Women in SF&F Month: Pat Murphy
Apr
21
2025

Women in SF&F Month Banner

Today’s Women in SF&F Month guest is Pat Murphy! Her work includes the short stories in Women Up to No Good, the Philip K. Dick Award–winning collection Points of Departure, and the Nebula Award–winning novel The Falling Woman. Pat’s latest SF&F novel—her first in more than 20 years—is The Adventures of Mary Darling. This subversive retelling of Peter Pan and Sherlock Holmes focuses on Mary Darling—the mother of the children who flew away with Peter Pan and the niece of Dr. John Watson, best friend of Sherlock Holmes. To rescue her children, Mary travels halfway around the world, with Watson and Holmes in pursuit. Described by the Library Journal as “a dangerous and delightful adventure that turns the bigotry and misogyny of Victorian England on its head,” The Adventures of Mary Darling will be released by Tachyon Publications on May 6, 2025. I am thrilled that Pat is here today to reveal how she managed to keep working on this novel for more than twenty years in “The Power of Community”—and to be giving away two copies of her book!

Cover of The Adventures of Mary Darling by Pat Murphy

About The Adventures of Mary Darling:

Who is Mary Darling? In this subversive take on both Peter Pan and Sherlock Holmes, a daring mother is the populist hero the Victorian era never knew it needed.

Mary Darling is the pretty wife whose boring husband is befuddled by her independent ways. But one fateful night, Mary becomes the distraught mother whose three children have gone missing from their beds.

After her well-meaning uncle John Watson contacts the greatest detective of his era (but perhaps not that great), Mary is Sherlock Holmes’s prime suspect in her children’s disappearance. To save her family, Mary must escape London—and an attempt to have her locked away as mad—to travel halfway around the world.

Despite the interference of Holmes, Mary gathers allies in her quest: Sam, a Solomon Islander whose village was destroyed by contact with Western civilization; Ruby, a Malagasy woman on an island that everyone thinks is run by pirates (though it’s actually run by women); Captain Hook and the crew of the Jolly Roger; and, of course, Nana, the faithful dog and nursemaid.

In a witty and adventurous romp, The Adventures of Mary Darling draws on the histories of people indigenous to lands that Britain claimed, telling the stories of those who were ignored or misrepresented along the way.

Enter The Adventures of Mary Darling Giveaway

The Power of Community
by Pat Murphy

My novel, The Adventures of Mary Darling, will be published on May 6, 2025. This will be my first new novel in a very long time. To be exact, it has been 23 years and six months since my last SF&F novel!

As you might expect, I’m excited that this book is finally coming out. In this essay, I could tell you at length about why I wrote this novel — a historical feminist fantasy mashup of Peter Pan and Sherlock Holmes. I could talk about my research on women fencers in late 19th century London, on dime novels (aka penny dreadfuls), on Wild West shows created by people of the Mohawk (Kanien’kehá:ka) nation, and much, much more. But for that sort of thing, you’ll have to check out my website.

Right now, I want to talk about how I managed to keep working on this novel for more than twenty years. What kept me going?

You did. All of you helped keep me going.

I want to talk about the power of community — and give thanks to the SF&F community that encouraged me during my early years as a writer — the twenty plus years when I was getting started and publishing regularly. But even more than that, I want to thank the SF&F community for encouraging me during the twenty plus years when I wasn’t publishing much at all. And finally, I want to reassure any authors who might be reading this that it is possible to return from a twenty-year dry spell.

First, a bit of history

I started writing science fiction and fantasy when I was in college. I took a writing course in the English department and the professor’s reaction to my efforts at science fiction was…not good. Not because of the writing (though that definitely needed work), but because of the genre in which I chose to write. It was very clear that science fiction and fantasy were not this professor’s preferred reading.

I had better luck in two other writing classes — playwriting and “daily fiction” (where the only requirement was submitting 350 words of original prose each day). In those classes, my urge to write SF&F was tolerated, though certainly not celebrated.

In 1978, two years after college graduation, I attended the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop. And that’s where I found my people.

For six weeks, I joined seventeen other want-to-be SF&F writers in a college dorm at Michigan State University. Six professional SF&F writers taught us — one each week of the first four weeks, then Damon Knight and Kate Wilhelm, working in tandem, for the last two weeks.

Every morning, we workshopped stories that had been turned in on the previous day. During the workshop, the students took turns talking about a story. After all the students had commented, the pro weighed in, critiquing the story and telling us about plotting and viewpoint and where ideas come from and how stories work.

Each afternoon and evening (and often far into the night), we students read stories and wrote stories. The university administration forbade typing in the dorm — the late night pounding of our typewriter keys kept everyone else awake. So a large room that I think was a banquet hall under normal circumstances served as a sort of communal office.

By week four, that banquet hall was littered with papers that had been ripped from typewriters, crumpled, and hurled to the floor. Late one night, the crazed energy of multiple frantic writers morphed into a paper fight. We tossed crumpled pages like snowballs, bashed each other with paper swords that broke in our hands, then collapsed amid the drifts of paper, still thinking of whatever story we were working on, that damned story that could be wonderful but wasn’t — at least not yet.

We were a roving pack of young would-be writers, talking, always talking about things we’d read, things we wanted to write, about alien worlds and alienation, about ideas and dreams. We were desperate to figure out how to write it all down, how to capture our thoughts in words, how to describe the characters who spoke to us in dreams or nightmares.

The professional writers watched from the sidelines, offering sound advice, patient counselling, and more. I remember repeatedly asking Damon Knight to explain how plot worked. I had a tattered copy of an anthology he had edited and I challenged him to tell me what made each story work. None of them seemed to have the elements of plot the pros kept talking about. So where’s the plot? And what about this story — show me the plot points!

Clarion was a masterclass in writing — and that was important. Clarion was also my introduction to the SF&F community. In the long run, I think that may have been even more important.

The best advice I have for any writer is this: Find your community. Find the people who understand what you are trying to do, who speak the same language, who understand the particular brand of madness that makes you want to write.

The Madness Continues

I thought I had found my community at Clarion, but that was just the start. In the fall after I attended Clarion, I went to the 1978 World Science Fiction Convention. IguanaCon II was a gathering of almost five thousand science-fiction fans, pros, and editors, held at a Hyatt Regency in downtown Phoenix.

Harlan Ellison, the pro guest of honor, had apparently claimed that he could write anywhere, any time. So the con organizers put up a clear plastic tent in the central atrium of the hotel and provided Harlan with a table, a chair, a manual typewriter, and a ream of paper. For most of the con, Harlan was in his tent, banging out a short story. From the balconies surrounding the atrium, you could look down at the once-elegant lobby — which quickly began to resemble that banquet/writing room at Clarion.

At IguanaCon, I hung out with my Clarion classmates and met graduates from past Clarion classes. I went to parties filled with people who were interested in the things I was interested in. I met established authors and to my amazement they were willing to talk to me. It was crazy, it was amazing, and I loved it.

At Iguanacon, I began to understand what I had stumbled into. Clarion wasn’t an isolated phenomenon. There were conventions — held all over the country — where science fiction fans and writers congregated. And the line between science fiction fans and professionals was a blurry one. I learned that Damon Knight — who had patiently explained plot to me — had started as an SF fan, writing for fanzines.

I was fortunate to join the SF&F community at a time when feminist SF was on the rise. Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness, one of the first novels recognized as feminist science fiction, came out in 1969. It was followed by Joanna Russ’s The Female Man in 1970 and Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time in 1976. Just two years before Iguanacon, SF fan Susan Wood had organized a panel on “women and science fiction” at MidAmericon, the 1976 Worldcon. That panel led to the founding of A Women’s APA, the first women’s amateur press association.

After Clarion, after IguanaCon, I kept on writing, no longer alone in my aspiration to publish SF&F. I got together each month with a group of Clarion graduates to workshop stories, becoming part of a long-running SF&F tradition. (Back in the early 1930s, J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis were members of the Inklings, an informal literary discussion group at the University of Oxford that provided these authors with feedback on their early work.) I attended science fiction conventions.

With the support of my workshop, I wrote stories and I sold stories. Eventually, I published eight novels. I won Nebula awards for my novel The Falling Woman, and my novelette Rachel in Love. I won the World Fantasy Award for my novella Bones.

I taught at Clarion, giving back to the community that had nurtured me. I attended other science fiction conventions and joined the never-ending conversation about what science fiction is and what it isn’t. With Karen Joy Fowler, I co-founded the Tiptree Award to reward and celebrate science fiction, fantasy, and other forms of speculative narrative that expand and explore our understanding of gender. We named the award after James Tiptree Jr., the pseudonym of Alice Sheldon.

During that time, I was publishing a book every few years. My biggest project was a series of three novels connected by the pseudonyms who wrote them, a grand metafictional project.

Then…stuff happened

The first book in that grand metafictional project was There and Back Again, by Max Merriwell, which came out in 1999. The second book came out in 2000, and the third book in 2001. Then, when all the books were finally done, the first book was taken out of print because of a lawsuit. (Long story that. Better told elsewhere.) The removal of that book ripped the heart out of a project that had taken me years to complete.

I was working on a novel, but I had to stop. That story included characters from the book that had been taken out of print — publishing it would have resulted in another lawsuit.

I was discouraged, to say the least. Around then, my day job started taking up more time. My elderly parents needed assistance — and I had to step up and help. The bottom line: I didn’t have much time to write SF&F.

During the 24-year period between my last SF&F novel and The Adventures of Mary Darling, my science fiction and fantasy output was just nine short stories. That’s less than a story every two years. I did manage to complete a children’s book that was published and well-received, but that wasn’t the genre where my heart lived.

As a writer with little time to write in a life packed with eldercare and a full-time job, I came to appreciate the SF&F community even more than I had as a beginning writer. I stayed connected to the writing life through my monthly writing workshop with friends and colleagues. I could read and comment, even when I had no new work to contribute.

I made an annual trek to Wiscon, a feminist science fiction convention in Madison, Wisconsin. There I had interesting and challenging conversations that reminded me of why I write. With the help of Debbie Notkin, I started a discussion group where mid-career writers could talk about the challenges we all faced and share sympathy, strategies, and assistance.

Somewhere in there, I started working on the novel that became The Adventures of Mary Darling. I worked slowly, in scraps of time between other tasks, in the late hours of the night or the early hours of the morning. There were great gaps when I had no time (or no energy) to write at all.

During those gaps, it would have been so easy to forget about writing. Why bother? After all, it’s not as though publishers were clamoring for another book.

But I had something that mattered more to me than publishers. And that was a community — a place I belonged, a group of people who understood what I was trying to do.

Oh, I had many friends and family outside the science fiction and fantasy community. My writing mattered to them because it mattered to me. But the SF&F community was different. To my friends in SF&F, the writing mattered, the ideas mattered. Whenever I managed to attend a convention, I returned home re-energized and inspired.

In 2014, at the 72nd World Science Fiction Convention, I did a reading — a scene from The Adventures of Mary Darling in which fourteen-year-old Mary Darling (the future mother of the children who fly away with Peter Pan) meets her uncle’s friend Sherlock Holmes for the first time — and questions her uncle’s respect for the man.

After hearing me read that scene, Jeanne Gomoll, a good friend from Wiscon, told me she wanted to read that novel. Over the next five years, she nagged me (in a polite sort of way), reminding me that she wanted to read that novel. She was patient (sort of), but persistent. She made it clear that there was an audience for this book. (And yes, I sent her a complete first draft as soon as I had one.)

In many ways through the long years, the SF&F community reminded me that there was an audience waiting for me. Fans reviewed and wrote about my published work. Anthologists sought out my older stories. Editors invited me to write for anthologies.

The Ensemble Cast

Fast forward to 2022. I quit my day job at the end of that year. My eldercare duties were over. I finally had time to write.

In November of that year, I attended the World Fantasy Convention in New Orleans — my first big convention in decades. Walking into the hotel, I was worried. I hadn’t been to a large convention or published a novel in many years. Would anyone remember me?

The people who read and write and publish science fiction — my people — have long memories. Of course they remembered me! Without hesitation, they welcomed me back. So what if I’d been away for a couple of decades? That didn’t matter. I was back at last.

Many SF&F stories celebrate the lone hero — the extraordinary individual who saves the day. My own work tends to take a different approach. I favor the ensemble cast — a community working together to save the day; people inspiring each other, supporting each other, and helping each other in unexpected ways.

To finish The Adventures of Mary Darling, I needed the help of an ensemble cast of SF&F readers and writers and bloggers and editors and reviewers and publishers. I couldn’t have done it without you — and I thank you all.

Photo of Pat Murphy Pat Murphy writes science fiction and fantasy about women who defy and subvert their societies’ expectations. Her most recent novel, The Adventures of Mary Darling, will be released in May 2025. Her past works include The Falling Woman (winner of the Nebula Award for Novel), “Rachel in Love” (winner of the Nebula Award for Novella), Points of Departure (short story collection and winner of the Philip K. Dick Award), and “Bones” (winner of the World Fantasy Award for Novella). For more information and a complete list of Pat’s published fiction, visit www.patmurphy.net.

Book Giveaway

Courtesy of Tachyon Publications, I have two copies of The Adventures of Mary Darling to give away!

Giveaway Rules: To be entered in the giveaway, fill out Fantasy Cafe’s Mary Darling Giveaway Google form, linked below. One entry per household and the winners will be randomly selected. Those from the US are eligible to win. The giveaway will be open until the end of the day on Monday, May 5. Each winner has 24 hours to respond once contacted via email, and if I don’t hear from them after 24 hours has passed, a new winner will be chosen (who will also have 24 hours to respond until someone gets back to me with a place to send the book).

Please note email addresses will only be used for the purpose of contacting the winners. Once the giveaway is over all the emails will be deleted.

Enter The Adventures of Mary Darling Giveaway
Women in SF&F Month: Week 4 Schedule & Week in Review
Apr
20
2025

Women in SF&F Month Banner

The fourth week of Women in SF&F Month starts tomorrow, with four new guest posts and a book giveaway coming up this week. Thank you so much to last week’s guests for their fantastic essays!

Before announcing the schedule, here are last week’s guest posts in case you missed any of them.

All guest posts from April 2025 can be found here, and last week’s guest posts were:

In addition to essays, there was also the cover reveal of The Essential Patricia A. McKillip with a giveaway of the 30th anniversary edition of the author’s fantasy novel The Book of Atrix Wolfe. (Two copies, US only.)

And there is more this week, starting tomorrow with both an essay and book giveaway! This week’s guests are as follows:

Women in SF&F Month Schedule Graphic

April 21: Pat Murphy (The Adventures of Mary Darling, The Falling Woman)
April 22: Linsey Miller (That Devil, Ambition; What We Devour)
April 23: Mia Tsai (The Memory Hunters, Bitter Medicine)
April 24: Lindsey Byrd (The Sun Blessed Prince)

Women in SF&F Month: The Essential Patricia A. McKillip Cover Reveal
Apr
18
2025

Women in SF&F Month Banner

For Women in SF&F Month today, I’m revealing the cover of The Essential Patricia A. McKillip—and giving away two galleys of the 30th anniversary edition of her fantasy novel The Book of Atrix Wolfe! This is an honor since I love her writing, from the magic and beauty of her prose to the wit and wisdom that shines through her stories. She is the author of two of my favorite novels, The Changeling Sea and The Forgotten Beasts of Eld, but her short fiction also holds a special place in my heart since I was introduced to her work through her enchanting collection Wonders of the Invisible World. She was also here as a guest during Women in SF&F Month in 2013, where she discussed writing her first major fantasy from a female perspective (though she’d not often read books featuring one) and why there may have been such a large increase in science fiction and fantasy by women being published between then and the mid 1980s.

The Essential Patricia A. McKillip, a new short fiction collection featuring an introduction by Swordspoint author Ellen Kushner, is coming out on October 28!

Cover of The Essential Patricia A. McKillip
(click to enlarge)

Cover Designer: Elizabeth Story
Cover Artist: Thomas Canty

About THE ESSENTIAL PATRICIA A. MCKILLIP:

World Fantasy Award winner Patricia A. McKillip (The Forgotten Beasts of Eld) has inspired generations of readers with her enchanting, and subversive fiction. This lovely hardcover career-retrospective edition offers McKillip’s finest short stories. Featuring an original introduction by Ellen Kushner (Swordspoint) and cover art from frequent McKillip illustrator Thomas Canty, The Essential Patricia A. McKillip is a must-have for fans of classic fantasy.

Patricia A. McKillip has been widely hailed as one of fantasy’s most significant authors. She was lauded as “rich and regal” (the New York Times), “enchanting” (the Washington Post), and “luminous” (Library Journal).

Within McKillip’s magical landscapes, a mermaid statue comes to life; princesses dance with dead suitors; a painting and a muse possess a youthful artist; seductive sea travelers enrapture distant lovers, a time-traveling angel endures religious madness; and an overachieving teenage mage discovers her own true name.

Patricia Anne McKillip, widely considered one of fantasy’s finest writers, was the bestselling author of more than thirty adult and children’s fantasy novels, including The Riddle-Master of Hed, Harpist in the Wind, and The Bards of Bone Plain. McKillip received three World Fantasy Awards, for The Forgotten Beasts of Eld, Ombria in Shadow, and Solstice Wood; for the latter, she also received the Mythopoeic Award. Born in Salem, Oregon, McKillip lived in Germany, the UK, and the Catskills in New York.

Enter The Book of Atrix Wolfe Giveaway
Cover of The Book of Atrix Wolfe by Patricia A. McKillip

About THE BOOK OF ATRIX WOLFE:

This brand new edition celebrates the 30th anniversary of a classic, luminous novel from the World Fantasy Award–winning author Patricia A. McKillip (The Forgotten Beasts of Eld). In McKillip’s stunning cinematic prose, the human world and the realm of faeries dangerously entwine through chaotic magic. Discover the spellbinding legend of generational atonement and redemption between a reluctant mage, a powerful wizard, a struggling heir, fae royalty, and a mysterious scullery maid.

When the White Wolf descends upon the battlefield, the results are disastrous. His fateful decision to end a war with powerful magic changes the destiny of four kingdoms: warlike Kardeth, resilient Pelucir, idyllic Chaumenard, and the mysterious Elven realm.

Twenty years later, Prince Talis, orphaned heir to Pelucir, is meant to be the savior of the realm. However, the prince is neither interested in ruling nor a particularly skilled mage. Further, he is obsessed with a corrupted spellbook, and he is haunted by visions from the woods.

The legendary mage Atrix Wolfe has forsaken magic and the world of men. But the Queen of the Wood, whose fae lands overlap Pelucir’s bloody battlefield, is calling Wolfe back. Her consort and her daughter have been missing since the siege, and if Wolfe cannot intervene, the Queen will keep a sacrifice for her own.

This edition includes an original introduction and cover art by World Fantasy, Ditmar, and BFA Award-winner Kathleen Jennings.

Book Giveaway

Courtesy of Tachyon Publications, I have two galleys of The Book of Atrix Wolfe to give away!

Giveaway Rules: To be entered in the giveaway, fill out Fantasy Cafe’s Atrix Wolfe Giveaway Google form, linked below. One entry per household and the winners will be randomly selected. Those from the US are eligible to win. The giveaway will be open until the end of the day on Friday, May 2. Each winner has 24 hours to respond once contacted via email, and if I don’t hear from them after 24 hours has passed, a new winner will be chosen (who will also have 24 hours to respond until someone gets back to me with a place to send the book).

Please note email addresses will only be used for the purpose of contacting the winners. Once the giveaway is over all the emails will be deleted.

Enter The Book of Atrix Wolfe Giveaway
Women in SF&F Month: Sara Hashem
Apr
17
2025

Women in SF&F Month Banner

Today’s Women in SF&F Month guest is Sara Hashem! Her Egyptian-inspired epic fantasy debut novel, The Jasad Heir, was a Sunday Times bestseller and a Goodreads Choice Award nominee in the Romantasy category. Her next novel and the conclusion to her Scorched Throne duology, The Jasad Crown, will be released on July 15. I’m very excited for its release since her first novel was one of my favorite books of 2023 with its excellent banter and character dynamics, including an enemies-to-maybe-something-more arc done incredibly well. But most of all, I loved how she crafted her protagonist and her voice, so I am thrilled she is here today to share more about writing Sylvia in “Along for the Ride: A Head Worth Inhabiting.”

Cover of The Jasad Heir by Sara Hashem Cover of The Jasad Crown by Sara Hashem

About The Jasad Heir:

A fugitive queen strikes a bargain with her greatest enemy that could resurrect her scorched kingdom or leave it in ashes forever in this unmissable, slow-burn, Egyptian-inspired epic fantasy debut. 

Ten years ago, the kingdom of Jasad burned. Its magic was outlawed. Its royal family murdered. At least, that’s what Sylvia wants people to believe. The Heir of Jasad escaped the massacre, and she intends to stay hidden, especially from the armies of Nizahl that continue to hunt her people.

But a moment of anger changes everything. When Arin, the Nizahl Heir, tracks a group of Jasadi rebels to her village, Sylvia accidentally reveals her magic—and captures his attention. Now Sylvia’s forced to make a deal with her greatest enemy: Help him hunt the rebels in exchange for her life.

A deadly game begins. Sylvia can’t let Arin discover her identity, even as hatred shifts into something more between the Heirs. And as the tides change around her, Sylvia will have to choose between the life she wants and the one she abandoned.

The scorched kingdom is rising, and it needs a queen.

Along for the Ride: A Head Worth Inhabiting

When I set out to write The Jasad Heir, the term “unlikeable female character” wasn’t one I had come across yet, but unbeknown to me, I had started crafting a character that would fit neatly into that strange, amorphous, slightly troubling category. Sylvia, the protagonist of The Jasad Heir, survived a massacre that killed her royal grandparents and lives in hiding following a siege that burned her kingdom to the ground.

At the time, I thought nothing could be worse for a female main character than to be disliked. I had fabricated a law of balance in my head: if she’s fierce, if she undertakes a harrowing and dangerous journey, if she strikes a deal with the devil, it must always be on behalf of someone else. If she’s sassy, she must also be soft-hearted. If she’s calculating, it has to be as a last resort. Her own self-preservation can never be important enough to warrant the risk of taking an action that could render her “unlikeable.” If, for any reason, she encounters a situation where she chooses to put herself first, then she has to feel absolutely terrible about it.

By trying to make the initial version of Sylvia palatable, I had accidentally made her insufferable. This Sylvia didn’t take ownership of her selfishness, she excused it. She didn’t embrace her capacity for violence, and she refused to look too closely at the dark lengths she was willing to go to ensure her own freedom. The law of balance I’d subconsciously forced onto Sylvia had built her into someone I didn’t understand, which I realized was a fate far worse than unlikeability.

Changing the way Sylvia viewed herself and her actions transformed my relationship with her character.

Let me introduce you to the real Sylvia of Jasad: she’s a temperamental, paranoid crook who’s terrible at keeping plants alive, and five years of surviving unspeakable torture by a disgraced war captain has caused Sylvia to distrust both her magic and her scorched throne. She’ll fake struggling to carry heavy objects so she doesn’t give away that she can kill you with one hand, she eats a tooth-rotting volume of sesame seed candies, and if you put her in a situation where she feels trapped, she’ll become utterly unhinged. Friendship? A weakness for your enemies to exploit. Honesty and integrity? Sweet nonsense we tell children before bed. She’s aware of her own flaws, and while she certainly doesn’t celebrate them, she doesn’t let others shame her for them, either. She struggles with her identity as a fugitive Heir and a Jasadi, and the trauma that shadows her life shows itself in how she views her place in the Scorched Throne world. She is a reluctant hero whose reluctance is continually challenged by how she defines herself and how she defines what it means to be a hero.

Allowing Sylvia to lean into who she is made it so much more fun to inhabit her head, and I think the same can be said for many characters we don’t particularly agree with or ‘like.’ Bravery, kindness, compassion: no two people express these qualities the exact same way, so why should likeability for a female character follow one rigid set of rules?

Instead, I would ask: do you understand them? Does it make sense why they move through the world the way they do?

And most importantly, do you want to stick around for the ride?

Photo of Sara Hashem Sara Hashem is the Sunday Times bestselling author of The Jasad Heir. An American-Egyptian writer from California, she spent many sunny days holed up indoors with a book. Sara’s love for fantasy and magical realms emerged during the two years her family lived in Egypt. When she isn’t busy naming stray cats in her neighborhood after her favorite authors, Sara can be found buried under coffee-ringed notebooks.
Women in SF&F Month: Karin Lowachee
Apr
16
2025

Women in SF&F Month Banner

Todya’s Women in SF&F Month guest is Karin Lowachee! Her short fiction includes “A Borrowing of Bones” (selected for the Locus Recommended Reading List), “Meridian” (a Sunburst Award finalist that was also selected for The Best Science Fiction of the Year, Volume 3), and “A Good Home” (selected for The Best Science Fiction of the Year, Volume 2). She is also the author the Philip K. Dick Award–nominated novel Warchild and the rest of the books in The Warchild Mosaic, my favorite science fiction series largely because of her fantastic work with voice and characterization. Her newest works are The Mountain Crown and The Desert Talon, the first two books in a fantasy trilogy featuring dragons that will be completed with the release of A Covenant of Ice on July 29. I’m excited she’s here today to share more about her wonderful new series in “Character and Worldbuilding in The Crowns of Ishia.”

Cover of The Mountain Crown by Karin Lowachee Cover of The Desert Talon by Karin Lowachee Cover of A Covenant of Ice by Karin Lowachee

About The Crowns of Ishia:

The Crowns of Ishia is a dragon riding frontier fantasy trilogy of novellas, with mosaic points-of-view across each story. The series tackles issues of colonization, war and its refugees, loss and longing, and the price of healing. At its heart, it’s a journey through love, revenge, and the sometimes bloody consequences of betraying the natural world.

Character and Worldbuilding in The Crowns of Ishia
Karin Lowachee

I am often asked how I go about worldbuilding a fantasy or science fiction milieu. Do I start with the character, the setting, the initial conflict, a concept? Over the years of creating many worlds both in short stories and novels, I discovered that the process varies. Sometimes it begins with a concept, sometimes a general interest (like dragons!) that I want to explore. But however I build out a world, the process of creation and exploration, for me, is always anchored in character.

But this process isn’t hierarchical. Often, ideas develop like a web and connect through a branching method of discovery. Simply put, I investigate and interrogate my own world, and this often leads me into surprising new avenues virtually all at the same time.

For my fantasy trilogy The Crowns of Ishia (The Mountain Crown, The Desert Talon, A Covenant of Ice from Solaris Books), I thought simultaneously about the first point-of-view character (Méka), her culture (the Ba’Suon), the dragons (suon), and their “magic system”—which I knew early on was not going to be a “magic system” per se, like the kind you find in traditional fantasy. One of the earliest ideas I had for this story involved the consequences of a schism of belief between two peoples. Essentially, in the same way science fiction is often concerned with developing technologies and their impacts, I wanted to explore the concept of developing “magic” over centuries and how this might impact whole cultures. For that, I had to understand the beginning, or the origins, of this “magic,” in order to prognosticate the people who are impacted by its changes. Beginning the trilogy, even the introduction to my world, through Méka’s eyes offered the reader a fundamental knowledge of the people and culture (the Ba’Suon) who exemplify this “magic” in its most natural form.

The idea of “magic” being tied to nature isn’t new, but I wanted to avoid the overt use of spells and incantations, or even rituals that incorporate tangible aspects of nature. I was more interested in “magic” on an atomic level and the idea of a culture and a people who are so intrinsically connected to nature, they don’t even codify this understanding in any way. They simply live it. “Magic” then becomes a way of being, not a learned practice, and is by definition neutral (it simply exists as a fundamental part of reality, like air or the stars). Developing this idea inevitably led to the question: how would this way of being shape the people who live it? The Ba’Suon culture arose from this inquiry.

To explicitly answer this, I was inspired in part by the philosophy of wu wei, a key concept in Daoism that encompasses the idea of acting in harmony with the flow of nature. ‘The Way never acts yet nothing is left undone’. This is the paradox of wu wei. It doesn’t mean not acting, it means ‘effortless action’ or ‘actionless action’. [theschooloflife.com] When fantasy narratives tend to depend on actiony heroes heroing actionally, I wanted to explore another angle while still addressing personal themes of war and colonialism, industrialization and resource exploitation.

I knew it would be a challenge to depict a point-of-view character like Méka who isn’t constantly threatening her world with violence or revolution as The Answer to aggression. As my milieu was inspired by North American frontier literature, where the “stoic cowboy” is an entrenched trope, I became more interested in a female protagonist that embodied the kind of stable, quiet, only-acts-when-necessary personality often attributed to men in this genre. She is so centered in herself, aggression as a first reaction is counterintuitive, even if she’s usually the most powerful person in any room. It made sense that if her Ba’Suon culture was born from an intrinsic understanding and connection to nature and the cosmos, her way of moving through the world is one of “wu wei,” not only because of disposition, but because any violent disturbance to her world would be, quite literally, felt. So, in this way, my worldbuilding of the Ba’Suon, Méka, Ishia and the archipelago’s history all became intertwined. To understand one, I had to understand all the other elements.

Furthermore, introducing Ishia and the Ba’Suon through Méka allowed me to deconstruct the world through subsequent points-of-view: first Janan (in The Desert Talon), who is a Ba’Suon veteran of war (a contradiction, and he bears the consequences of it), and Lilley, the “enemy” Kattakan who probably possesses the most familiar point-of-view to Western culture audiences. However, by the time we arrive at the third novella, A Covenant of Ice, which is through Lilley’s eyes, this more “recognizable” Western personality is rendered actionless. He can’t “fight” in the conventional way Western protagonists are often expected to fight.

In developing the world and its characters, I became more interested in exploring situations and people who traditionally are not given the opportunities for “action” and must work within the “system” that has been foisted onto them. In a way, the characters are dropped into a flow of nature against which they either fight or find ways to exist within the parameters they can actually control. A repeated phrase through the series is “nature will always rebalance itself” (even if it takes centuries) and people, also as much a part of nature as the suon and the land, are intrinsic to this reality.

Taking into consideration all of these aspects, as well as many others, allowed me to flesh out the whole world and the characters. It becomes impossible to compartmentalize any of these considerations under topical headings. My understanding, as the author, of how the Ba’Suon, and Méka, and the suon, and every other part of the story informs one another consequently directs not just what is being told in the narrative, but how it’s being told. For me, building fantastical worlds and characters to live in them isn’t about having a schematic so much as it is about having a philosophy—a point-of-view or approach to narrative that’s carried through to the most minute details, some of which make it onto the page, and others that remain in the realm of the unconscious that readers may or may not pick up on.

Worldbuilding as an aspect of fantasy writing is still, at its heart, storytelling. It may start as a cool idea you want to explore (like I had the desire to write my version of dragons), but it doesn’t end there. Once I realized that my dragons would be both symbolically and literally a representation of the inexorable forces of nature, the philosophy of my world and its characters—and thus the narrative as a whole—began to feel real, and became something that would be reflected in my story through multiple aspects. Hopefully, this approach created an immersive world and unique characters.

Karin Lowachee was born in South America, grew up in Canada, and worked in the Arctic. She has been a creative writing instructor, adult education teacher, and volunteer in a maximum security prison. Her novels have been translated into French, Hebrew, and Japanese, and her short stories have been published in numerous anthologies, best-of collections, and magazines. When she isn’t writing, she serves at the whim of a black cat. Find her online at karinlowachee.com.

Women in SF&F Month: J. D. Evans
Apr
15
2025

Women in SF&F Month Banner

Today’s Women in SF&F Month guest is J. D. Evans! She is the author of the epic fantasy romance series Mages of the Wheel, which currently contains five novels. Reign & Ruin, her debut novel and the Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off Award–winning first book in her series, features a Sultana and prince who “must find a way to save their people from annihilation and balance the sacred Wheel.” I’m thrilled she’s here today with her essay “In Defense of the Kind Character.”

Cover of Reign & Ruin by J. D. Evans

About Reign & Ruin:

Reign & Ruin is Evans’ debut novel about a young Sultana trying to maintain order in her father’s court despite his failing mental health and a war looming on the horizon. It won the Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off in 2021 and is the first book in the epic fantasy romance series Mages of the Wheel.

In Defense of the Kind Character

I want a strong female character.

This demand originated in response to the many, many damsels in distress, fridged wives/girlfriends, and soulless supporting women in popular media. They had no agency; they had no desires beyond what the main character needed from them. They didn’t have female friends, and in egregious cases, could be argued to be the sole woman in a book’s universe.

Readers wanted better. We wanted leading ladies. We wanted them to save themselves. We did not want them to be at the mercy of everyone around them. And so were born the Ripleys. The G.I. Janes. And romantasy’s beloved, sassy, back-talking, stabby heroine. She was the boss babe. She was a loner, a “not-like-other-girls” type who talked like a man, walked like a man, and generally behaved like your typical Western male hero and who definitely would not be caught dead wearing a dress. She still didn’t have female friends, but hey, she didn’t need them.

This woman was a reflection of how Western society values toughness, assertiveness, and winning at any cost. In seeking to show that women are equally as strong as men and capable of saving themselves, we perpetuated the mistaken belief that strength only looks like this collection of traits. Thankfully, our protagonists have come a long way from this prototype due to critiques and metrics like the Bechdel Test. Yet as readers, I think there is still one form of character strength we have yet to accept, and that is kindness.

In a value system that still disproportionately values stoicism and individuality, and with the trauma of the damsel-in-distress not so far behind us, kindness in a character can be misunderstood as weakness, or even as stupidity.

This is because kindness is often conflated with niceness. Women are so often expected to be nice, even to our detriment. We don’t want to see that in our heroines, we want them free of that burden.

However, kindness and niceness are not the same thing. Niceness is a mask we put on to maintain social order. It is a burden because it is an act. Kindness is not a burden, nor is it weakness. It requires courage, empathy, and resilience. To be kind, especially in challenging situations, is a powerful display of strength. To be calm when others are angry, to offer forgiveness instead of holding a grudge; these acts are not about being a doormat. They are about the core of who a character is and maintaining their own integrity while modeling a different way to be.

A person offers kindness not because they are weak, or afraid, or naive, but because they believe in it, and believe everyone is worthy of it and hope that kindness can make a difference.

Readers too often treat a character’s kindness as though it were a flaw, or boring, or “goody-two-shoes”, instead of a quiet act of power that can disarm hostility and open a path to understanding. Kindness has the ability to break barriers, heal emotional wounds, and foster opportunities for connection.

Some of my favorite characters in fiction are kind characters with immense social intelligence. Jessica Fletcher, from Murder, She Wrote. Danielle, from Ever After. Elle Woods, from Legally Blonde. Guinan, from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Chihiro, from Spirited Away. Miyazaki writes kind characters particularly well. He has spoken on how he chooses lead characters that win their battles by fostering understanding instead of slaying a Big Bad at the end. These “battles” of understanding are one of the many reasons Studio Ghibli is so popular.

These types of characters are particularly important now. We feel more divided than ever, distant even from those we are closest to. We are separated by screens, interacting more and more in faceless, impersonal ways that drive us apart and insulate us from each other and from genuine understanding and compassion. We don’t think kindness works in real life, and sometimes, it doesn’t. So, it is more important than ever to see a character’s kindness be an effective tool. Kind characters remind us that humanity’s greatest strength lies in our ability to care. Kindness is hope.

If fiction is escapism, then I want to escape to a world where kindness is valued and seen for the act of bravery that it is. It is for that reason that I choose most often to write characters, both male and female, whose strengths include compassion, kindness, and social intelligence.

When I say, I want a strong female character, I always hope that at least part of her strength is that she is kind.

Photo of J.D. Evans J. D. Evans writes epic fantasy romance. After earning her degree in linguistics, J. D. served a decade as an army officer. Now she writes stories, knits, sews badly, gardens, and cultivates Pinterest Fails. After a stint in Beirut, J. D. fell in love with the Levant, which inspired the setting for her debut series, Mages of the Wheel. Originally hailing from Montana, J. D. now resides in North Carolina with her husband, two attempts at mini-clones gone rogue, and too many stories in her head.