Across the Summer Sea . . . to find mermaids!
Ever since I was seven years old, my favorite fairy tale has been Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid.” For those who are only familiar with the Disney cartoon of this story, I should warn you ahead of time that Andersen’s story is far different. Disney’s version drastically changed the ending, for one thing. Don’t get me wrong, I find the Disney version has its own charms. But I far prefer Andersen’s original. It’s a bittersweet tale of longing, love, transformation, loss, death, and rebirth, the same themes I explore in the Landers Saga, the same themes that touched me deeply as a child struggling with demons far beyond my years.
Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid” enchants with poetic descriptions of life below the waves, a fantastical world that captured my imagination at a young age. I remember gazing at Lake Superior after reading “The Little Mermaid” and seeing the movie Splash, longing to become a mermaid myself so I could experience the world Andersen described. My very first offering to my elementary school project fair centered around merfolk–a huge poster I drew of life under the sea, the captions detailing in practical terms (food and clothing, for instance) how merfolk lived. It was only a matter of time before I started writing about my own fantasy world, inspired as I was by Andersen, Tolkien, Robin McKinley, Alice Hoffman, and others.
Surprisingly enough, considering my early obsession with fins, my first serious foray into the fantasy realm as a writer ended in a bird nest, not a fish tail. Although various characters mention mermaids throughout the Landers Saga, it’s only in The Curious Fear of High and Lonely Places that we actually meet a mermaid for the first time. Of course, the winged theme of the Landers Saga has roots in my early childhood experience as well–my favorite pets growing up were homing pigeons. I hand-raised a number of squabs when I was young, teaching them to ride on my bike handlebars and watching them fly with that vast, dizzying freedom only a bird in flight experiences.
So I love birds and merfolk, and now, with the introduction of Ghitana in The Curious Fear of High and Lonely Places, I finagled it so I could write about them both in one story. While working on The Bird Children, I digressed from mermaids a bit to focus on Avreal’s struggles as a young bird-girl. However, in Across the Summer Sea, which picks up about three years after the end of The Bird Children, I return to writing about mermaids again with a new point of view character. I’ll leave it to those who have read the Landers Saga to guess who this new character might be!
Read More