The Raven's Sepulcher by Gary Cottle

The Raven's Sepulcher is available at Amazon and Smashwords.

I used the fairytale Sleeping Beauty as inspiration for my novel The Raven’s Sepulcher. The fairytale is about a girl who wakes to her own adulthood. There is a special emphasis on sexuality and romance in the fairytale, and those things play a significant part in my story, too, but I expanded on the basic premise. Allison, my protagonist, is not only confronted with her growing desire for love, but she also has to wake to the dangers and disappointments of life. She must give up her childish delusions and deal with reality if she is to survive. There are forces in her grandmother’s house that are urging her to open her eyes. These forces may be supernatural or they may represent Allison’s own innate wisdom bubbling up from her subconscious, but in any event, they are trying to tell her that she is leading a nebulous existence somewhere between life and death. She is in a tomb, and she might slip away forever if she doesn’t wake up.

I like the way Sleeping Beauty suggests that maturation has two tracks. On the one hand, our bodies mature physically, and there’s not much we can do about that. It simply happens to us. Accompanying that physical maturation are usually societal expectations that steadily increase as the process goes along. But there is a second maturation process, a psychological one, and according to the fairytale, this one is driven by our own willingness to accept that our childhood is over.

When Allison is sent out into the world, she is not ready to think for herself or make her own decisions, so for the longest time, she is blind to the danger she is in. There are people in her life, people she should be able to count on and trust, who would prefer Allison remain an obedient and naïve child. They would do anything to keep her asleep in her tomb forever.