and Paige and Ally, and then they asked me to do it, and then I reached out to like I hadn't even talked to some of these narrators dude.

I reached out to every narrator that was mutuals with me and was like, hey.

Or every femme narrator.

And it's like, hey, you want to do this thing?

And so they ended up the original three ended up including me in part of that because it was like, hey, you brought all these extra people in.

Not that they couldn't have done that, because they could have, but I had already done that.

And so I was sending Ruthie and Paige lists of here's all the ones I've reached out to.

Right.

So this go around.

Now I'm seeing all these narrators that I've never even heard of before.

My husband will show me his phone.

He'll be like, hey, do you know who this is?

And I'm like, I've never seen her face before.

Oh, wow.

There's so many involved now.

I usually don't know what's going on.

I'm not going to lie.

I don't know.

Unless somebody actually tells me what's happening.

I'm very much in my own all the time.

It's fairly easy because it's like there's no commitment to ever work with the narrator.

Last time.

I ask for three to 500 words if you have the COVID for the book.

So far, I have three authors that I'll be doing and all three of them are unreleased books.

All three of them are books that aren't out yet.

So I had someone message me.

Actually four if you count Stormy.

But I think the enhancement is out technically anyways.

So like, three of them, though.

Two of them.

One is my husband.

One is like an author that I've interviewed on here.

She messaged me yesterday and was like, hey, does it have to be a released book?

And I'm like, no, not for me.

Some narrators may not want to do not released book, but I'm all for it.

I don't even need it to be edited.

I had to edit my husband's piece before he sent me a section of this really cool fight scene.

And I'm like some of these words because he's like on first draft with his right now.

I'm like, we're going to clean it up in pro writing aid first.

Absolutely.

I am supposed to be the person editing his book, but I'm waiting until he's done with it.

Yeah.

Anyway, it helps when it's like you have it all.

Yeah, well, and then because you're also be looking for developmental stuff too, which you need the whole book to know.

Whatever.

I've read the first couple of chapters of it and there was a couple of sections where I'm like, hey, if you're going to say stuff like this, you need to explain it a little bit more because it may make sense in your head.

But I don't know what's happening.

I feel like every author has that problem at some point.

Yeah, it's kind of like it's basically you don't want to info dump.

You know all the things yes, but you're not telling me all the things.

I've had friends and I'm like, Dude, tell me about I'll talk to them.

I'm like, hey, so tell me about so and so.

And they'll be like I'm like, okay, now take that and show me.

Because you have all the answers.

But you're not putting it here because you know the characters, you know all the things, or some people do, some, I guess, as they write, like, I'm a panther, so I just kind of go with it.

But you know all the things, who they are and all this stuff.

But sometimes we forget that we have to tell others and all that stuff.

I'm working on my own book right now.

I'm 89,000 words in at this point.

This is the second book because, like, you I started one, got 30,000 words in and was like, oh, squirrel, let's go write this.

So I'm working on that one has I would call it an outline, but not a plan.

It's like each chapter has I have the chapter name and I have the major not even a sentence, like, ten word plot point that needs to happen in that chapter.

That is my plan.

That is all I have.

The rest of it's panced.

My characters weren't developed ahead of time.

My location wasn't even developed ahead of time.

I'm like, it's a winter one.

And I'm like, I want them to be on slay rides.

So I'm like, what states have get enough snow that there can be slate rides, right?

Research.

Find it.

I described it as being on, like, a town square.

So I'm like, I need to find a place with a cute town square.

You just make it up.

Basically, the area that's what I did between death and destiny.

I did a northern it's just make believe town, and I don't ever really say what state it is, so it could be anywhere.

And then here, I set it in my McKay series.

I set it in the North Carolina mountain and pretend town named Blue Creek.

And then when I moved from Florida, I got lost here in the North Carolina mountains.

And I've been here for 16 years.

Okay, yeah, I ended up here, but I made the town up, and it's really weird.

The city next to me is the name of my character.

I'm not a good maker upper.

So, for example, I was making the LLC for publishing the books or whatever, and I'm like, I want it to be something, like, in every word.

So I'm like, okay, my favorite animals, penguins can't use penguin in the name because Penguin random House can't use that.

So I'm like, going through all these things, and I'm like, well, okay, what kind of books will I be writing?

And I'm like, okay, so, like, fantasies and romances and that kind of genre or whatever.

So then I go to synonym.com and I find what are similar words that sound cooler.

Then I come up with something that's like my process for everything.

So my book that I'm writing currently is a Beauty and the Beast retelling.

Well, I didn't want to use belle or beauty.

I needed it to be so what other names mean beautiful?

Pick one.

So I'm not a good maker upper.

I am a good like, think outside the box to find an answer.

Hey, sometimes you got to go around about to get to where you're going.

It makes the journey more fun.

W.

L.

Brooks liked Goldilocks and the Three Bears growing up goldilocks and the Three Bears is a 19th century English fairy tale of which three versions exist.

The original version of the tale tells of an obscene old woman who enters the forest home of three anthropomorphic bachelor bears.

While they're away, she eats some of their porridge, sits down on one of their chairs and breaks it and sleeps in one of their beds.

When the bears return and discover her, she wakes up, jumps out of the window, and is never seen again.

The second version replaces the old woman with a young girl named Goldilocks.

And the third, and by far best known version replaces the bachelor trio with a family of three.

What was originally a frightening oral tale became a cozy family story with only a hint of menace.

The story has elicited various interpretations and has been adapted to film, opera, and other media.

Goldilocks and the Three Bears is one of the most popular fairy tales in the English language.

Today we'll be reading the story of the three Bears.

Don't forget we're reading Lemourde Arthur the Story of King Arthur and of the snowball knights of the roundtable on our patreon.

You can find the link in the show notes.

The Story of the Three Bears once upon a time, there were three bears who lived together in a house of their own in a wood.

One of them was a little small wee bear, and one was a middle sized bear, and the other was a great huge bear.

They had each a pot for their porridge, a little pot for the little small wee bear and the middle sized pot for the middle bear and a great pot for the great huge bear.

And they had each a chair to sit in, a little chair for the little small wee bear and a middle sized chair for the middle bear and a great chair for the great huge bear.

And they had each a bed to sleep in, a little bed for the little small wee bear and a middle sized bed for the middle bear and a great bed for the great huge bear.

One day, after they had made the porridge for their breakfast and poured it into their porridge pots, they walked out into the wood.

While the porridge was cooling that they.

Might not burn their mouths by beginning too soon to eat it.

And while they were walking, a little old woman came to the house.

She could not have been a good, honest old woman, for first she looked in at the window, and then she peeped in at the keyhole.

And seeing nobody in the house, she lifted the latch.

The door was not fastened because the bears were good bears who did nobody any harm and never suspected that anybody would harm them.

So the little old woman opened the door and went in.

And well pleased she was when she saw the porridge on the table.

If she had been a good little old woman, she would have waited till the bears came home and then perhaps they would have asked her to breakfast.

For they were good bears, a little rough, or so, as the manner of bears is but for all that very good natured and hospitable.

But she was an impudent bad old woman and set about helping herself.

So first she tasted the porridge of the great huge bear, and that was too hot for her, and she said a bad word about that.

And then she tasted the porridge of the middle bear, and that was too cold for her, and she said a bad word about that, too.

And then she went to the porridge of the little small wee bear and tasted that.

And that was neither too hot nor too cold, but just right.

And she liked it so well that she ate it all up.

But the naughty old woman said a bad word about the little porridge pot because it did not hold enough for her.

Then the little old woman sat down in the chair of the great huge bear, and that was too hard for her.

And then she sat down in the chair of the middle bear, and that was too soft for her.

And then she sat down in the chair of the little small wee bear and that was neither too hard nor too soft, but just right.

So she seated herself in it.

And there she sat till the bottom of the chair came out, and down she came, plump upon the ground.

And the naughty old woman said a wicked word about that, too.

Then the little old woman went upstairs into the bedchamber in which the three bears slept.

And first she laid down upon the bed of the great huge bear but that was too high at the head for her.

And next she laid down upon the bed of the middle bear and that was too high at the foot for her.

And then she lay down upon the bed of the little small wee bear and that was neither too high at the head nor at the foot, but just right.

So she covered herself up comfortably and lay there till she fell fast asleep.

By this time the three bears thought their porridge would be cool enough, so they came home to breakfast.

Now, the little old woman had left the spoon of the great huge bear standing in his porridge.

Somebody's been at my porridge, said the great huge bear in his great, rough, gruff voice.

And when the middle bear looked at his, he thought that the spoon was standing in it, too.

They were wooden spoons.

If they had been silver ones, the naughty old woman would have put them in her pocket.

Somebody's been at my porridge, said the middle bear in his middle voice.

Then the little small wee bear looked at his, and there was the spoon in the porridge pot.

But the porridge was all gone.

Somebody's been at my porridge and has.

Eaten it all up, said the little small wee bear in his little small wee voice.

Upon this, the three bears, seeing that someone had entered their house and eaten up the little small wee bear's breakfast, began to look about them.

Now, the little old woman had not put the hard cushion straight when she rose from the chair of the great huge bear.

Somebody's been sitting in my chair, said.

The great huge bear in his great, rough, gruff voice.

And the little old woman had squatted down the soft cushion of the middle bear.

Somebody's been sitting in my chair, said the middle bear in his middle voice.

And you know what the little old woman had done to the third chair?

Somebody's been sitting in my chair and has sat the bottom out of it, said the little small wee bear in his little small wee voice.

And the three bears thought it necessary that they should make further search, so they went upstairs into their bedchamber.

Now, the little old woman had pulled the pillow of the great huge bear out of its place.

Somebody's been lying in my bed, said the great huge bear in his great, rough, gruff voice.

And the little old woman had pulled the bolster of the middle bear out of its place.

Somebody's been lying in my bed, said the middle bear in his middle voice.

And when the little small wee bear came to look at his bed, there was the bolster in its place and the pillow in its place.

Upon the bolster and upon the pillow was the little old woman's ugly, dirty head, which was not in its place, for she had no business there.

Somebody's been lying in my bed, and here she is, said the little small wee bear in his little small wee voice.

The little old woman had heard in her sleep the great rough, gruff voice of the great huge bear.

But she was so fast asleep that it was no more to her than the roaring of wind or the rumbling of thunder.

And she had heard the middle voice of the middle bear, but it was only as if she had heard someone speaking in a dream.

But when she heard the little small we voice of the little, small wee bear.

It was so sharp and so shrill that it awakened her at once.

Up she started, and when she saw.

The three bears on one side of the bed, she tumbled herself out at the other and ran to the window.

Now the window was open because the bears, like good, tidy bears as they were, always opened their bedchamber window when they got up in the morning.

Out the little old woman jumped, and whether she broke her neck in the fall.

Or ran into the wood and was lost there.

Or found her way out of the wood and was taken up by the Constable and sent to the House of Correction for a vagrant.

As she was, I cannot tell.

But the three bears never saw anything more of her.

Thank you for joining Freya's fairy tales.