Transformation. It’s an idea older than the mythological Greeks. It seems that people everywhere have wondered what it would be like to be something else. It’s also a staple of fantasy literature.
I recently read The Lizard Princess by Tod Davies. It is a heavily symbolic work, and one that makes the reader think. Nothing can be assumed in this world. Even death is not what it seems to be.
Fantasy novels rely on a willing suspension of belief. It is difficult to read such stories with a critical eye and enjoy them. Ironically, I found George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones difficult to get into. The writing is what I call “power writing”—full of bravado and flash. A fantasy, it seems to me, should have a certain gentleness to the narrative.
I’ve occasionally presented Boeotian Rhapsody, my Medusa novel, to publishers as a fantasy. It really isn’t. Magical realism, perhaps. Fabulism maybe. Weird fiction writ long. It is fantasy in that it could never happen, it is a world that doesn’t exist. I’m not sure if that’s fantasy or not.
The Lizard Princess surely is. A princess transformed (at least part-way) into a lizard is a fantasy theme. The adventures she experiences are what you find in fantasy novels. You know what you’re reading in a book like this.
I sometimes suffer from writing in no genre. Purists wouldn’t call it literary fiction, that catch-all that doesn’t really catch all. I think of my stories as gentle horror, or weird tales. Reality is all around me, so I don’t need to write fiction that’s too realistic. If you can’t label it, however, publishers will shun it.
There is a wisdom in writing what you want to write, and not worrying about the consequences. Some of my stories are never intended for public viewing. Those that are, however, are bits of my consciousness formalized in words. I hope that someone, some day, may be interested in seeing what I thought.
Famous authors are considered national treasures. We want their opinions on subjects they know nothing about. The vast majority of us who write, however, remain obscure. Some of us can’t even put a label on what we write.
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