Last week I shared Alexis A. Hunter’s interview with me about my story from the Fae anthology. This week, I’m thrilled to present the second half of our one-on-one interview pairing -- my interview with Alexis about her Fae story, called “A Fairfolk Promise.”
I suppose you should be forewarned that the following contains lots of spoilers for Alexis's story. If you haven't read it yet, what are you doing here? Go read Fae, and then come back here for all the fun extras!
By the way, that creepy awesome image to the left is artwork by Ivan Kap. You'll discover its significance when you read my interview with Alexis after the break.
I suppose you should be forewarned that the following contains lots of spoilers for Alexis's story. If you haven't read it yet, what are you doing here? Go read Fae, and then come back here for all the fun extras!
By the way, that creepy awesome image to the left is artwork by Ivan Kap. You'll discover its significance when you read my interview with Alexis after the break.
KC: Hi Alexis, and welcome to my humble home on the web. It was such a pleasure to be interviewed by you, and I’m so glad to have the opportunity now to return the favor.
I have to admit that I was initially a bit surprised by your story -- it doesn't, at the beginning, seem at all like the sort of story in which I expect to find a fairy. It’s so brutal, so visceral… What made you want to write a fairy story in such an unexpected setting?
AAH: Pretty early on in my story planning, I knew that Cedric and his people were going to be quite oppressed. I also knew they worked the land and probably felt a connection to it. In my mind, fae in general have always been very connected to Mother Earth and that's probably where I got the idea to get them involved in this story.
I feel like the presence of fairies in this story is only really the tip of the iceberg in terms of their presence in that overall world. They certainly, in my mind, had a long and full history of interacting with humans and the world in general before the time that Rolfere took power.
I really enjoyed playing with the connection between Cedric and the earth, the earth and the fae and thus the fae and Cedric.
KC: Rhonda Parrish, Fae’s editor, mentioned in her note about your story that one of her favorite things about “A Fairfolk Promise” was entirely unrelated to fairies, and I have to say that I agree with her. One of the central images you create in the story, of human scarecrows strung up through the cornfields, is so powerful I have trouble getting it out of my head! I’d love to hear how you came up with that, where it came from!
AAH: This story came about during the annual Story-a-Day May challenge. It's a pretty intense month, involving—as the title suggests—writing a complete story every day. I'm usually strapped for ideas, so I almost always turn to photo prompts, which I collect on my Pinterest board. “A Fairfolk Promise” and its creepy human scarecrows were born from a single image on my board. The image depicts a human scarecrow with his arms strapped to the side. It's possibly more creepy than my rendition in that the man has no legs or anything—his torso is simply thrust onto the stake in the ground (you can't see it, as it's shrouded). Quite a gripping image! It really stuck with me and I just spun off that image and fleshed out the ideas I mentioned above about connection and oppression and so on.
KC: Alright, I went and dug up the original image (and did a quick bit of internet sleuthing to find its source), and it's fantastic. I will say, though, that I think I like your twist on it even better. Also, I love your Pinterest board so much that I’m creating my own for story ideas. I hope you don’t mind if I poach some of your pins to get it started!
AAH: By all means, 'poach' as many as you like! In fact, one of my favorite things to do with writing groups/partners is to have multiple people write off the same photo prompt. The varying results are fascinating! Plus, I think it's good practice for when you're writing to a themed submission call. You have to think outside the box—outside the immediate image which is presented to find something original or something that the other people (probably) won't think of.
KC: That’s a great point. I have often given my own students a single image or idea as a writing prompt, and I love seeing all the divergent paths they take from that one starting point. Consider your Pinterest board followed. (And mine created!)
So I mentioned already that your scarecrow image really got stuck in my head, but even beyond just that one element, “A Fairfolk Promise” played out very visually in my head, in a way that not all stories do. Maybe this is odd, but when I think about your story, it has two distinct color schemes for me. The beginning is very orange and red -- the twin suns baking down, the blood, the burning of Cedric’s skin against the iron cross, the heat and agony, even Cedric’s curse against Rolfere, that he “burn in the fires of the afterlife.” But then the fairy Rhoswen comes to him, at night, and the story becomes much more purple. Night and Rhoswen bring some relief for Cedric -- the water in the cup, the shadows in the moonlight, the cooling of the air are all blue in my head. Yet the pain and the fire still flicker around the edges, tinging the blue into purple. Did you think in terms of color at all when you were writing this story, or is that me putting my own spin on it as a reader?
AAH: That is so fascinating! You know, I never consciously thought in terms of color while writing this tale, but your assessment of it really makes sense to me. I think I may have felt those colors on a subconscious level—though not specifically the blending of the blue and the red. Your color interpretation is so wonderful!
KC: Well, color-conscious or not, I found “A Fairfolk Promise” was very visually and emotionally evocative. I can’t think of many other stories that I can immediately tell you what their color scheme would be if I were creating a visual interpretation of them!
By the way, Fae is actually the third time we’ve been featured alongside each other in a publication. You wrote a four-part weird Western that appeared in Spark: A Creative Anthology volumes 1-4; I had poems that appeared in volumes 1 & 3.
I bring this up because I mentioned that my mental color scheme for “A Fairfolk Promise” is very red and orange at the beginning. When I realized that the “By the Gun” quartet in Spark was also yours, I went back to look at it. It occurred to me that I also associate those colors very strongly with the Western setting. I think there’s some similarity (beyond just my apparent color obsession) in that both feel like very harsh, unforgiving landscapes. Do you find that you’re drawn to these bleak, almost hostile settings, or is it just sheer coincidence that I wound up with these two stories in my hands?
AAH: How awesome that our work has been featured together before! I'm sure I've read at least your poem in Volume I—now I'll have to go back and re-read it, as well as look up the one in Volume III.
As for your question, I find that I am particularly drawn to bleak and hostile settings. When someone reads one of my stories and calls it 'bleak', it's probably the highest compliment I can think of. It makes me very happy! I'm not sure what it is about harsh worlds and lives that draws me, but I find myself returning to them time and again. I think it brings out things in a character that softer worlds don't always bring out.
KC: Well, the aesthetic certainly seems to be working for you!
I’m going to switch gears a little, and since I guess we pretty established in your interview with me that I’m into folklore, the direction I’m about to head shouldn’t be a big surprise.
In folklore, fairies were often accused of kidnapping human babies and leaving changeling babies in their place. You’ve sort of upended that trope in this story by having the father, Cedric, actually request that the fairies take his child and raise him as their own. Where you thinking at all about those old tales when you had Cedric give up his child to the fairfolk?
AAH: I'm actually not very well versed in fairy lore and haven't read as many fairy folklore tales as I probably should have. Thus, upending the trope didn't really come into play for me—though I wish it had, as that would make me sound totally clever! In reality, I had this story somewhat planned, but not all of it was laid out as I was drafting the story. I tend to do this during the Story-a-Day challenge; I start with an image or an idea and I just sit down and write to see where it takes me. For some reason, my mind seemed to think it natural that Cedric would be desperate enough to offer up his son to the fae. It probably also plays into how much trust and reverence Cedric feels for the fae. Despite never having interacted with them, he's quite awed and trusting, isn't he?
KC: I had a very brief moment where I wondered if perhaps the fairfolk in your story weren’t quite as benevolent toward Cedric and his family as they appeared. When Cedric asks Rhoswen to rescue his infant son, she questions him. “You would give him up entirely? Not knowing what will befall him?” And then moments later she makes Cedric promise he will never ask about the child. Again, it felt like you were taking those expected conventions of fairy lore (kidnapping babies for who knows what purpose) and then inverting them. Rhoswen brings the child to Cedric so that he can say his goodbyes, and I absolutely believe the fairie when she assures him that “we will name him. We will care for him.” Am I just so jaded by my fairies of folklore that I read a moment of doubt where none was intended, or were you deliberately playing with the reader’s expectations?
AAH: To a certain extent—consciously or subconsciously—I do think I was trying to play a bit with the reader's expectations or, probably more correctly, I was trying to show that the fairies aren't all goodhearted and sweet. In my mind, Rhoswen chose to be kind to Cedric, to save his son, and to ensure his son's debatably happy future because she had observed Cedric's awe and respect for her people and the land itself. In a way, it's a reward for his faithfulness when most of humanity has either forgotten the fae or angered them. So those lines, in my mind, were a caution. Maybe so her violent lines toward the end wouldn't feel out of character.
KC: So perhaps, if Cedric hadn’t been so respectful towards the earth and so reverent towards the fairfolk, there might have been a more sinister purpose behind their taking of the baby?
AAH: I definitely think their purposes may have been more sinister if he hadn't been so respectful. Also, it's possible they wouldn't have come to him at all if he weren't the man he is at the time of the story.
KC: Makes sense. I liked the very faint sense of unease I got from Rhoswen during that moment where she agrees to take the child -- it certainly suggests that there is another side to the fairfolk, one they’re not really showing to Cedric at this moment.
Just to follow my train of thought, then, what do the fairies want with the infant? Rhoswen certainly seems willing enough to take him. Is it just kindness for an orphaned child, or do the fairfolk have some other purpose for making this deal?
AAH: I would say that first and foremost they took him to reward Cedric, as I said, for his respect and love of the earth. There may be some secondary motivations that I came to consider during editing—ideas about the child's future and how they could teach him to honor the earth, how they could hone him to be a weapon or a voice for them. But those thoughts didn't come into play until well after I drafted the story.
KC: You mentioned this earlier, and I wanted to go back to it for just a moment. The fairfolk are very much identified with the natural world in your story, in opposition to Lord Rolfere and his Rolfmen. That seems to be a common theme in how we think about fairies -- any thoughts on why that’s so? What is it about fairies, these supernatural creatures, that we tie them so strongly to nature?
AAH: Well, again, I'm not extremely familiar with fairy folklore, so I can really only speak for myself. I think I tend to think of fairies as embodying earth—Mother Nature or Mother Earth, or whatever you'd call her, can be capricious and beautiful and dangerous and thrilling and deadly. That seems quite in line with everything that is fae.
Something that played into my emphasis on the fairies being so connected to earth as pitted against the Rolfmen and the iron and so on, is some ideas I've seen expressed about or by J.R.R. Tolkien. I've watched documentaries that talked about how much of his stories had to do with the way industrialization and the ways of man slowly take over and destroy nature. I really love that idea and I wanted to play with it a bit in this story. The way iron hurts the fairies is in line with folklore, as far as I've researched, but it also has some symbolism in that iron is, in my mind, very associated with humanity and our advancements.
KC: I love that. I actually don’t know what the origins are of the tales that say iron hurts the fae folk, but I wonder if it is related to exactly that -- iron is identified with humanity and encroaching civilization.
I think it’s really fascinating that you say you haven’t dug much into fairy folklore, yet your story fits so nicely into it! In some traditions, the fae folk are actually the earlier inhabitants of the land (like the Irish Tuatha Dé Danann), who have been displaced by later invaders, much like the fairfolk in your story. (Although, in fairness, the Tuatha Dé Danann themselves overthrew a different race when they arrived Ireland!)
AAH: Why thank you! And that is most fascinating. I think I'm going to have to dive into some fae folklore at some point—seems like there's vast worlds of fun I'm missing out on.
KC: Some of the folklore is pretty neat stuff. I think, if you do go digging into it, you’ll be surprised at how much of it had already sort of seeped into your subconscious, as part of the background noise of pop culture fairy stuff. Because, like I said, you seem to be making use of a lot of familiar folkloric tropes, even if you’re not doing it consciously! I guess that’s a testament to how much of an impact the folklore has had on our current cultural conceptions of the fae.
One element that I was surprised at in your story was the idea that the fairies (who in the beginning appear only in miniature winged form) would even be able to take care of the child. I couldn’t help but wonder how a tiny fairy was going to go collect and raise a human baby. And then Rhoswen shows up with the baby and she’s not a tiny winged creature anymore; she’s “the size of a middling child.” And when she reappears for the last time, she’s the size of an adult human. I don’t know why I was surprised -- they’re magical, after all -- but I hadn’t expected it. Did you intend to surprise your reader with that ability of the fairfolk?
AAH: The shapeshifting ability probably came about mostly because I couldn't fathom a way for Rhoswen to care for the child. Though I can't find the link now, I thought I had taken a moment to do some research and had read about other shapeshifting fairies. Possibly on a subconscious level, I didn't think it was too far out of bounds for them to have this ability. In some sense, who's to say that their tiny winged form is even their true form? I think they can definitely present themselves in whatever manner they choose, at least in this world.
KC: No, it totally makes sense. Like I said, they’re magical beings -- I’m honestly not sure why I was so surprised (in a good way) to find they could shapeshift! I really like the way that, when you introduce the fairfolk, they seem initially to conform to the sort of Disneyfied (for lack of a better word) fairies, but then you show the reader, in a variety of subtle ways, that they have these hidden depths of power and purpose. It’s one of the things I’ve really enjoyed about the two stories of yours I’ve had the opportunity to read -- the sense that everything has real dimensionality, an existence beyond just the events of the story.
I was also interested in the way Rhoswen’s appearance changed as she shifted to larger sizes. Tiny winged Rhoswen has golden hair, dark eyes, and violet lips. Mid-sized Rhoswen has nut brown hair and green eyes. Woman-sized Rhoswen has wheat-blond hair and pale skin. It almost made me wonder if she was borrowing the body, or perhaps just the appearance, of some human child and woman. Am I way off base with that? What’s the significance of the change?
AAH: It hadn't occurred to me that she could be taking on the appearance of a human child or woman—but I love that idea! To be honest, I'm not sure I had a reason for her shifting form, other than simply displaying the colors of nature. I think I did intend the 'wheat-blond' to be rather golden, as I always imagine wheat in the height of the season when it's that beautiful golden color.
KC: Does taking on a larger size give her greater power, to last long enough to free Cedric from the iron cross, or is it just because the pure practicality of needing to be more than a few inches tall to unwrap the wires binding him?
AAH: I don't think being larger gave her any additional power. I tend to think of her power as static. It was simply a matter of being better able to free him, I think.
KC: Ha, I imagine it would be a bit difficult to do if she were still in the miniature form in which we first see her!
I know talking about what comes next is sometimes taboo, so you don’t have to answer this if you don’t want to. But I’m fascinated by the world you've created here and I’m curious about what happens to it after the end of your story. Cedric has been freed to deliver “a message of fire and blood.” Will it have the effect that he and Rhoswen hope for? What about Cedric’s son? I wonder if he, raised by the fairfolk, will have some role to play in the coming conflict?
AAH: That's a question I've faced a lot with this story. A few of my local critique group members suggested that this could be the start of a novel—and honestly, I think it could. So I'm not offended at all when people have this question, because the story does certainly leave a lot of curiosity and is open-ended in a huge way.
I think Cedric would be, at least in some sense, successful in delivering his message. It's quite clear that the people in his world are very oppressed and while that kind of oppression can continue quite a long time, I think it only takes one or two strong, unwavering voices to begin a movement against such tyranny. And with the fae to back him up, I can't see how he could fail to at least start a change.
I do think Cedric's son will have a large impact on this world's future. I haven't thought it out a lot, but I do see him as being some sort of half-wild leader. An “other” of sorts that people will fear and admire, but also maybe judge. I think he's going to grow up to be a really fascinating character.
And, just for fun, let's say Cedric delivers his message and starts a revolt. I could see Cedric falling in battle and his son later taking up the charge, empowered by the fae, and finishing his father's work. But we'll see...I'm definitely interested in pursuing Cedric and his son's future at some point.
KC: I’m on board with your critique group -- I think this is a really rich beginning for a larger story! It’s interesting that you mention both Cedric’s and his son’s future, because I ended “A Fairfolk Promise” thinking that Cedric was surely not long for this world. Do you think he has a greater role to play than that of the swift martyrdom I guess I’d assigned to him in my head?
AAH: I agree with you that Cedric probably won't last long. In my mind, he will probably end up delivering his “message,” possibly sparking a revolt, but not getting much farther than that. Poor fellow. However, I think history will remember him fondly.
KC: In my own imaginary version of this world’s future, there’s a monument standing where his iron cross once was. I hope he’d be pleased with it.
Alright, if readers enjoyed “A Fairfolk Promise,” where could they go to read more of your work? Do you have anything else upcoming, or anything you’re working on and excited about, that you’d like to mention?
AAH: Well, you've already mentioned Spark: A Creative Anthology, so that's a nice segue into probably the most exciting project I have on the horizon. “By the Gun” – my four-part weird western series – is going to be published as a stand alone novella. Brian Lewis, Editor-in-Chief of Spark: A Creative Anthology, seemed as eager as I was to see these stories collected in one place. It'll be my first 'book' of sorts. So look for that sometime in the next year or so. Otherwise people can always find me on my blog and on Twitter (@alexisahunter). I'm usually much more active on the latter, but I keep the blog updated with all my latest publications and whatnot.
KC: Awesome, congrats on the coming novella!
AAH: Thanks for the great interview, Kari!
KC: And thank you for writing such a great story and being so willing to share your behind-the-scenes thoughts. These interviews have been a real pleasure, and I look forward to reading more of your work in the future!
I hope you enjoyed reading these interviews -- they were a lot of fun to take part in!
If you're hungry for more Fae goodies, you might also want to check out Laura VanArendonk Baugh's interview with Shannon Phillips, author of "The Fairy Midwife." And Shannon's interview with Laura, author of "And Only the Eyes of Children."
And if you haven't read Fae, and you didn't follow my instructions up top, now is the time. Go, read, enjoy! And then come back and let me know what you think!
If you're hungry for more Fae goodies, you might also want to check out Laura VanArendonk Baugh's interview with Shannon Phillips, author of "The Fairy Midwife." And Shannon's interview with Laura, author of "And Only the Eyes of Children."
And if you haven't read Fae, and you didn't follow my instructions up top, now is the time. Go, read, enjoy! And then come back and let me know what you think!