Z. Lindsey
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GENRE: Fantasy
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BLURB:
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EXCERPT
“What’s happening now?” Two Rabbit shouted.
“Looks like some kind of sheep,” Merritt said.
Essie’s eyes shot open.
“Sheep?” Two Rabbit asked.
She still couldn’t move. She was staring at the sky again. Purple storm clouds.
“Essie?” the doctor asked. “Are you awake? You hear me? You’re bleeding to death! For Aro’s sake, let down that shield or aura or whatever you’re projecting.”
He was just out of sight. They were all out of sight. Essie desperately tried to sit, but it only made the storm clouds choke in on her faster.
“Whoa!” Connie said. “Those are some mean sheep.”
“Sand sheep?” Boon asked.
Their voices made her head throb. She tried to follow, but couldn’t. It sounded like nonsense.
“By Aro—the sheep stepped on that guy’s crotch!” Merritt shouted. “Please don’t say we’re being rescued by sheep.”
“That’s if they don’t attack us, too,” Boon said.
“Holy Mother,” Two Rabbit said. “I’ve never seen a sheep spit like that.”
“Ohhhh.” Essie
smiled as much as she could. “Llamas.”
Then she passed out.
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Topic: Pros and cons of writing in your genre
Despite its association with stories of princes and wizards, fantasy is a versatile genre that can tell any story and deeply reflect human emotion--especially our desire for a magical world.
The fantasy genre as we consider it today hasn’t existed for that long--only about two hundred years, when the writers of the Gothic and Romantic era took old folk tales and re-explored them. Our ideas of creatures like goblins and elves don’t come so much from ancient mythology as from 1800s-era interpretations of these creatures. For example, the goblins of Jim Henson’s The Labyrinth owe a lot more to British artist Arthur Rackham than they do to the goblins of the fourteenth century.
Since fantasy started, it has had a dark edge, but it has also frequently been hopeful. One of the most famous early fantasy poems, Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti, seems quite bleak until one sister manages to save the other at the last minute.
To me, that’s a key aspect of fantasy. Fantasy worlds are often places where the bad guy can be defeated. While there’s plenty of dark fantasy, one of my favorite reasons to work in the fantasy genre is to tell stories that have real catharsis. In real life, and in historical fiction, sometimes the good guys don’t win, or their victory isn’t celebrated until years after they’ve died. But in fantasy, the villain is often punchable, and heroes can make a lasting difference upon their world--in thirty chapters or less, even.
Fantasy has a lot of established iconographic codes and rhythms, but at the end of the day, it’s super flexible. Fantasy romances are particularly popular right now; some other sub-genre might be more popular in five or ten years, but I can guarantee people will still be writing about orcs.
Is it complicated creating a fantasy world? It can be! It doesn’t have to be, though. I’ve seen writers struggle so much with worldbuilding when the iconography of fantasy does a lot of the heavy lifting for you. If I make a world where it’s industrial 1800s England but with magic, and there are elves there, I don’t have to tell you what an elf is.
If you want to make your dwarves different from dwarves in other fantasy works, you certainly can. But if you can’t think of anything unique for them, just say they’re dwarves and we’ll fill in the details. This allows you to focus on the plot and the emotions of the characters. You don’t have to create a whole culture for your dwarves--you can describe them as typical dwarves and we’ll assume they’re great miners and move on with your story.
It’s true that some folks do get surprisingly ornery depending on how you modify it. The Amazon Lord of the Rings show got a lot of flack for having Black elves, for example. I have my feelings about the people behind that flack, but it did have an impact on the conversation around the story--when the conversation around the story should have been, “Is this a good story or not?”
The issue with the wave of offense over Black elves is racism, pure and simple, but it is also the fact that people have developed certain expectations about fantasy species. Modify the mold too much and you might get in trouble with fans. So that’s sort of the con--certain readers may get annoyed if it’s not exactly the type of fantasy they expect.
But screw ‘em. No book is for everyone. Indie fantasy especially is a pretty niche thing. If you find your clan of readers, you’ll find that you can modify fantasy tropes in whatever ways you and they enjoy.
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AUTHOR Bio and Links:
Zac Lindsey is an anthropologist and a linguist who focuses on the Maya people of Quintana Roo. Since childhood, he's had a not-so-secret love of weird, silly, and well-structured fantasy. When other people's parents were reading them picture books, his mom was reading him, Terry Brooks. He typically writes hopeful and character-driven fantasy.
Today, he lives in Quintana Roo, Mexico with his wife, daughter, and various stray cats.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/z.lindsey_fiction/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61550498257222
Amazon link to the first book: https://www.amazon.com/River-Against-Sea-Z-Lindsey-ebook/dp/B0CH3TW3YD/ref=sr_1_1
B&N link to the first book (for paperback): https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-river-against-the-sea-z-lindsey/1144077772
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GIVEAWAY INFORMATION and RAFFLECOPTER CODE
Z. Lindsey will award a randomly drawn winner a $25 Amazon/BN gift card + a digital copy of the book via Rafflecopter.
5 Comments
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