Bruce and the Daisy
Spring made her way across the land and summer followed. Every day, they waited on the edge of the creek watching for the girl’s white dress and yellow hair to flit through the trees and bring them some new treat. She brought jars of honey, fish, or a pie to the bear and his friends. They ate, sang, and danced until the sun went down.
For a time, Bruce, Mr. Owl, Jack, and Gus forgot their hunt for the old woman. The four rested and waited on the girl.
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.