writing for self-discovery

What’s real besides The Velveteen Rabbit?

I’ve been in Prythian with Rhysand and Feyre, a place of dark forces and magic. I feel pretty comfortable there. It’s not perfect. There are good queens and winged lords, bad queens and weak mortals, bonded mates and jilted lovers. The intensity grips me, pulls me in. Reality blurs until I’m more in that world than my own.

In that realm, power struggles exist at all levels, evil intrigue, political plotting, betrayals, romance. I’m not a fan of endless torrid love scenes, but when the tension has been building for 500 pages, skillfully interwoven with battles, near deaths, jealousies, and treachery, when you’ve lived in the minds, hearts, and bodies of the characters for that long, sharing their doubts, longings, insecurities, hopes, fantasies, fears and wildest dreams, and when the writer spins a fresh twist on the oldest reproductive act known to humanity…uffdah! Sizzle!

This author, Sarah Maas, has written a series of five books, big, thick, juicy fantasies. For most of my life, I never read that genre. I liked stories set in places I’d heard of, historical fiction, mystery, memoir, action, romance, women’s fiction, literary fiction, anything as long as real people were doing real things. Then came The Hunger Games, dystopian science fiction, and Steig Larsson, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, a crime fiction thriller, and I was hooked. I couldn’t get enough. Magical realism, fantasy, science fiction, suspense, thriller! Bring it on!

But back to Prythian…have you ever been so engrossed in a movie that when the screen goes dark and you step outside into the light of day it’s almost like, No, please, I don’t want to leave Never Never Land. That’s how reading these books is for me. I’m there, and not merely watching. I become Feyre, the slain mortal resurrected and fated to be the bonded mate of the High Lord Rhysand, with magic to equal his.

So when I hear, “Mom, can you meet the kids’ buses today?” and realize I’m in South Carolina, visiting my dazzling, grown, human daughter, two irresistible granddaughters, and a son-in-law whose looks resemble the High Lord himself, it takes a few moments to orient to my alternative universe. I’m here to help them pack and move into their new home a few blocks away, and I’m totally on task with that!

But, the Prythian Court of Mist and Fury lingers on the periphery. The veil separating the two worlds seems gossamer thin, and when my energy dissipates, I escape into those pages of enchantment where I’m no longer bound by my seventy-five-year-old body. I can winnow from here to anywhere in the blink of an eye and recharge my magic.

And it is…magic. The power to imagine a thing into reality is nothing less than sorcery. Can I manifest Prythian, Feyre, Rhyland, and the Court of Mist and Fury? Hell, yes! When I’m immersed in the story it’s real for me and I exist nowhere else. Isn’t that interesting? So I ask again…What is real?

In case I’ve piqued your interest, these are the titles of the five-book series by author, Sarah J. Maas:

• A Court of Thorns and Roses
• A Court of Mist and Fury
• A Court of Wings and Ruin
• A Court of Frost and Starlight
• A Court of Silver Flames

I’ve just started the third book, A Court of Wings and Ruin. I love that it connects immediately with the ending of book two. My daughter said she needed a break after the intensity of the first two. Not me! I’m a glutton for thrills! Not that I need any vicarious risk or drama. There’s plenty of that in my REAL life!