The Magician's Metamorphosis Exposed???
A letter/interview from Husband Tom
Dear Elissa,
You said you'd write a blog post about your upcoming book, The Magician's Metamorphosis, if I sent you some questions. (I've read the draft, and I loved it.) Here's what I want to know.
The Magician's Metamorphosis involves fairies: lots of fairies, interacting with people. They aren't scary amoral fey, or cute tiny fairies--maybe a little more like Tolkien-elven fairies? Is that the right way to think about them? What inspired them? (You can't just say Tolkien elves.)
Oh, goodness, no—they’re not like scary fey at all. No offense, but I have no patience for writing about the antics of courts of morally-grey, deviant creeps.
If anything, my fairies are like those in Gail Carson Levine’s Ella Enchanted—immortal, magical beings who are generally decent people (exceptions apply). They have to balance their desire to help their human friends and concerns about coddling them and risking exploitation. And when they get that balance wrong, the consequences can be catastrophic.
Of course, because I’m me, Tolkien’s elves also influenced them a very little. I’m really drawn to the idea of two races that are children of the same God, who are more sundered from each other than they should be because of evil influences.
These fairies are pretty distinctive, though. They’re physically weaker than humans, and although almost all of them have magical abilities, they use it less intuitively than human magicians (who are very rare at the time the book takes place). And of course they have heartsongs—their hearts make distinctive music that mirrors their emotions and makes it difficult to lie or conceal how they’re feeling (I guess that ties back to traditional fairy lore a little!). There’s a lot of Deep Lore about how fairies became the way they are, but I’m not going to get into it…yet.
I know you've been turning over the ideas for this book for many years. A draft years ago didn't turn out quite the way you wanted. Now it seems like your vision is working out. Remind me about the history of the ideas, and tell me: what finally made the book work? Does it have to do with experience gained writing Nightwalker? Experience as a mother? Anything else?
When I was in high school (or maybe a little earlier) my family got into hiking. We all had widely different physical fitness levels so I had time to just think and tell myself stories as I trudged up the trail. One day we got back to the parking lot and I saw this huge swarm of black and yellow butterflies. It was really unnerving, and I wondered if anyone had written about evil butterflies before. I was also reading a lot of YA back then, and was just unhappy about the way those stories went. So I started asking myself what I would change, and a story started to come together.
I jotted down all my ideas in a notebook whenever I had a free moment at school, but I knew I needed to get better at writing before I actually wrote the thing. I finally started a draft the summer before our senior year of college, while you were interning in San Antonio. I actually snuck my laptop into the chemistry lab where I was working and wrote whenever I was waiting on a reaction. Someone actually asked me what I was writing, and I panicked and lied that it was something for school (yes, I feel bad about that).
That draft, which I’m calling the zeroth draft, was a mess. I was trying to be subversive about everything, and I really, really wanted to write it in omniscient POV even though I personally have no business writing in omniscient POV. I also didn’t outline it completely, so when I got done writing the scenes I’d already visualized, I was stuck. But I really cared about this story, so I told myself I’d write some other things first, level up my writing skills, and then come back to it.
As I was preparing Nightwalker for publication, I finally felt ready to try again. I started from scratch, occasionally glancing over the zeroth draft for reference but mostly ignoring it. I still got bogged down, but now I had the tools to push through. I’d read a lot more books, written a lot more words, and accepted that 3rd person limited is my happy place. My chemistry studies helped me visualize how the magic system works, and motherhood taught me how recalcitrant four-year-olds actually behave. It’s taken about four years for the book to be almost finished (we moved, had a baby, and started homeschooling within that time), but the book is going to be so much better now.
The book feels like it's strongly influenced by your family values as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and it deals with a lot of family relationships and experiences. Some of these are obviously made up; I don't think anyone in our extended family is big on [SPOILERS REDACTED]. But are there any specific family experiences that have crept in or influenced the book?
Dude, easy on the spoilers!
I have one sister whom I’m very close to, and we went on a lot of make-believe adventures growing up. It makes sense that one of the first real stories I came up with involved a young woman trying to save her little sister. I will say that Sora is a much better older sister than I ever was, and Meri is far more troublesome than my actual sister.
Our kids’ behavior also influenced a few of the events in the book. You probably caught the reference to the Gravity Game in chapter 39, and I’m hoping anyone with a baby will enjoy it, too. And the way Curdie and Faramir are so protective of their younger sisters changed how I wrote a few things.
What real-world locations are most similar to the setting, and how?
I hesitate to answer this question because people will read about these areas and see no resemblance. My writing tends to be light on nature description. I guess I could fix that, but…meh.
The fairy city of Hinai could be situated in Cloudcroft, New Mexico—up in the mountains, lots of pine trees—although the surrounding regions are much more temperate (I have no interest in setting a fantasy kingdom in Alamogordo).
Is it pretentious to say Kilona, the kingdom where Metamorphosis takes place, reminds me of the Basilicata region of Italy? It sounds pretentious to me. But…yeah. It does.
What is your favorite scene, and why? (No major spoilers, but tell me enough that I can recognize it, and everyone else can figure it out once they've read it.)
There’s one scene near the end that’s pretty close to my heart. It ties in many of my dearest beliefs about life, the Gospel, and reality. One of the characters has a very significant dream, and that’s just about all I can say!
When are you going to release the book? Release the book! Release the book!
The release date hasn’t been nailed down yet, but I’m almost done with my 3rd draft. A lot of pieces need to come together, but I’m hoping to get it out sometime this fall, or by the end of 2025 at latest. I can’t wait to share it with you!
Love, Tom
Thanks, Tom, for making me write about my book! You can find Tom’s writing on his website and occasionally in Public Square Magazine.