Tag: SFF

Studio Ghibli Fanzine Preorders

~ Kathryn ~ Leave a comment

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I’m excited to share a preview of the short story I wrote for New Winds: A Studio Ghibli Fanzine.

My story, “The Record of the Last Heavenly Warrior,” is narrated from the perspective of one of the giant robots from Castle in the Sky who remained in Laputa Castle after all the humans fled. The log it creates across the years is an account of the actions it takes to help nature return to the abandoned structure. Through the care it offers the environment and its companions, the robot gradually begins to understand why humans abandoned the fortress, and it wonders what it will do should they ever return.

The editors and layout artists who’ve worked on New Winds put an extraordinary amount of love and attention into making the writing in this zine shine, and the comics and illustrations that fill the pages are equally beautiful. If you’re interested, preorders for the zine are open until February 6 on Bigcartel (here). You can check out more previews on the zine’s accounts on Twitter (here) and Tumblr (here).

🌿 https://studioghiblizine.bigcartel.com/
🌿 https://x.com/ghiblifanzine
🌿 https://ghiblifanzine.tumblr.com/

An Unfound Door, Chapter 16

~ Kathryn ~ Leave a comment

Fhiad reflects on the uncanny emptiness of Erdbhein Castle as he leads Agnes to the queen’s ruined chambers. While describing Erdbhein before the war, Fhiad tells Agnes about his three sisters, all of whom were highly competent administrators. Fhiad confesses that he dreamed of becoming a mage so he could return to Erdbhein to build monumental stone structures aboveground to rival the stonework in the long-abandoned city underneath the castle.

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This chapter is about Fhiad processing his grief. It would be the perfect opportunity for an exposition dump, but Fhiad isn’t in a good mental state to deliver a lecture at the moment. Like Agnes, he feels like a failure, and he misses his family.

While Fhiad talks about the past, I hope the reader gets a sense of this character belonging to a much larger story. Unfortunately, Fhiad is never going to be able to live that story, and the reader isn’t going to hear much more about it, either. Fhiad mentions spending time in an ancient city in the mountains below Erdbhein, and tells Agnes that he went to university to study architecture because he always dreamed of building something equally grand aboveground.

That’s an intriguing detail, I hope. It adds another layer of foreshadowing regarding Agnes and Fhiad’s final destination, but the reader is never going to encounter another reference to Erdbhein’s history and culture. That’s what it means for an entire group of people to be destroyed; all of their art and memories and folklore are destroyed along with them.

Agnes is deeply disturbed by this loss, as she should be. Meanwhile, Fhiad’s anger regarding the destruction of Erdbhein has drained away, alongside his sense of agency. At the beginning of the story, he was furious and hostile and scary, but he’s become calmer and more introspective as the reality of his situation becomes clear.

Fhiad’s monologue in this chapter mirrors Agnes’s monologue at the beginning of the novel about how she’s the exact wrong person to handle a difficult situation. Agnes was doing something stupid (bringing a demon back to Faloren) because she felt that she had no power to halt her kingdom’s decline on her own. Fhiad was likewise attempting to do something stupid (stealing a relic that could turn back time) because he saw no other way to address what happened in the past. Fhiad knows that his mother or any one of his sisters could have been effective in restoring his kingdom, but he feels that he himself doesn’t have the power to do anything. And honestly, he’s right.

I think that’s a hard lesson to learn, that sometimes you’re just not the right person to fix a messed-up situation. Not everyone can be a hero. At the same time, if a broken situation can’t be fixed by normal people working together and trying their best while using the tools at their disposal, then perhaps the situation isn’t worth fixing.

In The Demon King, a novel I put on hold to focus on writing An Unfound Door, the main character finds himself in a situation that’s somewhat similar to what Fhiad’s going through. This character is going to succeed by virtue of being ten years older and completely unhinged, and his success will destroy him. Fhiad is going to fail, though. His failure isn’t without sadness, but accepting himself and the reality of his circumstances is going to be the best thing that ever happened to him.

The same goes for Agnes, who needs to understand that she can simply walk away from Faloren. The arc of her character development is longer and more complicated; but, from this point forward, it’s going to be Fhiad’s job to support her.

This chapter is relatively quiet, especially after the action in the previous chapter, but it’s the emotional turning point of the novel. So this chapter is about grief, but it’s also about two tired adults taking a much-needed break to have a nice date with delicious tea in a handsome ruined castle overgrown with beautiful bioluminescent flowers.

The illustration of Fhiad in this chapter’s preview graphic was created by the bold and brilliant fantasy illustrator Armd39, who posts dynamic and creatively textured artwork on Bluesky (here) and on Instagram (here). You can also find her commission info pinned on Twitter (here) if you’re interested. Arma was wonderful to work with, and the process of creating this illustration was a fantastic experience that easily added a few months to my life.

An Unfound Door, Chapter 15

~ Kathryn ~ Leave a comment

Now that Fhiad has taken the form of a demon boar, Agnes rides him through the mountain forest on the way to Erdbhein. They make quick progress, stopping only for Agnes to rest. As they approach Erdbhein Castle, Fhiad leads Agnes to an overlook from which she can see the overgrown ruins of the city in the valley.

At the cliffside castle’s back entrance, severely decayed husks emerge from what used to be a village that housed the castle staff. Fhiad is frightened, so Agnes dismounts and comforts him as she leads him across a bridge and into the castle’s rear courtyard. More husks emerge, and Fhiad is paralyzed with fear. Agnes forcibly reverts him to his human form, and they escape into the castle keep.

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Based on the synopsis, you might think there’s fighting in this chapter, but the truth is that I dislike writing action. As much as I enjoy the choreography of cinematic fight scenes, I find prose descriptions of battles to be tedious. I always skim through action sequences as a reader. Why subject myself to this sort of thing as a writer?

In my defense, neither Fhiad nor Agnes is an action hero. Fhiad is an extremely cowardly demon, and Agnes wields a sword the way I imagine most people would, which is to panic and swing it around wildly. When she actually hits something, she’s horrified and disgusted.

Instead of a thrilling adventure, this chapter is more of an extended meditation on death and decay. In particular, I really enjoyed writing about the slow creep of the husks. My personal take on zombies is that they’re scariest when they take the “persistence predator” aspects of human physicality to an extreme. Fast zombies are a lot of fun! But slow zombies that just keep coming? That’s what really creeps me out.

On a more serious note, zombies are an indirect way to think through the indignity of certain types of death. An Unfound Door isn’t a political novel by any means, but I can’t deny that I wrote this story while watching a genocide unfold. It’s important to bear witness, I think. Still, I’m disturbed by the media spectacle of destruction, in which the victims of war are reduced to nothing more than their blunt physicality in order to sell an enticing narrative to a public that passively consumes death on television or online. As my academic work has (hopefully) demonstrated, I care deeply about these issues, and fiction is another way to explore the complications and consequences of an empire lashing out at imagined enemies as it crumbles from the inside. Let it suffice to say that I have a great deal of sympathy for zombies.

In any case, Agnes isn’t particularly afraid of husks, which she sees as pathetic but harmless. There are a whole lot of husks in this ruined castle, however, and Agnes has a difficult time shepherding Fhiad inside the keep while doing her best to keep both of them safe. Consequently, the main narrative breakthrough that occurs in this chapter is a demonstration that Agnes has become much more sensitive to Fhiad’s emotional state. I guess riding a man through the forest like a horse will do that.

The illustration of Agnes in the chapter preview graphic was created by Loustica Lucia, a bright and shining fantasy artist who posts colorful battle scenes and character portraits on Instagram (here), on Tumblr (here), and on Bluesky (here).

An Unfound Door, Chapter 14

~ Kathryn ~ Leave a comment

Agnes and Fhiad have a brief conversation with Galien and Caelif before departing from Faloren Castle. Fhiad’s personality becomes warmer and more open as they travel across the countryside. He’s friendly to travelers, and he shares his memories of the university in Cretia with Agnes. In the evenings, Agnes stretches and practices the sword forms that she learned from her mentor Mylah, who left the castle shortly after Fhiad’s arrival and hasn’t returned since.

On the first night after they enter the northern forest, Fhiad watches Agnes practice and confesses that his magic won’t be useful against the dangers they’ll face in Erdbhein. He asks that Agnes remember him as human before transforming himself into a boar.

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This chapter is the transition stage between narrative acts that Jessica Brody (of Save the Cat Writes a Novel fame) calls “the eye in the calm of the storm.” It’s a seemingly extraneous but actually extremely important part of the story in which the characters take stock of their situation, their relationships, and their goals.

Even before I read Save the Cat, this in-between chapter was always one of my favorite parts of any longer story I wrote. This is especially the case with romances, where this scene is almost always the first intimate moment the characters spend together. If An Unfound Door were a different type of novel, things would have gotten spicy before Fhiad decided to transform himself, but he just kisses her hand. Which is plenty romantic enough, I think.

I end this chapter with the suggestion that Fhiad is going to be reckless and violent as a demonic boar, but this is misdirection. Even in the form of a powerful monster, he isn’t emotionally equipped to handle action, and Agnes is going to have to forcibly transform him back into a human in order to drag him forward in the next chapter.

Even to me, as someone who ostensibly knows how this story ends, it’s been interesting to see how Fhiad has developed as a character. He initially seems strong and dangerous, but his personality becomes more complicated and neurotic as the reality of his trauma sets in. He slowly unravels as he goes from one set of bad behaviors to another, which is always fun to watch. In this chapter, however, Fhiad is a completely normal person, which I think is the key to the story. As long as Fhiad isn’t subjected to the pressure of being involved in history-changing events, he’s fine.

The goal is to get both Fhiad and Agnes to the point where they’re able to accept that they can just leave these ruined kingdoms behind them and start a new life elsewhere. I therefore used this chapter to create foreshadowing that strongly suggests that this is the best possible outcome for them both. Although their respective homelands are beyond redemption, Agnes and Fhiad can still save each other.

The illustration of Agnes for this week’s preview graphic was created by Anta ARF, who posts brilliant and shining fantasy art on Cara (here), on Tumblr (here), and on Twitter (here).