Myth, the Universe, and Everything

I received a wonderful email today from a Blackstone Academy player today, who is working on a project about influences in a writer's work. My response to the writer (whose name has been redacted) bounced, so I'm posting it here in hopes that they find it. Some of the notes about my inspirations may be interesting to other readers, as well!

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Dear A,

What a wonderful note to receive! I have also been struggling with my love for a certain transphobic author's works (which absolutely did help inspire Blackstone Academy), and to hear from you that the game helped made me tear up. I am so glad that it reached you!

A lot of other works influenced Blackstone Academy, many of which I referenced with little in jokes. In addition to that magic school series, I have absolutely been inspired by Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson novels, as well as Terry Pratchett's Discworld books (one of the Mahwees wears an Unseen University ball cap). I'd be remiss in not mentioning the Narnia books, which I grew up with! They're not quite as direct an inspiration, but the idea of finding a magical world within the real one certainly corresponds to the idea of being able to leave normal school to attend a magic school. All of these are works that shaped me as a reader and a writer. I wouldn't say that my game directly responds to any of them--it was created to stand alone, rather than to comment on those other works--but the inspiration is certainly there.

In addition to other children's and adult fantasies, I also was greatly inspired by my new hometown. I moved to Connecticut as an adult, and the Thimble Islands are a real place off the coast near where I live. I wanted to create a setting based on this part of Connecticut, and I very much wanted to honor the indigenous people who lived here before European settlers. Jules's mother is based on actual scholars I've met at the Pequot Museum on the Mashantucket Pequot reservation in Connecticut. Esme and her parents are Quinnipiac; the Quinnipiac people are the original inhabitants of the New Haven area of Connecticut, and I wanted to make sure they were present in the narrative! Sleeping Giant State Park is a very real place, and stories of Hobbomock were a big inspiration for me; for years I've been wanting to do a project that brings in that mythological figure, because in addition to being the villain in most of the stories I found, there are really old historical records of stories about him being responsible for healing and warding off disease--and the local Quinnipiac organization claims him as a culture hero. That contrast really appeals to me in mythology and religion (figures like Loki, who are tricksters and are frequently the villains, also have stories where they're the heroes), so I wanted to highlight that about Hobbomock.

I'll also say that the setting first started in my head because I had a dream about students at a magic school racing flying sailboats. I'm not sure where that came from, but it became central to this game!

Regarding the discrimination, I wanted to make sure that was focused on supernatural vs. human magicians. In part, I didn't want it to be triggering to readers who are discriminated against in their normal lives, but I wanted to create a scenario where people could strive toward equal rights for a group. I also have to hugely credit Choice of Games for being so dedicated to representation. They encourage their creators to make it possible for players to create a main character of any gender and sexuality combination, and it is one of the things I most love about creating games with them (and playing their games by other authors!).

This ended up being a long response! I hope it's helpful for your project--and I truly thank you for writing. It made my day!

-Alana

Guess who has two thumbs and wrote a short story over the weekend?

This writer!

(Imagining me gesturing to myself with my thumbs -- or giving a salute Don Cherry style. Whichever you prefer)

I am so wonderfully excited about being back in the fiction saddle. The story turned out well (Twostripe liked it, which I consider a success -- he's not obligated to like my writing, but he is obligated to tell me if he doesn't, so I'm always pleased when I get approval from him on a first draft). I'm hoping to get a couple of reader responses this week so I can get it off in the e-mail in time for the submission deadline. I am so glad that I had a deadline to shoot for -- it made me consider the work urgent and important, not just important. (Important work that isn't urgent gets shoved down on the priority list under things that are urgent but not important, sadly. That's just how it goes!)

At any rate, next week, I'll probably post a teaser, but for now, I'm just glad I have something to report for Kaz's Summer Camp! Hint: It's a Hobbomock story, so I've finally written something about the Sleeping Giant. (In the process of writing it, I've discovered that the Quinnipiac Tribal Council has put a lot more information up online, and I'm psyched to dig through that.)

Are any of the rest of you campers? I'm embarrassed to say I'm not reading all the notes on Kaz's posts. (I also hear she's under the weather, so I'm about to pop over there, hoping that she's feeling better.)

I wrote this yesterday on fantastic_realm, but since it has to do with what I'm realizing about the new YA novel (which I'm going to start tagging under Blackstone), I thought I'd x-post here. ;)

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It's been quiet around here, and since I've just had a writing related issue come up, I thought I'd see if we could stir up some conversation.

What I thought was going to be one novel seems to have turned itself into something like three novels instead. This is not because I have the writing anywhere close to done (hardly begun is more like it), but because I realized that all of the different ideas I want to work with are just too big to fit into one story.

I'd started the whole concept wanting to work with giants in Connecticut (since we used to have them, apparently--just look at Hobbomock, our own Sleeping Giant, a lovely hiking area near Haddam). Then I wanted to work with other Quinnipiac legends, particularly the woman sachem who is said to have drowned herself in Long Island Sound to protect the Thimble Islands from invaders. And I still love those stories and think they have a place in the world I'm developing--but they also seem to need their own books. The alternate Connecticut I'm working on needs its own book just to get started--and I think it could be that the secondary characters who are less important in the first book may be the ones to be involved with those other legendary figures. As it is now, the Blackstone family of Branford is coming to the fore, along with their (soon to be developed) relationship with the famous Blackstone the Great. And those ghosts don't seem to want to share the page with the legends that went on before.

Have you ever had that experience? Has your original great idea ended up becoming a third book in a series, rather than the book that starts it all? (Or, have you ever realized that you will need more books to tell the stories you want to tell when you haven't even sold the first?)

I just watched Stranger than Fiction, which was excellent. I think it was probably a really challening role for Will Farrell, because he's not just a doof--he actually has a full range of emotions and comes off as a really amazing guy. It's also a great look at what story means, and what choices writers make, and why they decide to make them. I don't usually go for really touching movies, but I thought this movie was really touching and I liked it a whole lot. Maybe not quite as much as Lyrics and Music, but I think on the whole it was a better movie.

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On a completely different note, I've started reading Wicked Lovely, which I'll write about once I've finished it. (Just to keep melissa_writing from being in suspense, I'm really enjoying it so far.) Between reading and watching the movie tonight, I figured something out:

The Hobbomock novel and the Tuatha de Danan novel, which I thought were the same story, are, in fact, not. The concepts I wanted to explore by writing about the Danans are really not going to work with the plot that I had set up. Which means I'll either have to drop that plot to explore the ideas, or I'll have to drop the ideas for the sake of the plot. (Or I'll have to separate them and let them each go their own ways.)

The theme of the story with Hobbomock in it was supposed to be about the relationship between the main character and her sibling, who is dead/missing/crazy (hadn't decided yet). The story with the Danans was meant to find out what it means that the Tuatha de Danan, who were thought to be gods, were defeated by humans and sent underground, where they became the same as the Fomorians. I was struggling to find the link that brought those two ideas together, the character who would bridge the main character from the Hobbomock story with the Danans.

I found her today, and I think she has her own story to tell. She's not interested in what Hobbomock has to say at all.

So I'm a bit back to the drawing board--but I think it's in a good way. I don't have deadlines on either of these stories, so I have plenty of time to explore what this separation means.