Category: fantasy (Page 1 of 9)

American Fantasy in a Box of Rain

Ross Douthat had an op-ed a few months ago where he posited that America needed its own quintessentially American fantasy novel/series, and while I immediately objected to the headline’s premise that we’ve never had one (ever heard of Oz, my dude? Or the John the Balladeer stories?), I understood that Douthat was arguing for a “Great American Fantasy,” a Lord of the Rings for our purple mountains’ majesty.

He also acknowledges the Oz books and others, and yes, he does say we can have a great American fantasy that is for children or that does something outside of epic fantasy.

In his opinion, no “American fantasy” has achieved greatness yet, and that’s what he’s challenging authors to do. “Make American Fantasy Great” (but not “again,” because, well).

Okay, cool, fine, whatever.

I’ll admit that I have a fantasy novel idea (that I first developed back in my early college days) that seeks to blend my love for psychedelic 1960s music with my love for fantasy, but I don’t know if it would meet Douthat’s idea of “great.” Too quirky, perhaps. Too niche.

In many ways, the Between Earth and Sky trilogy by Rebecca Roanhorse is what I would call an “American Epic Fantasy,” but I’m not sure it counts for Douthat’s vision, and I don’t think he’d call it “great.” For Douthat’s “American Fantasy,” America = United States, whereas Roanhorse is definitely America = non-European, indigenous America. She’s decidedly pre-Colombian.

My idea is of the “magic school,” magic-in-the-real-world variety. Think A Separate Peace set at a music school with magic and dragons and it’s the 1960s.

For me, psychedelic rock & roll has a lot of fantasy connections. It’s why hippies and college students were all saying “Frodo Lives” in the 1960s, making The Lord of the Rings into a huge American bestseller. We all know Led Zeppelin was putting Tolkien references into their lyrics. And the weirdness of an LSD trip can definitely feel like traveling into another world, a magical world (so I have heard).

In particular, the Grateful Dead’s music and Robert Hunter’s lyrics have always been a source of inspiration for my imagination and for my fantasy writing too. If there’s an “American Fantasy” soundtrack, I think it might be the Dead who plays most prominently on it. This is partly because of the free-form style of their music, the occasional weirdness. But it’s also because of Hunter’s lyrics, which blend Americana with mystical imagery; a very grounded, homespun sensibility with a dream-like lyricism:

“Walk into splintered sunlight

Inch your way through dead dreams

to another land

Maybe you’re tired and broken

Your tongue is twisted

with words half spoken

and thoughts unclear”

“Just a box of rain

wind and water

believe it if you need it

if you don’t just pass it on

Sun and shower, wind and rain

in and out the window

like a moth before the flame”

(“Box of Rain,” words by Robert Hunter)

“Box of Rain,” “Ripple,” “Dark Star,” “St. Stephen,” “Terrapin Station,” “Franklin’s Tower”: These are only a few of the Dead’s songs that carry me away to an Otherworld, to fantasy.

I think we tend to associate British bands like Zeppelin, or heavy metal and prog rock in general with fantasy — which makes sense. These genres and bands are often heavily influenced by fantasy literature. And fantasy literature has, to Douthat’s point, been generally associated with European culture for a lot of its history (though this has changed more recently).

But the Dead are also a band with a fantasy vibe, it’s just that their vibe isn’t always drawing FROM fantasy literature but instead from a different corpus that includes American history and folklore as well as classical literature, the Bible, the folk, blues, and country traditions, and, of course, the Ken Kesey Merry Prankster LSD stuff from their early years. The Dead are American Fantasy to me because of the way they bridge so many different influences, while also bringing their own original visions to bear on these source materials. It’s old and new, traditional and experimental. Earthy bluegrass and psychedelic flights of fancy.

One need only look at the album artwork and overall aesthetic of the band’s merchandise and promotional art: animated skeletons and dancing bears and all kinds of fantastical and sumptuous pastoral imagery. Crows and cats and harlequins. Banjo-playing turtles and skulls and starry skies.

(To be fair, lots of promo art from the psychedelic sixties and seventies fits this bill. But the Dead have kept it going beyond that particular period, making this aesthetic an integral part of their oeuvre.)

In some ways, the “Great American Fantasy Novel” isn’t even a novel at all. It’s the body of work done by the Grateful Dead. Maybe this isn’t what Douthat is looking for — this isn’t a Moby Dick but for “fantasy” — but as the man once said, “Believe it if you need it. If you don’t just pass it on.”

I believe it.

Let’s All Read Tanith Lee

If you had asked me about Neil Gaiman before recent horrific news broke about his abusiveness, I would have said I was a fan.

Not a huge fan, but a fan. I liked The Sandman comics, liked Neverwhere, liked the movie adaptation of Stardust, liked some of his children’s books, liked the movie adaptation of Coraline, liked Neverwhere.

But even more than being a fan of his work, I was inspired by him. His prolific career. His advocacy for libraries. His ability to write in several different mediums, from comics to film to novels and short stories. Probably because I myself am NOT prolific but aspire to be, I’m inspired by those artists who ARE prolific: Bradbury, Andre Norton, Brandon Sanderson, Gaiman. And Gaiman’s brand of dark fairy-tale-esque fantasy suits my sensibilities quite a bit. I’ve never loved anything he wrote, but I definitely liked a lot of it, and even more importantly, I was inspired by it.

I can’t deny my inspiration, as much as it sickens me that I was inspired by such a creep.

The accusations against him are absolutely horrible and sickening. I don’t really have anything to add other than I hope his crimes are punished and his victims find healing.

But the accusations of plagiarism that Kristine Kathryn Rusch mentioned in her latest Patreon post were total news to me, and now I see that perhaps even the ways in which Gaiman’s work inspired me were a lie.

I have heard of Tanith Lee, but I haven’t read anything by her. Now I see that this negligence needs to be remedied ASAP. If Gaiman was stealing her ideas and her style this whole time, then I was getting inspiration from the wrong person. I should be reading Tanith Lee. I WILL be reading Tanith Lee.

And because she too was prolific, I have a new writer to admire.

Let Gaiman fade into shadow and infamy. Let him face both human and cosmic justice.

But let’s the rest of us go read some Tanith Lee.

Goal: Finish Ysbaddaden and the Game of Chess

This one was always going to be a challenge. It’s a tortured history, and I might not be ready to confront it.

I wrote the first Merlin book in roughly 2014-2016 (exact dates are fuzzy because it was so long ago, which is exactly why my goal to finish Ysbaddaden is so fraught).

That was almost ten years ago, when I published The Thirteen Treasures of Britain. Not too long afterward, in January 2017, I wrote a Merlin prequel short story, and I started the second book of the trilogy, a book about the giant Ysbaddaden, a chess game between Merlin and his arch-nemesis, and the continued hunt for the treasures of Britain.

Yeah. It was gonna be great. It was gonna rock. I was gonna finish this book and get it out, then write the third one and have a complete trilogy and be awesome, yay, yay, yay.

Then, after I had completed the trilogy (so my plan was planned), I was gonna write more. So much more. Dozens more. Dozens upon dozens. Ideas for more books, more series, more stories. I had so much more I wanted to write.

So, while I was excited about the Merlin trilogy, I also had plans for more. I needed to get “through” the Merlin stuff to get to all the other stuff I wanted to write.

I was excited for Ysbaddaden, yes, but I was also nervous about it. It wasn’t something I had a clear idea about plot-wise. I knew roughly what I wanted to see happen, but I also wanted to discover new things as I wrote. This is my way. Discovery writing.

I started writing, started the journey roughly in 2017, but then life stuff happened. Another pregnancy happened. And the excitement of the Merlin trilogy began to chafe against my unclear idea of what would happen with Ysbaddaden. In those days, I didn’t have a good handle on how to deal with “stuckness” as a discovery writer. And I was stuck. Stuck physically (with the pregnancy), stuck emotionally (also with the pregnancy), and most especially stuck with the story.

I didn’t like the direction Ysbaddaden was going. And I couldn’t find time to write.

This went on for at least a couple of years. Honestly, I have a bad memory, so I’m not sure when things really started going off the rails, but off they went, and soon enough I realized I needed to scrap twenty-thousand words and redraft huge sections of the work-in-progress.

The redrafting was better, and I started to find a good footing with the story, but then two of my side projects started to become main projects. I finished Avalon Summer and Gates to Illvelion during the time when I was “supposed” to be finishing Ysbaddaden.

By 2023, I had published those two side project books, but I still had a half-completed manuscript for the second book in a trilogy I first started publishing in 2016. And instead of barreling ahead with Ysbaddaden, I decided to start ANOTHER book, Norse City Limits.

So, as I indicated above. Fraught.

This is probably a Critical Voice problem. Fear that the second book will be worse than the first. Fear that my ideas are stupid and I’ll ruin the series.

But even more than fear, I think what’s happened is that I’ve lost the momentum. I can already tell that momentum is starting to wane with NCL too. Turns out, I need to keep momentum going on a project or else risk losing interest. I’m like a kitten or puppy, distracted by every shiny thing that comes my way.

Going forward, with new projects, the key will be to keep the momentum going and not get too rolled by hiccups and life events.

But for these older projects, for the eternal project that is Ysbaddaden and the Game of Chess, I need to somehow regain the momentum. With NCL, I think I’ve managed it, but only time will tell. My goal is to finish it by March. Then, it’s on to Ysbaddaden, trying to finish it in the second quarter.

Regaining momentum on a long-delayed project is not easy. Frankly, I’m not sure how to do it. The best I can figure is the old stand-by for when I feel creatively stalled: More input.

If (for both NCL and Ysbaddaden) I can start reading and watching and listening to stuff that fuels my creative voice, then I might be able to rev the motor and restart. Reignite.

The NCL input list includes the aforementioned Myths and Symbols book by H. R. Ellis Davidson, as well as a long list of film noir (a list I might post on the blog in a soon-ish timeframe).

For Ysbaddaden, the list includes The Sandman comics, tons of medieval romances like Tristan and Isolde, the Lais of Marie de France, and Parzival. And, of course, the ur-text for all my Welsh Arthurian stuff: The Mabinogi. Throw in some Tennyson, some T. H. White, and maybe even some Susan Cooper, and add a dash of my favorite old fantasy films like Labyrinth and Excalibur, and I’ll be good to go.

This the hope, anyway. Maybe this time will be different.

I do know that I need to stay connected to the story once I start writing it again. I have to work on it a little bit every day so that the momentum never falters too much. And I have to keep the whole thing fun. Momentum and fun. I’m learning that these are MY key factors for finishing. Momentum and fun.

I think what hurt me way back in 2017 was that I was overwhelmed with life stuff and the writing was harder and harder to fit into my life. I made the book “important” and put myself under pressure to write it. The importance and the pressure and all the personal stuff just stalled me. And instead of being gentle with myself and going easy on the self-criticism, I went self-critical HARD. I beat myself up for my lack of progress, and that made progress all the harder to come by.

I’ve grown a lot as a writer since 2017. I know how to handle stuckness a little better, and I know that I’m really doing quite a lot, actually, so I don’t need to beat myself up about it. The most important thing is that I haven’t given up.

Lone Wolf Christmas

I’ve written before about my love for the Long Wolf RPG adventure books, but it was only recently that I found out the books have been reprinted with snazzy new covers in larger paperback format.

So what did I do with my Christmas giftcards? I bought the first two in the series, of course!

When I opened the envelope the other day, my children were all very interested in these books (especially after I explained how much I loved them as a kid), but to my surprise, it was my middle child who asked if I would read the books to him so he could play. He’s not the one I would peg as being “into” fantasy the way my oldest is; I could only guess that he was intrigued by the monsters and potential for fighting. Whatever the reason, he asked several times before I had even thrown the packaging away, so after taking care of the padded envelope, he and I settled onto the couch, pencil and book in hand.

Thus began our nearly ninety-minute gaming excursion in which I got to witness the Lone Wolf books through the eyes of a child.

I had read them most recently on my own, as an adult, and while they were a nostalgic trip for me, I was approaching them with thirty-plus years of life experience and fantasy fandom and all the other things that make a grown-up a bit inoculated to the sheer joy of playing an rpg adventure book like this. I loved them for the memories they conjured, and I liked them for the old-school, somewhat simplistic fun they provided to adult-me.

But playing with my eight-year-old son was something different entirely. Each choice was a considered one, sometimes accompanied by checking the excellent and evocative map of Map of the Lastlands provided in the front, sometimes talking aloud the risks and potential rewards of the various options. My son really weighed each choice, often making his decision because something would be “nice to do” or “helpful” or “because I don’t want to hurt anybody” or simply because venturing forth into a dark tunnel under a hill would be cool.

When we faced off against monsters, and he had to point his finger at the number grid in the back, waiting for me to read the result from the Combat Results Table, there was real tension and anticipation in his face. When he scored victories, he would pump his fist and cry, “Yes!” with such beautiful innocence, that I couldn’t help being overwhelmed at seeing the pureness of his joy.

After he made each choice and waited for me to the turn the page and read the next entry, I could see him tense up, wondering if he’d made the right decision, worried that he hadn’t. And when his choice resulted in something good, the relief on his face was infectious.

I was seeing what it must have been like for me as a kid: the same anticipation, the same dread, the same relief, the same joy. I could no longer experience that innocent pleasure myself, but I could watch it on the face of my child and get a time-traveled glimpse of my own first foray into the world of Lone Wolf. I was the adult, the grown-up, the one whose emotions were a bit too calloused to fist pump after a victory against a burrow-crawler, but I could bear witness to my child’s excitement, to the gleam of wonder in his eyes, and that gleam was surely once my own, when I was eight years old and reading the Lone Wolf books, and the Endless Quest books, and the Choose Your Own Adventure books off in a corner somewhere, lost in my own world of quests and magic.

I’m glad I could give my son the experience of the Lone Wolf books, but I’m also grateful for his gift to me: the gleam in his eyes and the wonder in his smile.

Dolmenwood Solo Gaming

The best TTRPG Kickstarter from 2023 was Gavin Norman’s Dolmenwood. The whole Dolmenwood universe has been my favorite fantasy adventure gaming stuff since way back with the Wormskin zines. It’s the perfect distillation of my favorite fantastical elements–magical forests, goblins and fairies, a quasi-Medieval world that feels like an old Arthurian romance– and it’s inspired by some of my favorite fantasy art, from Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell to Tolkien’s “Smith of Wooten Major” to Ridley Scott’s Legend.

Dolmenwood is the gaming world designed to perfectly match my sensibilities. It’s a bit too dangerous, perhaps, to want to actually live in, but it comes awfully close. It’s an Elfland I’d love to occasionally visit, after falling asleep by a fairy mound and finding myself walking through a sun-dappled, autumnal forest.

Norman and a host of other indie game designers are doing some of the most interesting world-building in all of fantasy art and literature. In the case of Dolmenwood, Norman mixes in a lot of traditional fairy tale and folk lore elements, but the combination of whimsy and horror, of earthiness and strangeness, though drawing upon familiar iconography, ends up feeling singular and original. Maybe this is because original D&D was inspired more heavily by Sword and Sorcery fantasy and not fairy-tale fantasy, but I also think it comes down to the fact that Norman is so well-versed in the fairy tale and folk lore he draws upon, while at the same time adding original elements that feel as if they belong to those old tales.

The mysterious Drune, for instance, are (as far as I know) original to Dolmenwood (though they definitely have a druids-in-the-glade vibe, inspired perhaps by the clash between pagan and Christian believers in early medieval Europe), and the breggle, though drawing upon medieval traditions about goats and their connection to Satan, are nevertheless a novel concept, taking these medieval traditions and turning them into something new. The same could be said of the cat-fairies, the Grimalkins. Or the wood-grues. Or the mosslings.

Needless to say, I love Dolmenwood. Everything about the world, the game, and the way it makes me feel–that slightly topsy-turvy feeling of excitement and anticipation a kid feels on Christmas Eve–are why I don’t want to wait until I can set up a gaming group to play. I want to play it now. Solo-style.

I’m still making my way through the Player’s Handbook, but I’ve listened to enough 3d6 Down the Line podcast to understand the basics of game-play (and I’m pretty familiar with OSE rules too). My plan is to create a trio of PCs and have them travel to the mound in Winter’s Daughter. After that adventure, I’ll see where it goes.

I have a bunch of resources for solo gaming, though I don’t think I’ll need much for this Dolmenwood adventure. Using the module and the three core books should get me pretty far, and then a simple oracle (that can answer “yes/no” questions), and a couple of reaction and random encounter tables (that can answer “what kind?” questions) are all I need.

I have Knave 2e and Cairn and other game systems like World Without Number and Shadowdark that all have excellent random tables, so if I need to, I can use those tables for extra detail and randomness. But since I’m using the module Winter’s Daughter, I won’t necessarily need a lot of tools for building the dungeon or encounters.

And, of course, I have my notebook with the dot grid and some pens, pencils, and dice. Eventually I’ll have the Dolmenwood minis from the Kickstarter, but for now, I’ll settle for theater of the mind.

Playing solo from an adventure module might be a bit tricky because I need to read some portions of the module to understand how to proceed, but I don’t want to read too much and miss being surprised by what I find in each room. It means I have to pretend not to have certain knowledge at times so my characters can act freely, which is where I’ll rely on my oracle. Even if I, the player, know going into a certain room is bad news, I’ll let the oracle decide these things for my PCs so I don’t fudge them.

What I’m most excited about, especially as the icy winter descends upon my own town and fog is predicted in the forecast for Christmas, is the chance to embark on a journey into Dolmenwood, even if it’s a solo journey. Hopefully, after a few dice rolls and pencil scratches on my characters sheets, I’ll have three imaginary traveling companions, ready to trek into the mists and bramble of the tangled wood in search of an ancient tomb.

Draw or Make Something Every Day (in September)

This was an idea my husband proposed today, so we’re getting a one-day-late start to the challenge, but he suggested that everyone in our household (aka me, him, and the kids) should try to make or draw something every day this month.

(If we miss a day, we can do multiple things in a day to catch up.)

I decided that I might draw some stuff for a zine I’m working on (title: “Saturday Morning”), but I might also “make” something for my various role-playing game campaigns (a solo one, a husband-and-me one, a family one, and a kids one). These somethings can include making a PC, an NPC, a map, a location, a dungeon room, a whole dungeon (!), or a treasure/magic item. I’m stealing this a bit from Dungeon23, that fabulous challenge from last year that got me started making my very first megadungeon (which, sadly, I never finished… so maybe I can work on that for my “makings” this month!).

Anyway, I like a loose definition of “making.” We have a similarly loose definition in our Creativity Club at my school. Spurred by their time in my Creative Writing class last year, the students who started the club are welcoming anyone who does any kind of creative endeavor to join, and we aren’t judgy about the kinds of things that count as “making.” We decided that even kids who want to make jam are welcome in the club! (But they should definitely share their jam with us once it’s made. :D)

My “making” for today’s family challenge was to come up with some NPCs and their backstories/personalities for the Hero Kids game I’m playing with my children. They are currently investigating the Basement O’ Rats and trying to find Roger, a local village boy. I’ve got an idea that Roger was taken by the King of Rats at the behest of a dark force that is also taking others away from Brecken Vale for mysterious reasons. This will be the central mystery of the campaign.

Does this counting as “making something”? I think it does. I took an idea, put it to paper, and developed it. I also stat-blocked Roger in case he comes with the Kids on any further adventures.

I’d say that counts for the day.

Now I just have to make something to count for yesterday…

« Older posts

© 2025 Jennifer M. Baldwin

Theme by Anders NorenUp ↑