Last week Wednesday was Manuscript Wish List
Day on twitter, an event wherein literary agents and editors post the types of
books they're looking for right now. If, like me, you’re actively seeking a
literary agent to represent your work, check #MSWL on twitter and start
scrolling through it! Starting before chemo, continuing during it, and interrupted
only briefly in the afternoon for my customary post-chemo nap, I spent most of
the day Wednesday going through all the posts, marking down who might want the
kind of story I’m trying to sell. All told I found eight pretty strong matches.
There was even a request for fantasy told from multiple points of view with
characters on both sides of the central conflicts, a siege, and a hidden villain
working behind the scenes. Since The Legacy of Rythka contains all these
elements I remain cautiously optimistic about that one.
Throughout the day a few overarching themes
emerged, no matter the genre, target audience, or tone that people requested.
Almost everyone wanted stories of resistance, social and moral struggles, minorities
and oppressors, refugees, or fighting for change. Such topics dominated the day, a heartening sight to see, partly because my
stories examine these themes, but mostly because these are the ideas we need to
see addressed more. These are the lessons we clearly need to learn yet, perhaps
personally and certainly as a society.
It highlighted what, for me, is the most
beautiful aspect of literature and one of the main reasons why I write. Literature
allows us to enter worlds both similar enough to ours to harbor the same issues
as ours, yet different enough that we can see those issues objectively, from an
outsider’s perspective. Certainly my goal with The Legacy of Rythka is to make
that possible.
When I first invented the land of Rythka and
reinvented it over the years, I purposefully crafted a world with fantastic, sweeping
landscapes, nonhuman species and races, and customs and beliefs that differed
from anything in our planet. Yet Rythka’s landscapes are in many ways amalgams
of the places I have travelled in North and South America. The species and
races of Rythka clearly parallel and reflect some of the racial dynamics found
in our world. Culture and religion in Rythka serve the same purposes—and
are manipulated in the same ways—as the customs and creeds of this world.
Rythka is plagued by many of the same issues as our world, though I hope it is
different enough to show those issues in a new light. I don’t know if I
succeeded or not, and ultimately you’ll have to judge that for yourself, whenever
it gets published.
Whether the timely critiques of society and
lessons we must learn come from my books, or, far more likely, from the writings
of others, one thing seems clear. Great literature and the people who read it
will continue to play a key role in shaping the future. So long as enough
people keep reading, we’ll be alright.
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