F.T. McKinstry's Blog

In the Ostarin Mountains, it is said, only wizards and hunters know the true meaning of darkness....

Enter to win a paperback copy of The Hunter's Rede, Book One in The Chronicles of Ealiron.

A swords-and-sorcery tale of one warrior's transformation by the forces of war, betrayal, wizardry and love.

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Giveaway ends on March 31, 2012. Good luck!

There's a venerable piece of advice to writers that says, "Write what you know." If you know what you're talking about, it's easier to bring the reader there. But how does it go when it's not familiar to anyone because you made it up out of thin air and broke the rules of known earthly experience in the process?

Enter the fairy tale. A good one drops in enough familiar things to lure the reader in. We all know what a forest is. A constellation. A frog, or a cat. But then things get weird, the familiar becomes suspect and you can go anywhere. When I started writing these stories years ago, I had all kinds of dark and fanciful ideas. I wrote them down and wasn't thinking about writing what I know. But I was.

Fairy tales create landscapes from metaphors, patterns and emotional impressions. This process isn't conscious or linear. It rises from the inner realms of the mind—not when the writer wants it to, or thinks it should, but when it's time—and what looks like a story about, say, some nefarious creature lurking in an enchanted forest is, beneath the surface, a story about something else entirely. Something we all know and are familiar with.

Wizards, Woods and Gods: Tales of Integration is a collection of eight tales that journey through the darker side of the psyche in the guise of imaginary beings, tree and animal lore, romance, dreams, visions and verse.



The Trouble with Tansy - An orphaned girl on the threshold of womanhood inherits a splendid, mysterious garden from three generations of wisewomen. When a roguish wizard attempts to impress her by disrupting the seasons, she must turn to the old powers for help.

The War God Sleeps - When a lush, fertile land is seized by drought, a lonely hermit's son ventures deep into the hills in search of water and there awakes a beautiful, yet terrible god whom the world has learned to live without.

The Bridge - A visionary who spent her life preparing for a planetary alignment that will materialize a beautiful nature spirit only she can perceive, descends into her blackest fears when she is abandoned to a war for which she is indirectly responsible.

The Fifth Verse - An ancient immortal entity defies the rules of her kind by falling in love with a mortal warrior, an indiscretion that leaves her grieving, pregnant and dependent on the help of a wizard whose army was responsible for the death of her beloved.

Deathseer - Under the influence of a mysterious observatory, the commander of a fearsome army is trapped in a conflict that eventually costs him his honor and the life of his brother, and drives him to accept an inborn magical ability that changes his destiny.

Eating Crow - A masterful, wayward shapeshiftress angers a wizard who curses her by summoning a diabolical immortal hunter that puts her near death and forces her to seek the wizard's cat, a gentle, mystical creature that alone can heal her wounds.

Marked - The mother of a fey child learns the pitfalls of mingling with immortals when her boy is taken by a ferocious winged monster at the request of the god who fathered him.

The Origin - A woodsman discovers that he is a god who created everything around him to know the love of a woman whose mortality drives him to the brink of annihilation.





Wizards, Woods and Gods: Tales of Integration will be released as an ebook on February 28, 2012 by Wild Child Publishing.

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To me, the most mysterious and beautiful thing about writing is the process itself. This is an exploration into the otherworld; like a hapless warrior in a medieval tale, I venture in with my sword and cloak not knowing what will appear from the shadows. I like to be startled.

The otherworld loves a good laugh. It's full of tricksters, beautiful beings and demons, a virtual parade of mirrors in which I see myself in the form of fantastic places, characters and events. While this is easy to romanticize, it's not for the faint of heart. I've often regretted getting what I asked for, or been bewildered by the obvious to the extent that it spins my life around—suddenly, it's not about the story anymore. I've written things that took me years to understand and synthesize. But that's where the mystery comes in.

I love supernatural archetypes...but then again, I'm friends with most of them. Here are some of my favorites in action.

Odin
In Norse mythology, Odin is the one-eyed, all-seeing god of war, magic and wisdom. He is a complex figure, associated with poetry and inspiration, madness and battle fury. He is also a shapeshifter and considered fickle, not to be trusted. He brings to mind the old Celtic stories of poets and magicians who, in their search for truth and pattern, end up going mad and wandering bewildered through the wilds. A patron of writers, if ever there was one.

"The Eye of Odin" is a science fiction story woven into the myth of Odin. It's about the daughter of a warrior clan who made her fortune as a fighter for a military contractor who harnessed the powers of the higher mind. When she is targeted for discovering a secret beneath their dominion, she must learn the nature of a much greater power: love.

Master of magic, god of war, Odin wanders alone. —From "The Eye of Odin," Aoife's Kiss, Issue 35.



Shapeshifter

The otherworld itself has the nature of a shapeshifter. You think you are looking at one thing, but it's something else; the psyche wears garments that mimic the forces of nature in symbolic ways. The shapeshifter reveals things through deception. What better thing to leap out while writing a story of a wizard-assassin about to fall to his own machinations? She appears from the otherworld with a message he won't understand until he knows what she is.

He drew one more arrow from the shadows of wind and snow and leveled the black, shiny tip through the trees, drifting along in a track as the lord rode down. Then the small man called out—in a woman's voice. She stopped and turned, slowly pushed back her hood to reveal the face of a wolf, gray with a white muzzle, her eyes flashing moon pale as they leapt over the surroundings. —From The Hunter's Rede, Book One in The Chronicles of Ealiron. On Goodreads: The Hunter's Rede.




Loerfalos

The unconscious mind has often been compared to the sea. An awesome force, vast, mysterious and mostly unseen, the sea is a metaphor par excellence for the forces of the Feminine, the primeval void from which all things come. The loerfalos, which in the wizards' tongue means "serpent of green darkness," is an enormous immortal sea serpent. A creature of the otherworld, she moves between dimensions, making her elusive and difficult to believe in. Her appearance heralds transformation on a large scale...usually unpleasant. When I began writing The Gray Isles, she was waiting for me. And she had quite a lot to say.

Voices rippled the surface above like the wings of a mayfly, an irritating vibration caught in the rays of the rising sun filtering into the surrounding darkness. One voice she knew; the other, she knew as the blood of an offering cast into the infinite flow of her creatures. Untold shades, hunter and hunted, the souls of drowned sailors, thousands of pearly eggs for every one that breathed, they whispered of chaos in balance. —From The Gray Isles, Book Two in The Chronicles of Ealiron. Coming in early 2012 from Double Dragon Publishing.


Sioros

This beastie showed up in my consciousness with a roundhouse kick. He is the driving force in my novel Crowharrow, which is the folk name for him. In the wizard's tongue, sioros means "destroyer in the air." A rare creature with the body of a man and the wings of a raven, he is immortal, as are all properly integrated archetypes. Predatory and tricky, he is a powerful seducer of women. Like the loerfalos, the sioros is of the otherworld, and moves between. While not inherently evil, he can seem so. A supernatural force, he burns with the fire of gods and confronting him—or worse, falling in love—is exceedingly foolish.

She leaned down and plucked a crimson columbine and some meadowsweet. She paused, and then straightened her back as the forest eaves stirred on the edge of the field. Something pale moved there, with a darker shadow surrounding it. A chill rippled over her heart as it came into focus, a magnificent man with the wings of a raven twice his height. Clad in the forest, he moved with the grace of dreams, his feathers settling in whispers as he turned and gazed at her from eyes the color of stars. —From Crowharrow, Book Three in The Chronicles of Ealiron. Coming in 2012 from Double Dragon Publishing.

***

I've written a collection of stories with a fairytale flavor featuring gods, shamans, shapeshifters and otherworld beings interacting with mortals in characteristic ways. Called Wizards, Woods and Gods: Tales of Integration, it will be released on February 28, 2012 from Wild Child Publishing. More about this soon....

Trees know things. A tree planted by a god at the dawn of a forest and raised in close proximity to an energy well deep within the earth beneath a wizards' citadel knows a great many things. This one likes to tell tales. In my short story "The Om Tree," it tells the tale of a wizard who loses what is most dear to him and thereby learns the true nature of his art.

In the beginning stood a tree.

I always start my tales with that; it is fitting, as I have stood here for so long. I have spread my roots on many worlds, being seeded by an undying star named Om. He has a child named Ealiron, the creator of this world on which I now grow. He knows I am here, of course. When I took root as a sapling, he sang to me. A charming fellow, really.

But my tale begins with a mortal. He calls himself a wizard, but he is not like any wizard I know. His name is Lorth, which in Om's tongue roughly means "water-loving root." A nice name for a most unsavory man. I call him the hunter....

"The Om Tree" appears in Tales of the Talisman, Volume 7, Issue 3. This is a great magazine and this issue features fantasy stories. Check it out.

The protagonist of "The Om Tree," Lorth of Ostarin, is also the main character in The Hunter's Rede. The short story takes place some years after that. An Om tree appears in the novel as well; it stands in the wizards' citadel itself. It doesn't tell tales...but it could, I'm sure.

I wrote this last year when my husband was deployed in Afghanistan.

In honor of Veterans Day, those who serve and the ones who love them.

***

Ten months ago, when winter held Vermont's Green Mountains in a white-knuckled grip, the man I love deployed to Afghanistan.

I can be strong when the need arises. But during the weeks that led up to his departure, I wasn't of a mind. I backed away slowly, and then turned and scrambled for the shelter of work and purpose. There, I stood over the woodstove like a vengeful witch and brewed up survival plans: stories to write, paintings to paint, garden harvests to grow and can, books to read. In no time, I had built a sturdy fortress, and when he marched from the hue and cry of a fluorescent send-off ceremony, I ran into my fortress and slammed the door behind me.

This is my second time to lose him to a deployment. Again wearing my pointy hat, I fashioned a figure of a seasoned warrior. I comforted myself with this mojo in much the same way as I have the death of a cat: I've endured it before; it will be easier this time. But it doesn't work that way. The same primordial force descends just as fresh and terrible as it did the time before. It simply takes a bite from a different place.

The Family Readiness people from the Vermont National Guard call me now and then. They ask how I'm doing and if I need anything. I often ignore phone calls, but I don't ignore those. The people are kind, and they understand the sadness; it hovers around them like a fragrance. I assure them, no leaky faucet, chimney fires or downed trees this month. Wood is stacked and the roof is sound! I'm a seasoned warrior!

Romance can be useful, sometimes.

I am good at solitude. I like the silence; it allows the deeper, subtler shades of the mind to come through. But solitude is not the same as being alone. Thanks to the brilliant metroplex of the Internet, I am not wanting for contact with my man; I talk to him every day. But he is a virtual lover. He might as well be on Mars, complete with oxygen tanks, bottled water and slimy monsters. The months have turned him into a character in a science fiction tale, a holographic transmission fading in and out to the beat of an active sunspot. When the connection ends, my fortress is silent and all my plans blink at me stupidly.

My little cabin is a big place now, a shrine to the power of my imagination. I talk to my cats, the dead or half-dead creatures they bring in and those I manage to rescue from them. I talk to my fishes, and whenever I find one stuck to the filter intake, a part of me dies too. I talk to my plants, to the gardens outside, the birds and dragonflies. I talk to the spider that lives outside the bedroom window and works on its web each night. I talk to my truck, eyeing the creeping rust as I would the countdown timer on a roadside bomb. With so much companionship, I shouldn't feel lonely. But I do.

It took me these ten months to realize my sturdy fortress is built on a swamp. All my plans have grown mold and sagged into the murky waters. I don't feel like painting, or reading, and my garden barely yielded enough to snack on, let alone can. Writing feels like reaching into the stars to touch an invisible planet that won't support life. I wear a clever mask, in public. "Oh, I'm working on this and that," I say. "Very busy, ayuh!" Whatever.

This cabin is full of ghosts: cats and fish I've laid to rest, rejected manuscripts, abandoned ideas, the knitting project I lost interest in, the vitality of an ivy that doesn't care for the west window. The wraiths of another passing summer fill the place like a nervous crowd. When my man is here, the ghosts are faint, as if he wields the power of the earth to scare them away. They don't flee from me like that. A watery creature, I attract them.

My lover is a Green Mountain boy. Strong as the hills, and as reliable. He emails me pictures of the mountains in Afghanistan, which are vast, tall, dangerous and inaccessible except to goats and vultures. The irony of this is not lost on me. "Wow," I say, wearing the same specious smile I wear while waving my seasoned-warrior mojo over the widening cracks. "Nice mountains. When are you coming home?"

Time can be cruel, but it is wise. The silence of solitude has finally managed to cut through the meows, chirrups, trickles and rustles of my interior dialog. Without the roots of the mountains, I drift out into the sea of my imagination like a mermaid whose heart got broken by a sailor. Two weeks left before he comes home. If I start swimming now, I should be within earshot of the shore by then.

The physical world, some believe, is held and permeated by an otherworld, an invisible realm most often perceived in dreams, visions, and fairy tales. At certain points in time, such as twilight or All Hallows Eve, the natural boundaries between the physical and the unseen become thin. In certain places, this happens by virtue of location or meaning; such as bridges, caves or the edge of a forest. People who are sensitive to the otherworld are said to possess second sight.

Lorth of Ostarin, an assassin and the hero of The Hunter's Rede, is such a one. Trained by a wizard, he has more faculties than the average seer and does not shiver at the appearance of the strange. When the dark-cloaked figure of a woman with a wolf's face begins to haunt his dreams and visions, he puts it down to exhaustion and the stress of having a price on his head. But when a flesh-and-blood woman leads an armed company into the woods to hunt him, Lorth pales with confusion as, in clear sight of the men accompanying her, she draws back her hood to reveal what has, until now, remained safely in the dark....

She emerged into the light, cloaked in black and moving with the sinuous, primeval grace of all women. She reached up with a pale hand, touched the edge of her hood and turned, drifting like fog without a sound across the earth. A wolf gazed over the fire with pale gold eyes staring deeply, completely, until she turned away and vanished into the shadows.

The Hunter's Rede is available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Fictionwise. Other ebook formats or paperback available directly from Double Dragon Publishing.

The Keepers of the Eye are central to the world of Ealiron, where gods and immortals walk and the veils between the physical and the otherworld are thin. The Keepers are an ancient order of wizards who maintain balance through a network of energy wells called iomors that feed and sustain the land. The Keepers' ruling seat is the Citadel of Eyrie, in southeastern Sourcesee.

The orders are arranged in levels of mastery, each of which corresponds to a kind of bird, a color and a tree. This arrangement draws upon the natural forces of interconnection and the frequencies inherent in the essences of living things. The Keepers of the Eye include nine orders of wizards; the highest, the Order of Dove, is rarely attained as it sets one's path into the realms of immortals.

Wizards (listed from highest to lowest as Bird; Color; Tree):

Dove; Gray; Silver fir
Raven; Black; Oak
Osprey; Cerulean; Ash
Eagle; Burgundy; Alder
Owl; Pine green; Hemlock
Crane; Grass green; Hazel
Swan; Indigo; Birch
Hawk; Yellow gold; Beech
Robin; Red; Elder

Three lesser orders called Keepers of the Crafts have limited powers pertaining to a particular area of expertise:

Wren; Deep brown; Apple; Healer
Albatross; Blue green; Willow; Sailor
Raptor; Blood red; Blackthorn; Warrior


Book One: The Hunter's Rede
Book Two: The Gray Isles
Book Three: Crowharrow