Welcome to the Storyfire Glade, a resurrected monthly newsletter brought to you by writer L.S. Feldman. We discuss great books and share short stories, writing prompts, and thoughts on how creativity can propel us along life’s healing journey. If this newsletter is unfamiliar, it’s because you signed up a while ago, but I’ve been on hiatus. Click here for past articles.

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Happy August, friends!

It's absolutely wild to think it's been a whole year since I've written a newsletter! I had my third little one (welcome, Henry!), and while getting used to being outnumbered by kids, my family moved across the country! Fortunately, I now live in the Pacific Northwest, which is a great place to write moody dark academia (and other short stories).

I’ve been thinking about how fiction helps us process the best and worst circumstances in our lives. Here are two great examples:

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Book Review: N.K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season

Recently I made a list of well-known modern fantasy I hadn’t read yet. Included in my list is author N.K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season, a Hugo Award winner and the first in her Broken Earth trilogy. The story follows three women with the power to manipulate the earth with devastating consequences. They must survive in a society that fears and hates them for this quality, which they can’t control. Meanwhile, the physical world feels like its own character. It roils, bubbles, breaks apart, and tries to destroy its inhabitants on a regular basis.

This book is fascinating for many reasons. I was initially captivated by Jemisin’s writing, which shares just enough to spark curiosity while also painting a picture that is utterly unfamiliar. The worldbuilding is unlike other fantasy/sci-fi I’ve read. The characters feel deeply real as they navigate incredibly difficult circumstances and try to understand themselves and their power. And, in a move I’ve never read before, one character’s perspective is set in the second person (“you do this, you notice that”), which creates a unique intimacy with the reader. Finally, the twist at the end was an utter masterpiece and worth the emotional pain I endured to get there.

I say “emotional pain” literally, because Jemisin wrote this novel to capture and explore the injustice and violent atrocities committed against black individuals in America. She shares in interviews that the book was created out of her reflections on the power of black men in particular, and how that innate power can be seen as threatening and dangerous, leading to tragic consequences.

Knowing Jemisin’s muse imbues The Fifth Season with a depth that’s hard to find in much modern writing. The novel makes power both a weakness and a strength as the characters come to understand themselves in light of their society’s negative perspective. While some criticize the book for being unnecessarily dark, recognizing the pain Jemisin is processing paints the whole story in a new light.

Be warned: this book contains abuse that is deeply painful to read, including abuse committed against children. But it’s an excellent example of how fiction can observe, dissect, and reshape the painful realities of the world around us, both our own personal pains and the hurt within wider society.

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The Rewritten Fate of Ophelia

In a lighter example, take Taylor Swift's song The Fate of Ophelia from her latest album. Taylor uses the fictional character Ophelia from Shakespeare’s Hamlet to represent her feelings about failed loves of the past and the new hope born out of a new relationship:

Late one night

You dug me out of my grave and

Saved my heart from the fate of

Ophelia

Ophelia, in Shakespeare’s telling, dies tragically, and her body is literally exhumed by warring lovers. Swift pictures herself dug up and rescued from Ophelia’s fate.

Whether it’s giving new voice to present painful realities or reimagining past hurt with a positive spin, fiction, poetry, songwriting, and other creative acts help us analyze, process, and even revise the pain in our lives. We can’t change the past, but we can paint new hope in our hearts.

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Enjoy a new short story!

Although I've been quiet on the newsletter front, I've enjoyed writing shorter pieces of fiction in recent months. This one was inspired by my recent real-life events, both becoming a family of five and taking a gigantic move across the country. It's not much of a mystery, but there's plenty of fantasy for everyone, and it was a delightful way to process such big changes. I hope you enjoy it! Find the story here.​

Writing News

I spent a few months querying my debut novel, The Crimson Alchemist. Unsurprisingly for an unpublished writer, my inbox was flooded with rejections. I’m happy to be in the company of other authors, from J.K. Rowling to Brandon Sanderson to Steven King (to a million other writers we’ve never heard of) who experienced rejection after rejection early in their careers. Since then, I've worked with an editor to fine-tune the novel and will spend a few months rewriting it before going at it again next year. And whether I traditionally publish it or end up self-publishing, I'm excited to bring this book baby into the world eventually.

In the meantime, I've been focusing on short fiction while spending the majority of my time mothering an infant and two spunky big siblings — which is a win for you, dear reader, because I’ll get to share more of these stories with you! Until next time, may your creative spark propel you along the healing journey.

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See you in September,

Liz

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