Let's Talk Ryan and Essie

Ryan and Essie have always been there. When I was a kid, I drafted a part of a story about them and their twins—very beta, of course, and not the story we read today. But still, they were Ryan and Essie. Even when I was very young, I knew that they represented ideas. I meant them to contrast in every way. I carefully made sure every detail about them was opposite. A little later, when I was more of a teenager, I added characters like Tarvelas and Viltan, and a rather expanded area with just Ryan and his adventures with these characters.

I trimmed this back because I wanted absolute balance between the two and I had written more Ryan than Essie material. I wanted sets of chapters to alternate, so a lot of extra Farlent and Vindillam stuff didn’t make it in. But we still see quite enough of these characters, especially Tarvelas, to understand what they bring to Ryan and Essie’s world. It’s a story I’ve always felt very far from personally, which sounds odd because stories formulated early are likely to be very personal. After all, I was too young to be professional. But this book is about ideas and ideas aren’t personal. They are beyond.

Ryan and Essie has always had a resilient strength from within, a sort of harsh, dry integrity. It is about what it is about and nothing can change that. That’s why it wrote itself rather than that I had much control over it. As an adult I made an ending for the story and linked Ryan and Essie’s duality into a kind of Christian philosophy, because that’s the belief system I’m used to and the story, I felt, should tie into the biggest thing there is.  I’m not trying to preach, just to say this story is about big ideas.

It is a quiet story too. It has never made a lot of noise. And that is what makes it unique.
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