Fate's Bane: The Music Behind the Myth + Giveaway

Hello, my friends, and welcome to another dose of 'this is how this book came to be.'

But first! I want to say thank you to the anonymous reader who donated to keep this website and newsletter running here. I cannot adequately express how much that means to me, but I am so grateful. Thank you so so much.

Instead of an excerpt today, I want to tell you about the musical inspirations for Fate's Bane, which just got a lovely review in Locus Magazine:

"Fate’s Bane is heartwarming and heartbreaking. It sees love itself as a Making, as magic that forges something stronger than its parts. It’s about finding your own power and owning it no matter how small it might seem – even if that power is nothing against the overwhelming machinations of fate. It’s worth fighting for the ones we love, the story argues, in whatever way we can, even if we might lose everything in the process. Because the tale doesn’t always have to go like this, and we just might make a new one."

When I started writing Fate's Bane, the first chapter came out with a dreamlike quality, like the kinds of stories recounted around a fire through the haze of memory--or myth. And the second chapter really was a myth, a creation myth of a tribe. Often what happens with a story is that I'll write in the voice that comes most naturally to the subject in my head, and sometimes it's deliberate and sometimes it's incidental, borne of coalescing influences. (Sometimes, I try to fight this incidental voice, but end up surrendering to it later because my subconscious knew better. Then I lean into it and discover something new about the story, or a character.) Once I've settled on the voice, or, to better explore it, I seek out others that have done it well and I study them--the rhythm of the diction, of the syntax. Word length and punctuation.

In the case of Fate's Bane, it wasn't just writers I turned to--though I did spend a lot of time with Seamus Heaney's Beowulf and Nicola Griffith's Spear and Sofia Samatar's Winged Histories, all small books that pack a mighty lyrical punch. The mythical quality of the narrator and the folk tale that followed put me in mind of music, especially Loreena McKennitt, who's known for her rendition of Irish folk songs and putting poetry to music (Alfred Noyes' "The Highwayman" was life-changing for me--"There was death at every window;/ Hell at one dark window!").

I've been listening to Loreena McKennitt for most of my life and her music inspired my early adolescent scribblings and is most certainly unconsciously a part of all that I make, as is the way of art. The song that I kept coming to for Fate's Bane, though, was "Stolen Child" by W. B. Yeats. McKennitt's version appears on her album Elemental (1985).

After the first folk tale interlude (as I'd come to think of the second chapter of the novella), I started toying with the idea of several interludes, each a different piece of folk narrative--a tale told around the fire, a lullaby, a children's game. There were many permutations of this, including one that tried to tell the story of the fate's-bane itself--herself--across the intervals. I still have the scratchings of the song I tried to write; I counted out the measures and meter of McKennitt's "Stolen Child," studied the verses, and...promised I would get back to it. I never did, though. As I figured out their rhythm, their placement in the book, the interludes ended up going in a different direction.

Then, it so happened by chance, as so many of art's great strokes often do, that I was working out in my kitchen with my kettlebells (this is before I moved house, space at a premium, etc.) and listening to an Einar Selvik themed playlist (he's the main vocalist on the Assassin's Creed: Valhalla soundtrack). Then this song came on, Einherjar, and I was stopped in my tracks:

It was so beautiful, and so haunting. Shortly after that, Middangaerd came on, from the same album. I thought, I have to check this out. The whole album was beautiful, perfectly evocative of the moodiness I was trying to evoke within the novella: a mourning tenderness, a respect for something ancient, maybe even divine.

Then there was one song in particular on the album that became emblematic of the entire novella: Wulf Ond Eadwacer. As I said before, I took linguistic inspiration from Old English poetry, and one particularly famous poem is Wulf and Eadwacer. It's exact meaning is contested, but for my own reasons, I'm attached to the interpretation as two tragically separated lovers, one of whom is in mortal jeopardy. And of course, it's a story of the Fens. A tragic love story set in the Fens...hmmm.

Wulf is on an island, I on another.
Fast is that island, surrounded by fen.¹

And the final line of the poem suited the idea of separation, just as the ambiguity of the poem itself suited the ambiguity of a told tale that I wanted to create with Fate's Bane.

One can easily split what was never united,
the song of the two of us.²

And with this song, Gealdýr absolutely nails the plaintive longing of the speaker to their love, begging him to come back, mourning the time spent without him. The lonely harp to start, Gealdyr's solitary voice clear before the swell of other instruments, other voices, ebbs in like high water, then ebbs out again.

By the time I heard discovered this album, I had already written a draft of Fate's Bane, but I returned to the album during the revision process, and while I was walking about my days. It began to serve as an emotional touchstone for the novel. Coincidentally, Mary Metzger, who is the artist responsible for Fate's Bane's astounding cover, said she also listened to Gealdýr while making it.

So do listen to these songs, in isolation or as a full album--and when Fate's Bane comes out, go ahead and loop it on repeat while you read, and then come tell me what you think.

Giveaways and Signed Bookplates

Now I'd like to offer you all the chance to win an early copy of Fate's Bane and a digital copy of Vigrðr. All you have to do is be a subscriber, which most of you reading already are! And if you're not, well. You know what to do. I'll draw lots at the end of the week.

There is a SECOND giveaway on Goodreads for an advanced copy of The Sovereign. Opens next Monday, Jun 30. Closes July 28. Good luck. ;)

Also, if you would like a signed bookplate for your copy of Fate's Bane, you can pre-order it from the following bookstores (the Raven will also give you an exclusive broadside!) (more bookstores will be added as arranged):

• The Raven Book Store - Lawrence, KS (including an AWESOME exclusive broadside)
• Tubby and Coo's - New Orleans, LA (in-person, though you can support them on bookshop.org)
• The Common Press - London, UK (I will sign your actual book!)
• Gay's the Word - London, UK (I will sign your actual book!)
• Morgenstern Books - Bloomington, IN
• A Seat at the Table - Elk Grove, CA
• The American Book Center - Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Special Editions!

Many of you have asked if there will be special editions or hardbacks of The Sovereign. Well, I can finally officially say, Illumicrate has announced the special edition! Books will go on sale August 14.

What I'm Reading (and listening to and watching)

• The Steerswoman by Rosemary Kirstein. An older book that was very well received, chosen as one of the 101 Best Fantasy Novels between 1985-2010. It popped up as a recommended read and I started on the sample and couldn't stop. It came at a moment when I could barely read anything.
• The Art of Intimacy by Stacey D'Erasmo. I'm writing a certain essay about sex and intimate moments in fiction, and wanted to consider other people's writing on the subject, how to do it, why we do it. It wasn't a how-to book like Diana Gabaldon's I Give You My Body (which is worth it, if you do want a how-to), but more a reflection. I found it helpful for directing my own thoughts about the essay, not to mention thinking about the intimate scenes in my own work. Also, this essay from Garth Greenwell, about the value of sitting with work that makes us uncomfortable.
• Last week, I saw THE Melissa Etheridge in concert and it was a transcendent moment for me. I can't put it into words, really, but I'm a Kansas dyke and wrote an essay about why she was my favorite Kansan when I was 15, and she had so much--ugh! Such soul, such big dick energy, and that voice! She even did a little mashup with a Chappell Roan song. It was such a delight.
• (Actually, I also saw Beyoncé the week before, so it's been a very cowboy music week for me. Love this.)
• The Last of the Mohicans and Rob Roy (the movies): So, when I was a kid, I got this little compilation two-CD album called The Celtic Circle (and later, The Celtic Circle 2). There are a lot of great songs on them, many from movie soundtracks, like Lord of the Rings and Braveheart and The Mists of Avalon. It also included the themes from the former two--I Will Find You by Clannad and Ailein Duinn by Capercaillie, songs I listened to on repeat. (You know how obsessive teens are about their music--just imagine a moody 14 year old with those songs.) (Also...that should explain a lot about my writing.) So I finally decided to watch them! Man, they certainly were of an era! Sweeping vistas, swelling orchestrals, heroic romance, honor! So much honor!

Is honor still a thing people believe in?

Until next time, stay sharp, my friends.

C. L.