Tag: Author Post

Conversations on Hope in the Fantastical Featuring Joanna Maciejewska

My blog has been focusing on the idea of hope in the fantastical lately. It’s a theme found over and over throughout fantasy and science fiction (as well as other genres) and I was curious what authors would have to say about it. Luckily, several authors were generous with their time and opinions.

Today, I’m excited to feature a guest post from Joanna Maciejewska, author of Pacts Arcane and Otherwise.

Hope, Friendship, and Epic Fantasy

Hope is one of those feelings that often keeps us going when things turn dire, and when the world becomes a shade too dark for us to cope, we escape into fiction. That escape might take different forms: to find comfort in learning that there are worlds more cruel and darker than ours, or to find comfort in exploring worlds full of wonder and magic.

Yet, it seems like there’s no middle ground, and our choices are limited to going “all grimdark” or “full high fantasy”, and it’s hard to find worlds that carry the realism of the world live in and at the same time can provide a genuine injection of hope.

When creating a world and a story, it felt like a hard balance to strike, and my solution was… friendship. In the real world, I’m lucky to have a handful of wonderful friends. Not only are they there for me when I need support, but they offer their companionship, experience, and time. Thanks to them, things rarely feel hopeless.

That’s why I wanted to preserve that feeling in my story. The world of Pacts Arcane and Otherwise is full of things we know too well: evil, cruelty, betrayal, lies, corruption, petty people… you name it. There are even otherworldly creatures who are more violent and brutal than humans meddling in human matters and manipulating their human pawns.

With all of that, my books could easily take the grimdark turn, but I think putting friendship in the focus of the story softened the hard edges of the unforgiving setting. Kamira and Veelk, the main characters and best friends for years, go through a lot, together and alone, facing dangers and difficult choices, but their friendship never comes into question. At any point, either would gladly give his or her life for the other, and they keep no secrets.

I think that promise of the friendship never broken is what helps my books to be hopeful while avoiding the feeling of sugarcoated issues or lack of realism. And thus it helps to carry hope, that feeling we often need to survive, off the pages of the series and into the real world, because most of us has at least one close friend we can confide in and who stays by our side through the worst storms. And if Kamira and Veelk, working together, can stand against anything, maybe we could as well. This kind of hope is what I want to bring to my readers.

About the author:

Joanna might be a bit too cautious to do anything even remotely daring or dangerous herself, so she writes about daring adventures and dangerous magic instead. Yet, she found enough courage to abandon her life in Poland and move to Ireland, and then some years later, she abandoned her life in Ireland to move over to the US. She’s determined to settle there, once she finally chooses which state to reside in.

When she’s not writing or thinking about writing, she plays video games or makes amateur art. She lives the happy life of a recluse, surrounded by her husband, a stuffed red monkey, and a small collection of books she insisted on hauling across two continents.

More about the series and purchase links: https://authorjm.com/books/pacts-arcane-and-otherwise-series 

Direct purchase link for By the Pact (first in series): https://books2read.com/ByThePact 

Website: https://authorjm.com/ 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorJMac/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/authorjmac/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/AuthorJMac/

Mastodon: https://indiepocalypse.social/@AuthorJMac

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/authorjmac 

Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/joanna-maciejewska 

Conversations on Hope in the Fantastical Featuring JCM Berne

Lately, I’ve been exploring the idea of hope in literature, particularly in fantasy and science fiction. They seem to be incredibly common themes and I’ve been mulling that over. I wanted to get some other opinions on hope in the fantastical and, luckily for me, several guest authors were willing to oblige me.

Today I’m sharing a guest piece written by JCM Berne, author of the Superhero Space Opera Wistful Ascending. Wistful Ascending is available now, so be sure to pick it up!

Plotting the Path to Happiness: Hope in Fantasy

Like almost everybody, I’ve been through some dark times – not more than the average person, and perhaps fewer; but I’ve been bullied, lost people, and had periods where I felt helpless, hopeless, powerless, and alone.  

That’s a lot of bad feelings.

I shouldn’t speak for everybody, but I will anyway. Everyone goes through dark times. When they do, I’m sure they also feel all those things, in various proportions, at various times. And that’s all a normal part of life.

What I’ve found is that while everybody’s the same, everybody is also different (yes, my birth name is Yoda). Bad feelings don’t follow rules—not everybody who loses a parent feels the same way. Ditto people who are bullied, or suffer breakups, or watch the news. All people suffer in these situations, but we all suffer differently.

The feeling I suffered from most, in the long term, is the sense of powerlessness or helplessness. The sense that I had bad feelings I couldn’t control or bad circumstances I couldn’t affect. That was what bothered me—specifically me —the most. 

And when your world is dominated by feeling powerless or helpless, what kind of narrative do you want to hear? In my case, and in the case of many others, it’s a narrative about someone gaining efficacy and changing their life. Kung fu movies where our plucky hero trains hard and avenges his fallen master. Fantasy stories where our plucky hero trains hard and slays the dragon that wiped out his village. Science fiction stories where our plucky hero trains hard surrenders to the Force, and destroys the Death Star. You see where I’m going with this.

When I feel bad, what I need is a story that tells me (even if it’s a lie—no, especially if it’s a lie) that with the right attitude, courage, and hard work, I can overcome whatever crappy situation I’m in. That’s what helps me cope. And that’s what a hopeful fantasy story provides!

I’m not saying that everybody in a dark place needs, or wants, that type of story. If you’re suffering and feeling isolated and alone, perhaps what you need is just a story about other people who feel the same way to alleviate that sensation of loneliness. If you’re a fatalist, maybe you need a story where things turn out badly, because otherwise you can’t suspend disbelief. If you feel like you’re in the lowest possible place, maybe you need a story about people who are in a worse situation than you.

And if you think humans are garbage, maybe you need to read stories where all the characters are garbage, else you toss the story away in disgust.

Let’s be honest – if people didn’t often gravitate towards stories with happy endings, romance wouldn’t be outselling SFF by such a huge margin. And if everybody always liked happy endings, there wouldn’t be such a large market for grimdark.

Different people need and respond to different types of stories. Sometimes the same people need different stories at different times. That’s okay! 

Because I like to read hopeful books, that’s what I write as well. In my books, the heroes will always win (you might not be sure of how they’ll win, but you can be confident they will), good will triumph over evil, and while things might get bad along the way, they won’t get too bad. That’s my brand.

That brand clearly doesn’t work for everyone. I’m sure some readers would read my book full of generally nice people who are generally trying to do the right thing and be totally turned off by it. And as I’ve said before, that’s okay! There are other books.

But if you’d like to spend some time in a world where things are mostly better and turn out better still, feel free to give Wistful Ascending a try.

About the author:

JCM Berne codes by day. By night he retreats to his secret lair and fights the deconstruction of the superhero genre by writing stories where the heroes are trying to do the right thing and, for the most part, succeed. He spends far too much time on Twitter, discord, and Instagram, whispering to himself that scrolling through one more set of pictures of expensive watches will somehow further his writing career.

Purchase Link:

Wistful Ascending

An Author’s Monster Manual Featuring Jonathan Nevair

I am so excited to have Jonathan Nevair, author of the Wind Tide series, here to discuss his Mutant Bukki Tiger! Half amphibian, and half tiger, this is such an intriguing and intimidating monster!

And guess what? Jonathan Nevair has a new book releasing in December! Find out more about Stellar Instinct here or go ahead and pre-order it here (you know you want to; it’s going to be great).

Credit for the amazing art goes to Stephen Wood at https://stephenwoodgames.com/.

Half tiger, half amphibian, the Mutant Bukki Tiger is the tragic result of a radioactive accident interfering with nature. The Mutant Bukki Tiger is confined to a roughly five-thousand-kilometer grid of jungle on the planet, Hesh-9, known as the Red Zone. A nuclear waste carrier heading to the capital city of Hikesh, from the far side of the planet crashed, rendering the area off-limits until radiation half-life reached safe levels. Rumors of mutations to whatever survived the bloom added disturbing flavor to popular myths and folklore about the rainforest region. Travelers who dare to traverse the Red Zone risk crossing paths with this most grotesque and ferocious creature. 

 The Mutant Bukki has five cat eyes, two jaws complete with fangs, four good legs, and one-half leg sprouting out of its spine, held together by a slimy frog-like torso. It is a radioactive horror that contains high levels of radioactivity that make it a most frightening and potentially deadly encounter. Yet, there are tales of individuals with powers of persuasion (driven by compassion) who have been able to calm the beast and sympathize with its tragic circumstance. Those who do so, it is rumored, have come to no harm.

About the author: Jonathan Nevair (he/him/his) is a science fiction writer and, as Dr. Jonathan Wallis, an art historian and Professor of Art History at Moore College of Art & Design, Philadelphia. After two decades of academic teaching and publishing, he finally got up the nerve to write fiction. His space opera trilogy, Wind Tide (Goodbye to the Sun, Jati’s Wager, and No Song, But Silence) was inspired by Ancient Greek texts and myths and released in 2021. Stellar Instinct, a standalone spy-fi space adventure, is slated to release in December 2022. Jonathan’s books explore speculative secondary worlds where language, culture, ethics, technology, and gender are reimagined to inspire human potential and growth (space opera sprinkled with a dash of hopepunk.) Find out more about Jonathan and his books at www.jonathannevair.com

To find out more about artist Stephen Wood: https://stephenwoodgames.com/

Pre-Order Stellar Instinct:
Amazon