Are fairy creatures really aliens from another universe?
Imagine a world where fairy creatures aren’t just myths, but hostile aliens from a parallel universe. This is the brilliantly bizarre reality of Mercedes Lackey’s “Hunter Trilogy,” a page-turning blend of fantasy and young adult post-apocalyptic fiction. This concept of fairies, elves, mages, and other magical creatures being from the “Otherlands” should be familiar to anyone who is a fan of portal fantasy and multiverse parallel universe fantasy. Mercedes Lackey adds an interesting spin to it by setting her story in post-apocalyptic America.
This series would especially appeal readers who liked Suzanne Collin’s The Hunger Games and Victoria Aveyard’s Red Queen series, as it has a similar dystopian flavor.
In the Hunter series, which includes Hunter, Elite, and Apex, Lackey introduces us to a dystopian Earth where the boundaries between worlds have thinned, unleashing a horde of mythological creatures intent on eating humans and kidnapping their children.
In this chaos, Hunters, elite warriors with magical abilities, are humanity’s last line of defense in protecting the dwindling human population from invading magical beasts.
The protagonist, Joyeaux Charmand, is a teenage Hunter who navigates this dangerous new world with a mix of bravery, practicality, and wisdom. Through her eyes, we experience the thrill and terror of combating otherworldly beings, while also grappling with the backstabbing politics of her ratings-driven society.
For readers who aren’t yet familiar with Mercedes Lackey’s work, I definitely recommend the Hunter series as an entry-point.
Diving into Mercedes Lackey’s extensive bibliography, it’s clear why she has been called one of the most prolific fantasy authors of all time.
As I perused her backlist, I was surprised to find a bunch of books I had read as a teenager, including Elvenbane, which was co-written with Andre Norton, and Lackey’s hugely popular Valdemar universe, which is a cornerstone of the fantasy genre. Lackey’s ability to continuously produce compelling, diverse narratives is a testament to her unwavering creativity and dedication to the fantasy genre.
Even though Mercedes Lackey will write many books in a fantasy world, she will often write in trilogies, so you can dip your toe into one of her worlds, enjoy a complete series arc in three books, and if you decide you like it there are plenty more in that world to enjoy.
One of her series that I’m looking forward to reading more of is her Elemental Masters series, which are historical fantasy re-telling of fairy tales, but set during the late 1800s and early 1900s.
For those interested in exploring more of her imaginative universe, a visit to her website offers a gateway to her literary world.
If you would like more book recommendations like this, consider signing up for my Reader’s Club. As a thank you gift, you will receive a free short story from me, along with updates on my works in progress every month or so.
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UPDATE — This blog post includes text and images generated with the assistance of OpenAI’s models. I provided detailed prompts, curated the outputs, and made edits, but the majority of the content was created with AI assistance. This disclosure aligns with my commitment to transparency under the EU AI Act. Disclosure added on November 18, 2024 to align with transparency requirements under the EU AI Act.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Portions of this content were generated using OpenAI’s models, with significant curation, editing, and creative input by E. S. O. Martin. AI-generated portions may not be subject to copyright under current laws.
When I was a child, my dad was vegetarian, so as a default, our whole family was vegetarian. Back in the ye olde days of the 1980s and 1990s, being vegetarian was considered weird. Getting take out food was a challenge, but luckily my mother was a fantastic cook. At home, she would make vegetable soups, broccoli sautéed in butter, and delicious salads.
A Meaty Detour
When my parents got divorced, I stopped being vegetarian. My first taste of meat was when I was twelve years old. It was a star-shaped chicken nugget from a drive-through fast food restaurant. It tasted like a deep-fried kitchen sponge, but it was fascinating to find out what all fuss was about meat. From then on, I did eat meat, but I never lost my preference for vegetable dishes.
In my opinion, what makes meat taste good is actually the sauces and marinades, which are made out of vegetables—usually some variation of tomato and garlic. Once you’ve chewed out the sauce, what’s left pretty flavorless.
However, I liked the social capital of not being the “weird vegetarian” that other people had to accommodate. It made things easier when I went over to friends’ houses.
The Wake-Up Call
Everything changed in 2019 when I was diagnosed with vasculitis and prediabetes. My doctor at Kaiser suggested two nutrition classes: a meat-based ‘Pre-diabetes and Me’ class and a plant-based nutrition class. The former felt like a slide into despair, while the latter, led by an inspiring teacher, presented a hopeful path toward reversing chronic diseases. You can read more about my health journey here. The stark contrast between the nihilism of the prediabetes class and the optimism of the plant-based diet class made going vegan the obvious choice.
Making the Switch
On May 5, 2019, I cleared out my kitchen of all animal products. The following books and resources were incredibly help to me in making the transition:
The biggest help of all was the Forks Over Knives Meal Planner because it basically takes out all the mental labor for what to cook and what to buy. The weekly recipes helped me switch from someone who dreaded cooking, to someone who actually enjoys it.
Whole-food, plant-based diets are way cheaper than meat-heavy and processed food diets. An annual subscription to the meal planner more than pays for itself with how much we are saving on groceries and not spending on medical bills. (Note: I’m not sponsored by Forks Over Knives in any way. I keep recommending them, because I love their food.)
Transitioning Tips
I went vegan overnight, but most people usually need to ease into it more slowly. I recommend signing up for the Forks Over Knives meal planner, and start by switching one meal a week over the course of a month. (Week 1: Vegan breakfasts; Week 2: Vegan breakfasts and lunches; Week 3: All meals vegan!)
Remember, just because something is labeled “vegan” doesn’t mean it is healthy. Oreos are vegan. Potato chips are vegan. A healthy vegan meal is built around the four food groups — whole grains, legumes, vegetables, and fruits — in as close to their original form as you can get. This is why people sometimes refer to this as a “plant-based, whole-food diet” rather than a “vegan diet.” This means the majority of your shopping happens in the produce section.
A whole food, plant based diet has a lot more fiber than most people on the standard American diet are used to. This means that your microbiome will need to change to help you digest all this fiber. A slow transition over the course of several weeks or months will help you avoid surprising gut issues.
A varied diet of whole grains, legumes, nuts, and vegetables has all the protein you need. But I generally build at least one meal a day around legumes, for the protein and iron. Eating legumes legumes has been shown to increase lifespan. Bean burrito lunches are my favorite, but I also like vegetable soups with lentils, quinoa, chickpeas, and peas. I also make my own hummus and blended sauces using chickpeas as a base.
In order to avoid all the salt in canned beans, I usually batch-cook my week’s legumes in an instant pot during the weekend.
What about B12?(And vitamin D, and iron, etc.)
Surprisingly, people who eat meat and dairy are also low on B12. This is because this essential nutrient is made from bacteria in healthy water and soil — which we no longer have in many places. Animals in the livestock industry get their B12 from nutrition supplements in their feed. Vegans need to get their B12 from multivitamins and fortified foods.
During the covid pandemic, many of us discovered how important Vitamin D is for healthy immune systems. Your body can make Vitamin D when exposed to sunshine, or you can take a supplement.
Iron is also important for immune system function, and menstruating women are sometimes at risk for being anemic. I make sure there is plenty of iron in my diet by pairing legumes with a vitamin C source — or example: beans and tomatoes, lentils and peppers, chickpeas and lemon — because the vitamin C helps the body absorb more of the iron than the body would otherwise.
When making any dietary switch, it’s important to check in with your doctor and get all of your blood levels checked to see if you have any specific needs you need to address. You should also get a doctor’s check-up every year to ensure your blood levels are healthy.
Beyond Diet: Ethics and Environment
My primary motivation for going vegan was selfish self-preservation.
However, the ethical and environmental aspects are important to me as well.
Books like Eating Animal by Jonathan Safran Foer and Mind if I Order the Cheeseburger by Sherry F. Colb, and the documentary Dominion really broadened my understanding of the ethical treatment of animals. (Content Warning: Dominion shows animal slaughter and animal cruelty in graphic detail. Do not watch with kids!)
The documentaries Cowspiracy and Before the Flood make a strong case that what we choose to eat every day has a tremendous impact on our environment.
I think that eating meat made sense, back in the old days when the global population was half a billion people, and when peak life expectancy was 35. Back then, animal flesh was basically a walking savings account for calories to keep us humans from starving to death when the only food available was snow-covered grass.
But we live in a different world now. There are more than 8 billion people and industrial food production has come a long way. As a species, we face different challenges than our ancestors did, and the best thing for our survival is to change our habits and evolve—rather than continue to cling to some romanticized, macho version of the past.
We’re witnessing a paradigm shift in awareness about the health, social, and environmental consequences of eating animals.
For me, veganism a positive and pro-active way to not just be healthier by avoiding chronic disease, it’s also a way for me to live my values by being kind to animals and in doing my part to solve world hunger and lower my environmental impact. Everything about it feels good to me. It is one simple choice that has tremendous benefit to myself and others.
My only regret is that I didn’t go vegan sooner.
Navigating Social Settings
Dealing with social settings as a vegan can be challenging sometimes, but over the years I’ve developed some strategies.
I let people know I’m vegan, but I don’t go into detail about it unless they want to know more. I wrote this blog post to answer some of the frequently asked questions I get about being vegan.
I eat beforehand. When hanging out with friends, it’s not a given that there will be vegan options available. If my family or friends give me the option of choosing the restaurant, I like to check HappyCow.net for restaurants with vegan options.
I bring my own food … plus plenty extra to share. If I’m going over to a friend or family member’s house, I usually bring my own food and enough food to feed everybody else.
If all else fails, I chose the best available option—which sometimes means ordering a baked potato and doing my best to scrape out the butter and pick out the bacon bits. 😝
When I was a child, I would always hear my mom and grandmother speak Polish together, but since their husbands were both monolingual English speakers, they mostly spoke English when their husbands were around so that nobody would feel excluded.
Me, age 10, wearing traditional Polish dress.
The way they tell it, I was bilingual as a small child, but since English was the dominant language at home, my vocabulary never really expanded beyond that of a toddler’s. The fact that I never really learned how to speak Polish has always felt like something of a family shame.
In fact, it’s not unusual for the children of immigrants to lose their heritage language, unless tremendous efforts are made to preserve it and pass it on. My experience is pretty similar to that of Marissa Blaszko of Relearn A Language, who grew up speaking Polish but who lost her native language when she started attending her English-only public school. (If anyone else is in the situation of wanting to relearn their heritage language, I highly recommend her website and her YouTube channel @Relearnalanguage!)
“I had no idea that the language could be so easily lost,” my mom said. “For some reason, I thought it was just going to be transferred to you in utero. I thought that because I spoke Polish, you would also speak Polish.”
It’s hard to explain how deeply I yearned to speak Polish. The sound of the language is like poetry to my ears. It is the sound of love, of my mother, of laughter, of warm food, of soft hugs and kisses, and of being cared for. For me, the language of love is Polish.
I would have dreams in Polish where I could fluently speak and understand the language. And then when I would wake up and feel so disappointed, because the language-barrier was back. Not being able to speak Polish felt like there was a wall cutting me off from a whole section of myself. Not having access to this beautiful romantic, cherished language was like not having access to a piece of my own soul.
Multiple times throughout my childhood, I would try to learn Polish. But we didn’t live in a place with a large enough Polish community to offer external support. There were no Polish Saturday schools in our area. Polish is such a minority language that it was really hard to acquire study materials. Polish was not one of the foreign languages taught at my high school. (Or at my college, or at my graduate school.)
So we’d start at square-one—over and over again. Just naming things around the house. Bread; chleb. Tea; herbate. Food; jedzenie.
We never got very far.
The amount of times I would need vocabulary repeated far outstripped everybody’s patience. We didn’t know it then, but what I needed was a spaced repetition system (SRS). Spaced repetition is a learning technique where you basically get reminded of something at ever-increasing intervals until it moves into long-term memory. But we didn’t have these tools then. It was just me and my mom and my grandma, walking around the house naming things. Within a few days, all efforts would be abandoned. I would feel stupid, and everyone would feel frustrated.
When I was in college, I decided to study abroad to learn more about my Polish roots. Unfortunately, my school didn’t have a direct relationship with any universities in Poland. The closest I could get was Charles University in Prague—which is in the Czech Republic. (Not Poland, but at least on the same continent!)
Before my semester began, I spent a month traveling in Poland. My grandmother had a couple of contacts in Warsaw and Krakow, and these two women were my hosts. They took me all over: Warsaw, Malbork castle, Gdansk, Krakow, the Wieliczka salt mines, Zakopane, and the Tatra Mountains.
Me, WarsawMe, Malbork Castle
Getting to visit Poland for a month was an incredibly meaningful experience to me. It touched a deep place in my heart to hear the language surrounding me, spoken everywhere. And I even started to pick it up, because the sounds and grammar were so familiar to me from when I was a baby.
And it was exciting to me to see modern Poland. It is sometimes said that people know more about Mars than about Poland. Poland is a medium-sized country of 41 million people. It has a larger population than Greece, Canada, Taiwan, Sweden, and Australia—and yet few Americans could find it on a map. The Western perception of Poland is frozen time with black-and-white photos of World War II rubble and communist block housing.
But then my semester started. I had to go to Prague—which was a wonderful experience, but it didn’t bring me any closer to learning Polish. When I returned to America a few months later, I was glad to be reunited with my family, but I also felt tremendously sad at leaving Europe. I felt like my time there was not yet finished.
When I was a graduate student earning my MFA in creative writing at San Francisco State, I made another attempt to learn Polish. And this time I got further than ever before. I studied the Pimsleur audio recordings, which used an audio-only spaced repetition system. That year, I was finally able to have rudimentary conversations in Polish with my mother and grandmother.
This was a good start, but the Pimsleur language course only stopped after only 30 lessons, and then I was stuck again.
Occasionally, I would try to write letters and translate recipes, using Google Translate, but at the time (in the early 2010s) it was a terrible translator.
It would be another ten years before I studied Polish again.
So what changed?
Firstly, I underwent a series of traumatic health issues. You can read more about that here, but the upshot was that I became much more pro-active and intentional about my health and well-being.
One of the things that was especially transformative for me was strength training. This was something I never thought I would do, and yet week after week I was constantly surprising myself by doing things I never thought my body could do. I saw amazing benefits applying consistent pressure over a long period of time.
It was incredibly empowering. My body felt transformed, but I was also noticing inner benefits.
“You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.”
A. A. Milne
I was two years into my strength-training journey, when the thought occurred to me, If I can do this, what else can I do?
There is a saying that the best time to plant a tree is 10 years ago. The second best time to plant a tree is today. The same can be said of language learning. So I dug in my heels and decided that this time, I was finally going to learn Polish and I wasn’t going to stop until I could speak it fluently.
My 40th birthday was a few years away, and this was a gift I wanted to give my future 40-year-old self.
(I also committed to finally following through with all my paperwork to confirm my Polish citizenship and get my Polish passport. My son and I both qualify for dual-citizenship, but the paperwork is a multi-step, multi-year process…and I’ll leave that for another blog post.)
It was around this time that I saw this Kurzgesagt video: “Changing Your Life—One Step at a Time.” There is a moment in the video that talks about becoming the person you want to be with daily habits to shorten the distance between who you are and who you want to be. One of the examples they give is of learning a language while doing push-ups. And I thought, I could do that.
Thankfully, language learning technology has come a long way since the last time I attempted to learn Polish.
I started with the Duolingo, which had finally created a Polish course.
Duolingo is an excellent, free language learning program that gives you quick 3-minute immersive language lessons that are in a gamified format. Duolingo is so good that students can actually learn a language faster with Duolingo than if they were taking a college class. The sentences are funny, the courses are built around spaced repetition, so that they remind you of a word just when you are about to forget. And you can look up words if you need to: no judgement.
I love Duolingo and I’ve even gotten the rest of my family hooked. My husband is learning Spanish. My mom is learning Italian. As of this writing, my son has a Duolingo streak that is more than 460 days long in Polish and Spanish!
Starting in July 2022, I studied like a mad woman, fueled by 30+ years of existential frustration. For an entire month, I was working at a pace of one whole unit a day. I was studying three hours a day at least, sometimes more. I studied until my brain felt like mush.
I completed the entire Polish Duolingo course less than 100 days. There were only 42 units in the Polish course (as opposed to 400 units in Spanish) but this was enough to finally get me over the hump!
In language, learning terms, getting to the end of Duolingo, plus having studied Pimsleur probably put me at the late beginner, CEFR A2 level. If you want to know what the CEFR levels are, you can watch this helpful video by Olly Richards. When I went to spend Christmas with my mother and grandmother that year, I was able to have full on conversations with them in Polish, and start reading simple graphic novels.
After completing Duolingo, I started doing a whole bunch of research about what to do next. Marissa Blaszko at Relearning a Language has a great resource for putting together your own language-learning plan. I found a whole host of amazing resources for learning polish, which I will link down below.
This is my current learning strategy:
Learn 10 new words a day from a frequency dictionary using the Anki mobile app.
According to Paul Pimsleur’s book How to Learn a Foreign Language, the slowest part of language acquisition is learning new vocabulary and moving that vocabulary from short term memory to long term memory. He recommends aiming to learn about 10 new words a day. It’s possible to do more, but given that language learning usually takes a few years, most people can sustainably do about new 10 words say. That has been the most comfortable pace for me.
One of the best way to get those new words into long-term memory is to used a spaced-repetition system. I like using Anki, which is basically a flashcard app, favored by language learners and medical students.
I put a lot of effort into making high-quality flashcards, but once I have them all set up, the daily practice of studying new words usually takes less than 30 minutes, spread out in short bursts throughout the day.
Choosing which words study is incredibly important for making progress because not all words are used equally. As Nathaniel Drew explains in this video, it’s best to focus on an essential core of vocabulary and then extend that in widening circles.
I’ve been putting my flashcards together using this series of Polish Frequency Dictionaries:
As of December 2023, I’m currently about two-thirds of the way through studying this book and I have been astonished at how effective it has been in expanding my vocabulary.
By the time I finish studying this book, my vocabulary will be big enough to know 92% of spoken Polish, and 82% of written Polish.
Polish grammar is different than English grammar. It has seven grammatical cases, and it doesn’t have a lot of articles. Instead, the beginnings and endings of the words themselves change to indicate what is happening in the sentence. Basically this means that it is complicated enough to warrant getting grammar books and just slowly plugging through them, one lesson at a time.
– Marissa Blaszko recommends the Krok po Kroku textbook series. However, this book is written all in Polish, which is great in some ways…but also intimidating.
Polish grammar resources I have found helpful…
Basic Polish Grammar by Dana Bielec—Has English explanations of Polish grammar rules, along with plenty of exercises, exceptions, and an answer key in the back.
Polish for Dummies by Daria Gabryanczyk—Really breaks down basics of Polish grammar and provides a list of common phrases a person might use while traveling.
I also like the Course of Polish YouTube channel because the teacher draws helpful charts and comes up with cute mnemonic devices to help remember the rules.
The biggest help of all has been asking ChatGPT to be my Polish language tutor. This video by Bri Does AI has some helpful tips for how to go about this. My strategy has basically been to ask it things like:
“Can you explain the nominative grammatical case to me?”
“Can you give me 25 example sentences of the genitive case, with the words in that case written in bold?”
“I’m going to write 10 Polish sentences in the present tense. Could you rewrite these sentences in the past tense and future tense, and show me in bold what you changed about my sentence to change verb tenses?”
Immersion in 5 main areas
Reading—Years ago, I was really inspired by this blog post on LinguaTrek, which was about the author’s experience of learning Polish by reading Harry Potter. I really love the idea of this method.
Round 1: Get the gist of the passage. Underline words you don’t know, but don’t look them up. Just see if you can figure out what the passage is about. It’s really great to have the audiobook as well, so that you can learn the pronunciation and inflection of what you are reading.
Round 2: Slow, detailed read where you look up every single word you don’t know, and make a list to add to your SRS system.
Round 3: Once you’ve learned all the new words, read it again.
Round 4: Read aloud, either along with an audiobook or with a native speaker. Your aim is for speed and fluency.
I love reading, and I’ve been working up to being able to do more of this. This year I only managed to read five books in Polish (mostly graphic novels or audiobooks), but I’m hoping that I’ll be able to transition to middle grade and young adult novels in this upcoming year. It’s rather difficult to find Polish books in America, so I’ve been ordering them online from The Polish Bookstore online and the Apple Bookstore, which seems to have a wider selection of books in Polish than Amazon or Audible. There are also a handful of public domain Polish classics on LibroVox and the Project Gutenberg.
I’ve also had the language on my phone set to Polish for about a year.
Writing—I’ve been writing weekly letters to my mother and grandmother in Polish, with the help of Google Translate. I’ve also been Bullet Journaling in Polish since September 2022.
Listening— Linsdey Does Languages has a helpful tutorial for setting up your Netflix account to show films in your target language. I’ve set up multiple language accounts for both our family’s Netflix and DisneyPlus accounts. Truthfully, though, I don’t watch much TV so most of my Polish listening has been YouTube channels like Dave z Ameryki, podcasts, music playlists, and audiobooks.
I asked ChatGPT to create a music playlist for me based on the music I like. You can listen to that playlist here. What’s neat about YouTube Music is that it will also show the lyrics, so occasionally I will translate the lyrics, if I can’t figure out what the song is about just based on listening.
I found a really cool app (that I haven’t made much use of yet) called LingoClip, which is basically an app that helps you learn language through singing karaoke. Awesome!
Speaking—This is my weakest area. I could be doing so much more, but I’m still quite shy. My mother and grandmother are absolutely thrilled every time I speak to them in Polish, so I aspire to do it more often. This year, I did recently have a conversation with my mom that lasted 30 minutes, all in Polish.
Culture and History—I found this wonderful website called Culture.PL which has excellent articles on Polish history and culture. I subscribe to their newsletter.
Since I’m a writer, I’ve also been reading as much as I can about Polish history, literature, mythology, and about slavic culture for some wonderful books I’m planning on writing at some point in the future.
I have begun writing historical fantasy short stories set in Poland. I hope to collect these interconnected short stories into a book, tentatively called Beads of Amber. I’ll keep you all posted on my progress.
I’m also considering writing an illustrated collection of Polish fairy tales and myths, tentatively titled Slavic Spirits, similar in style to D’Aulaire’s books of Greek and Norse myths.
The first time I saw these books was when I was about 12 or 13 years old, in a Barnes & Noble.
Going to a Barnes & Noble was a major treat for me. I would head straight to the back shelf to the fantasy and science fiction section. I was super into witches and sword and sorcery fantasy back then. (I still am.)
I remember distinctly the cover with the red dragon, and the two hooded witches riding their horses. I opened the book and fell in love from the very first paragraph, where we learn about Isabeau, the young apprentice witch growing up talking to animals in her hidden valley. She had to learn witchcraft in secret because magic has been made illegal in the Scots-inspired alternate universe of Eileanan.
The concept behind the magical world of Eileanan is that the witches, fairies, and other mystical creatures of Celtic Scotland had magically created a portal through space and time and landed in a world with two moons, which happened to have its own tribes of indigenous fairies and mer-folk.
The book is written using a lot of Scottish idioms like “augh!” and “ken” and the characters swagger about wearing kilts and tam-o-shanters. The Scottish dialect is a little bit silly at first, but you quickly get used to it.
When I was a teenager, I absolutely fell in love with this world. For years, whenever I would go to a bookstore, I would race to the back shelves to see if there was another book in the series.
Back in the ye-olde-days of the late 1990s and early 2000s, it was hard for brick-and-mortar stores to carry an entire fantasy series. Alas, I never finished the series as a teenager because the books never seemed to be on the shelf. (I think I was only ever able to find the first three books: The Witches of Eileanan, The Pool of Two Moons, and The Cursed Towers.)
Even so, the world that Kate Forsyth built had a huge impact on my worldview because it was so feminist.
I loved that the female characters were fully-developed, major players in this world. I loved that much of the book was built around female relationships—friendships, mentor-mentees, colleagues.
And there were so many different types of women: old, young, power-hungry, naive, athletic, femme, tom-boyish, motherly…it felt like there was a huge spectrum of the female experience that got represented in this book.
It really mattered to me that I was getting to see a representation of women that was as complex as all the women I knew in real life.
Fast forward fifteen years later and I was a mother in my late twenties up in the middle of the night nursing a little baby. My mind started to wander and all of the sudden I remembered Kate Forsyth’s name.
I looked her up on Amazon and OMG, the entire series was available!
Book 1: The Witches of Eileanan (The title in America. Outside the USA, the book was titled Dragonclaw.
I downloaded the entire series and immediately started binge-reading every spare moment I had, thumbing through the pages on the Kindle app on my phone. I read while pushing my son in a swing. I read while nursing. I read in the middle of the night, with the white text glowing against the black background.
What a delight it was to finally find out what happened to Isabeau. After more than a decade of waiting, I finally got to complete the series!
Now I’m in my late thirties, and my son has recently begun to fall in love with sword and sorcery and heroic fantasy books. His love of fantasy started with the Dragon Masters series of chapter books by Tracey West, and has continued with the Eragon, Inheritance Cycle series by Christopher Paolini.
I recently downloaded the audiobook editions of the Witches of Eileanan series, and I have begun re-listening to the books to remind myself of the story before I introduce the series to my son.
I love listening to the audiobook-version of this series, because I’m actually hearing the Scottish pronunciation and noting how it differed from the other two times I read this series and I only had my mind to sound out the words.
It is incredibly rare to find a series of books that holds up over time—a world you can enjoy in multiple decades of your life. I loved the The Witches of Eileanan series as a teenager, as a young mother, and now as a grown woman nearing my forties.
This is my third time through and Eileanan is still one of my top favorite fantasy worlds. I love how feminist the world is. I love all of the folklore, and the magic system, and the relationships between the characters are still solid. These books pass the Bechtel test over and over again.
I definitely recommend the series to anyone who loves sword and sorcery and heroic fantasy. I’m so glad that Kate Forsyth wrote it. I can’t wait to read some of her other books, which re-imagine fairy tales from a feminist perspective.
One of the things that I realized when I was writing the stories for What We Talk About When We Talk About the Apocalypse was how naturally the horror-genre voice came out of me. Horror stories are all about imagining the worst-case scenario—and wow am I good at that!
I think writing scary stories came so naturally because I have a slightly anxious personality. I don’t think I have an anxiety disorder, but my mind definitely leans in that direction, sometimes. I recently took the Brain Health Assessment online questionnaire by Dr. Daniel Amen, and it said I had a “cautious” brain type. In reading about that brain type in his book, You, Happier, I was like, “Oh yeah. This is totally me.”
My husband sometimes refers to the voices in his head as his “committee members”—kind of like the characters Joy, Sadness, Fear, Anger, and Disgust from the Pixar movie Inside Out. I think this is a helpful metaphor. Whatever is going on in my mind is just chatter, and the more I recognize it as chatter, the easier it is to ignore the destructive committee members that are not helpful to me.
This is an interesting Peter Attia interview about the process he took in changing his own negative mental chatter.
This brings me back to my changing relationship with my writing, and with genre.
I’ve been a journal-writer since I was eleven years old. Sometimes when I would write in my journal, I would notice myself entering the same old tracks of thought. “This is self-pity mental track #395.” “This is procrastination-busywork mental track #219.”
I can recognize when I’m on the track, but sometimes I have a hard time getting out of that track. I’ve read that, neurologically, repetitive thoughts are kind of like sledding down a snowy hillside: the more often you ride down those same trains of thought, the deeper the groove gets, and the harder it is to change course. Thanks, brain.
My tendency towards doomsday future-tripping became especially apparent during the pandemic—as I’m sure it did for many of us—when it seemed like the end of the world was literally outside our window.
These last few years, I’ve also had a number of health problems that have forced me to pause, slow down, and take a long, hard look at my habits—both physical and mental. You can read more about my health journey here.
Back to genre…
When I write horror stories, I find it incredibly cathartic because it’s like I get to take one of my many fears, lift it out of the pile, and let that movie run all the way to the end…usually to a climax scene where a hero figures out how to defeat the villain.
What I love about the horror genre in general—and about Stephen King books specifically—is that those stories are often about resilient characters. They don’t just stop and quiver like frightened rabbits. They fight back.
And one of the classic horror-genre moments is the “Hero at the Mercy of the Monster” scene, where the protagonist has their back against the ropes, all is lost, and they are about to be beaten…but then they somehow find a way to harness their inner gift to defeat the monster.
Usually that inner gift is some variation on “Rationality” or “Cleverness” or “Magic” or “Teamwork” or “the Jungian wisdom of integrating one’s Shadow and thereby triumphing over it”… or whatever theme the author was working with in that story.
I would say that in 90% of horror stories, good triumphs over evil and the heroes survive.
(Which is more than can be said about “literary” fiction. I think fictional protagonists have a much higher chance of surviving and finding happiness and meaning if they are in a horror novel than if they are in a literary novel—especially if the protagonist is female. Just think back to all those classics you were forced to read in high school English, and you’ll see what I mean. Antigone dies. Tess dies. Hester dies. Anna Karenina dies. Thanks a lot, AP English!)
In the rare occasion a horror-novel hero dies at the end, it is usually because they sacrificed themselves to save someone weaker than them. Altruism triumphs over selfishness! Heroes do exist! — And that, my friends, is the meaning of Christmas!
I love this. Horror stories have been great for me because they are a way to externalize fears, dramatize them for entertainment (maybe even laugh at them) and ultimately attain catharsis by triumphing over them.
But that’s not the whole story.
Although writing these scary stories feels powerful, and they bring me a lot of satisfaction and peace for learning how to triumph over a particular fear…I’ve also noticed that they sometimes leave me in a jumpy frame of mind.
There is a reason horror is a niche genre. Not a lot of people like feeling freaked out all the time. Heck, I don’t like feeling freaked out all the time! The whole reason I wrote horror was to get it out of my mind and onto the page, where the monsters in my mind could be defeated and neutralized.
And I wonder if constantly being on the lookout for horrible things for story material is actually reinforcing the negative confirmation bias in my brain? At what point does writing horror stop feeling cathartic and start feeling like a downward spiral?
A therapist would probably ask, “Does this behavior serve me?” Does this thought pattern of constantly looking out for danger serve me? Does anxiety serve me?
In some respects, yes!
As Dr. Daniel Amen says in his book You, Happier: you actually need a little anxiety to stay healthy. Anxiety is a very useful emotion. Fear for the future is why I exercise every day, eat healthily, and do my best to save for the future. When channeled in the right direction, anxiety can get you off your ass so that you turn in your homework on time.
But too much anxiety is no good. When you spend too much time thinking negatively, there is a danger in shaping your reality in order to confirm those negative thoughts. Confirmation bias. A huge part of our lives is shaped by our attitudes. If you have a bad attitude about your job, you will eventually be fired. If you only recognize the worst in your partner, they will eventually dump you. If all you ever focus on is lack, then you will always feel hunted and frightened no matter how much money you have in the bank. Having a bad attitude can sour any blessing.
What’s the opposite of horror?
For me, it’s romance.
Romance is an absolutely mind-blowing genre to me because the golden rule in that genre is that you have to have a happy-ever-after ending. As a reader, I know it’s coming, but it still surprises me every time.
You mean sometimes things can actually work out?! No way!
When I started reading romances on a regular basis, I felt as if it were re-wiring my brain for joy. For love. For hope.
I’ll be honest: this is not my brain’s natural tendency. But I want it to be.
I’d rather be an optimist than a pessimist.
Writing love stories is a lot harder for me than writing horror stories, but they also feel a lot more healing. I cry easily. I feel my chest get warm and melty. And it feels like something I need to be reminded of over and over again—that it’s okay to be loved, to be loving, and to let people care for me.
I’ve heard people say that writers tend to write in the genre that concerns them most.
What genre comes naturally to me? Horror.
What genre would benefit me by causing me to grow the most? Love stories.
To me, writing at the intersection of those two genres is also a powerful combo because Love and Fear have a lot in common.
(Yes, the heroes in romances are sometimes afraid of silly things, like whether their love interest will still find them lovable and attractive when they put on their glasses, but I digress.)
But on another level, falling in love can sometimes involve overcoming actual terror.
For example, in my short story, “Angel Man,” I write about a woman who is the survivor of domestic violence learning how to fall in love again when she meets a man who is literally her rebound-angel. He is caring. He is patient. He goes at her pace. He is consistent. And because he is so safe, she is able to heal and slowly overcome her body’s traumata-reflex so that she feels safe being alone with a man again.
“Angel Man” illustrated by E. S. O. Martin
That story was harder for me to write than some of my other scary stories. But it was also more satisfying.
My hope in writing “Angel Man” was that maybe I could rewire the brain of someone who needed this story, so that they could have a metaphor with which to approach healing. Perhaps by getting introduced to “Angel Man” on the page, they could have an easier time finding their own real-life angel man. And perhaps this story could teach a man how to be an angel for someone who needs to take things slow.
And readers unanimously loved this story. It was interesting that out of all the many people who read early drafts of What We Talk About When We Talk About the Apocalypse, “Angel Man” made it into everybody’s top-three favorite stories.
I suppose it’s kind of like that Netflix horror show, Black Mirror. People have strong feelings about that show—but “San Junipero” is everybody’s favorite episode.
So…that was interesting data when it comes to thinking about what types of stories I want to bring to the world. What do I need? What does the world need? It seems like the answer is more stories about love. (And maybe about overcoming fear in pursuit of love.)
In finalizing my collection of stories for What We Talk About, I made the conscious decision to include only the best of what I’ve written during the last seventeen years.
There were half a dozen stories I chose not to include because they were too dark, too pessimistic. The stories worked. They were well-written, if I do say so myself. They absolutely fulfilled genre-expectations for the horror genre… but in reading them, I couldn’t help but think that maybe the world didn’t need more of this?
Or maybe this wasn’t how I wanted my mind to exist anymore.
I honored that realization in the other stories included in What We Talk About by portraying established couples in “Inheritance” and “Forever House” in using the power of love to overcome horror. In “Library of Unfinished Projects,” I wrote about the love of a family overcoming the horror of aging. In “Prince of Birds,” I wrote about the love a father feels for his son in surviving a harsh and dangerous world. The stories may have scary parts, but there are also loving parts.
My aim was to be more balanced: scary things happen in this world, but with love and compassion we will triumph. Love can help you transcend your starting circumstances.
Bonus Lesson: Change Your Language, Change Your Brain
In a strange way, learning a new language—Polish—has also helped me become more conscious about my mental chatter and whether my thoughts aid me.
Last year, I started journaling in Polish—with the help of Google Translate app on my phone. It was interesting to notice that learning a new language actually turned my mind into a blank canvas with which to re-evaluate my own vocabulary. As I sat with my open journal, about to engage in a petty compain-a-thon, I thought to myself, “Is this negative vocabulary really what I want to learn and practice in my new language? Hell, no!”
If I’m going to go through all the effort to learn a new language, why not take the opportunity to gift myself a new personality as well?
If it’s true that when neurons fire together, they wire together, then couldn’t I consciously create a Polish-speaking version of myself that was happier and more optimistic than the English-speaking version?
This had the positive effect of allowing me to learn all sorts of awesome vocabulary for what I love about my life in this new language—which I also love. But it also gave the English-speaking side of me a break.
And, presto-change-o, the English side of me started to change as well. I was focusing so hard on noticing positive things with which to write about in Polish, that it felt like the negative-tracks in my English brain were starting to get weaker from lack of use. It’s now easier for me to have positive thoughts in both languages.
Learning a new language is truly a gift that keeps on giving.
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For the past few months I’ve been playing around with ChatGPT4 as a brainstorming partner and outlining assistant. I have been really impressed with it, and in the interview I go into a little more detail about how I have been using it.
Before you listen to the interview, I’d like to add a disclaimer about something I wish I had said differently. When Suzanne Le Grande asked me if I was worried about big companies scraping people’s material for AI training without permission, I basically dodged the question and my response was basically, “Meh. Just keep writing.” I’m not a legal expert or a computer programmer. I’m just a regular shmo who has been playing around with a clever online widget for a few months, and offering my opinions about it on a podcast.
I want to go on the record to say, of course I am concerned about it! I think it should be investigated whether the companies who are training these large language models have boosted people’s work. Of course I’m worried about these new technologies making my work and my creativity obsolete. Yes, I am afraid.
But I also see the tremendous benefits this technology can bring to me as a writing assistant. These are what I focused on in the interview.
Rather than sticking my head in the sand, I’ve sought out role models to help me figure out how to integrate these large language models into my writing process.
Here are some helpful resources I’ve been following to learn more about using Large Language Models in writing.
