The Oddity of the Inner Life of the Author: Behaving Normally
What about me was not normal? Well, like everyone else, everything and nothing. But specifically at that moment, I was assuming, safely I think, that no other woman at Book Club had a loud, violent man in their head who was leading a thief adopted by a dragon, ex-slaver, betrayed cop, and a chicken around a magical world on a swashbuckling adventure. Like I said, safe assumption. The challenge to my normalcy was keeping clamoring characters internalized.
The Oddity of the Inner Life of the Author: Dark and Cozy
My fantasy writing not only allows me to bring the two sides of myself together, but it also allows me to bring men and women back together, united, dependent, and helping each other. I write dark fantasy. I will always write dark fantasy. I have read and studied too many dark things for darkness not to come out. If you let me have my head, people are going to die, be tortured, and suffer. But I will always root my characters in a home, and I will always have a woman at the heart of that home calmly healing, tending, and making things cozy. Always. I will never do one without the other because, from Tolkien to Firefly to Stargate: Atlantis, the stories I love never have adventures without having a rooted hearth and a good hearth-keeper to tend it. The home at their back makes them stronger.
The Oddity of the Inner Life of the Author: Post-Publishing Discoveries
See, my muse is like a rather messy apothecary with my current WIPs simmering in cauldrons clustered together in the corner. The Woven Throne (possible title) is the front and center cauldron, merrily bubbling away and hopefully getting closer for my co-author to start taste-testing. Nearby is my HearthKeeper cauldron, filled with the studies of home and homemaking. I dip regularly into this cauldron. Hanging from rafters, stuffed in mislabeled drawers, filling shelves of glass jars, going cold in forgotten mugs, poking out of vases, and collected in bowls are all the things I love: military history, family, nature, Tolkien, Lewis, theology, coffee, trees, chickens, children, warriors, fairy tales, Vikings, cowboys, home, and more. Because this inner apothecary is so unorganized, things tumble into my cauldrons that I didn’t necessarily intend or even notice. My homemaking boils over into The Woven Throne, making a cottage a cozy respite. A bit of military history drops into my HearthKeeping cauldron and changes the flavor of my group. (Sorry, ladies! Yes, I’m talking about Navy SEALS again.) Something I don’t even remember knowing I know gets stirred in until it’s perfectly blended. The soups and tonics that pour forth from this delightful chaos are impossible to explain or repeat.
The Oddity of the Inner Life of the Author: Seasonal Settings
The thaumaturgy of a winter setting is the wide-open field of horror and beauty. Winter can kill an unprepared human even in the middle of a city. It can drive, sting, nip, and bite. It can stop, shut down, and destroy. The smallest task becomes almost impossible in the winter. Some days, the only goal is to make it through the day alive or through the unending, slowly dropping, refreezing night. Dangers are hidden under supposed purity. One can crash through a crust to be cut, wounded, or drowned. Things aren’t what they seem. Swift death hides beneath the beauty. A used-to-be-known world slides away below our feet.
The Oddity of the Inner Life of the Author: The Romance of Characters and Character Doppelgangers
My, oh my, what a loud place my brain can be when the voices in my head all want to share their opinions at once. And oh, how much do we strange things called authors love this annoying distraction! There is a special strength it lends me when part of me is wrapped up in my characters just chomping at the bit to move on in their story. It is like having your best friends always at your back no matter what the day holds. It allows me hold a snippet of joy in my soul that, for only a brief time, is mine alone.
Writing in a Circle, or Why It Helps to Have a Co-Writer
When you have a good wine, whiskey, cigar, meal, or dessert, the first flavors to hit your tongue are important, but the richness comes from the flavors that follow. A well-informed sommelier will guide you through these different levels of taste as he pours your wine. A rich bourbon will taste of far more than simply an alcohol burn, and each bourbon will have its own complex layers depending on how it was made. A well-told story is much the same.