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Her Endicott Studio website (www.endicott-studio.com) remains one of the best touchstones for the mythic arts, featuring art, essays, poetry, stories and links to other site
s.
She also has a more personal blog at http://windling.typepad.com/blog/ in which she begins conversations in her posts that are often carried on in a lively discussion in the ensuing comments section.
Thirteen years after the last Bordertown book was published (a shared-world anthology series written by several of the writers Terri first nurtured at Ace and Tor), a new Bordertown book is coming out in 2011 featuring many of the old guard and some of the brightest new writers working today.
Folkroots, the column she initiated in Realms of Fantasy to explore the mythic arts, still appears in each issue with a new editor, Theodora Goss.
And while The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror series that she edited with Ellen Datlow is no longer being produced, the writers and poets she featured in her choices continue to create work for all of us to appreciate and enjoy.
These days a whole new group of writers have taken up the mantle of “urban fantasy.” At first they came from the mystery and romance fields, combining elements of those genres with the tropes of more traditional fantasy—I’m speaking here of writers such as Charlaine Harris, Kim Harrison and Patricia Briggs. Soon after there was a whole new wave of writers inspired by their stories, in the same way writers are always inspired by what came before them, using what they like as a springboard to take the stories they want to tell in new directions.
As with any subgenre, some of the books are wonderful, some not so much. But the difference between what they do and what Terri and I call mythic fiction is that the magical/mythic/folkloric elements of these books is colour and shade, rather than the substance of the story. The new urban fantasy story remains rooted in the genres from which it sprang. Its magic is more often matter-of-fact—bricks and mortar—rather than something that leaves the reader with a sense of wonder.
There’s nothing wrong with that, of course. Whether we call them urban fantasy, paranormal romance, or just “books we like to read,” they provide full entertainment value. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be as popular as they are, making inroads into television and film.
I’m sure their readership overlaps with that of mythic fiction, but the two styles remain very different for all that they use many of the same tropes. For me, the biggest difference is that mythic fiction has room for a story to be told at a slower pace. The preternatural elements are present, not only for their coolness factor (werewolves and witches and vampires, oh my!), but because fairy tales and mythology tap into a deeper part of the psyche than an adventure story can reach.
In the end it’s apples and oranges. I’m just happy that we live in a literary world where there is room for both, as well as for whatever new things might be waiting for us on the other side of the days still to come.
As I’ve said before, I’m a writer and this is what I do no matter what name we put to it. Year by year, the world is turning into a darker and stranger place than any of us could want. Somewhere, there is always a war. Somewhere, there is always the threat of an act of terrorism. Somewhere, there is always a woman or a child in peril. Nature itself delivers devastating snowstorms, tsunamis, hurricanes and earthquakes. This is the only thing I do that has potential to shine a little further than my immediate surroundings. For me, each story is a little candle held up to the dark of night, trying to illuminate the hope for a better world where we all respect and care for each other.
A Bird That Whistles
Emma Bull
The dulcimer player sat on the back steps of Orpheus Coffeehouse, lit from behind by the bulb over the door. His head hung forward, and his silhouette was sharp against the diffused glow from State Street. The dulcimer was propped against his shoulder as if it were a child he was comforting. I’d always thought you balanced a dulcimer across your knees. But it worked; this sounded like the classical guitar of dulcimer playing. Then his chin lifted a little.
’Twas on one bright March morning, I bid New Orleans adieu,
And I took the road to Jackson town, my fortunes to renew.
I cursed all foreign money, no credit could I gain,
Which filled my heart with longing for the lakes of Pontchartrain.
He got to the second verse before he stopped and looked up. Light fell on the side of his face.
“I like the bit about the alligators best,” I said stupidly.
“So do I.” I could hear his grin.
“‘If it weren’t for the alligators, I’d sleep out in the woods.’ Sort of sums up life.” He sounded so cheerful, it was hard to believe he’d sung those mournful words.
“You here for the open stage?” I asked. Then I remembered I was, and my terror came pounding back.
He lifted the shoulder that supported the dulcimer. “Maybe.” He stood smoothly. I staggered up the steps with my banjo case, and he held the door for me.
In the full light of the back room his looks startled me as much as his music had. He was tall, slender and pale. His black hair was thick and long, pulled into a careless tail at the back, except for some around his face that was too short and fell forward into his eyes. Those were the ordinary things.
His clothes were odd. This was 1970 and we all dressed the way we thought Woody Guthrie used to: blue denim and workshirts. This guy wore a white T-shirt, black corduroys, and a black leather motorcycle jacket that looked old enough to be his father’s. (I would have said he was about eighteen.) The white streak in his hair was odd. His face was odd; with its high cheekbones and pointed chin, it was somewhere out beyond handsome.
But his eyes—they were like green glass, or a green pool in the shadow of trees, or a green gemstone with something moving behind it, dimly visible. Looking at them made me uncomfortable; but when he turned away, I felt the loss, as if something I wanted but couldn’t name had been taken from me.
Steve O’Connell, the manager, came out of the kitchen, and the green-eyed man handed him the dulcimer. “It’s good,” he said. “I’d like to meet whoever made it.”
Steve’s harried face lit up. “My brother. I’ll tell him you said so.”
