A Magical Blend: Writing Historical Fantasies...with Lucy Strange

Hello and welcome to MythMakers. MythMakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is Julia Colting and I'm an author and I also run the centre. Today I'm joined by a very good friend to us, Lucy Strange, who not only does she help us all teach creative writing on our online fantasy course, she's also an author and today we're going to be talking about writing historical fantasies, that blend of the fantasy genre with historical fiction. So Lucy, why don't you start by telling us a little bit about yourself and your journey to being an author? Hi, hello, Julia. Hello everyone, lovely to be here. Well, I'm not really sure where to start. I started at the beginning that I've always always been just a lover of stories and all sorts of sorts of stories and when I started thinking about talking to you today and talking about fantasy and I write particularly children's literature or fantasy magical realism, that kind of that sort of thing but ended up kind of 9, 10 and up, that sort of thing. Anyway, I started thinking about children's literature and how a lot of children's literature has fantasy in it that we'd never even think of as describing as fantasy. I was thinking of the magic far away tree and some of these sort of classic stories I used to read when I was little. Anyway, so I always loved stories and never really thought of being a writer particularly mainly because all the writers that I loved as a youngster were all dead. So I sort of thought, and I appreciate this makes no sense whatsoever, that to be a writer you had to kind of be dead and somehow exist only in the past and as a career option that I didn't really appeal. So I just read, I just devoured books for a very, very long time. I trained as an actor, I studied in the English university, then trained as an actor, worked as an actor for a few years, did some singing as well, and then retrained as an secondary school English teacher, and then I did that for 15 years. And so it's with hindsight now, now that I'm writing full-time professionally, I look back on on all of those things that I did and I think actually it was always there, it was always about stories, always about a love of stories, my teaching literature, being an actor, and being a performer for me was always about loving the creativity of the rehearsal process and the dynamics between the characters and the nuances and the language and all that sort of thing. I didn't actually enjoy the performance aspect of it as much as I did the rehearsal. So then about 2014, I started writing, 2013, 2014, I started writing properly, having not really written much at all, apart from some really bad poetry as a teenager, which I think is a right of passage for every. Yeah, necessary, necessary thing to do it. So yes, I started writing, I started writing, I did a bit of journalism, I started writing a blog, and I was living abroad at the time, I was living in the Middle East, and I was really, really homesick. And I think I probably, on reflection, started writing as a way of channeling a lot of these feelings that I was having a missing home, a sense of nostalgia, and a sense of loss for something. And the first, I started writing what actually ended up being my first book, Secret of Nightingale would, I entered the first few chapters in the competition and got an agent through that, and then got my first publishing deal through that. But fantasy, I suppose, is something that we often think of in terms of perhaps more escapist end of literature. And so I think it's quite interesting that when I started writing, it was about escape, it was about escaping where I was physically, geographically, and wanting to be somewhere else. That's a really interesting theme, this idea of escaping, because I think there's also an element of escaping to the past, when you go and pick up a straight historical book, that you can spend time living back in an area that's already happened, you know the story, if you're sticking to real history. So it's perhaps unfair to say that fantasy is the only escapist genre, isn't it, because I think mind you, that you could say that making up a story in our contemporary world is equally you're escaping your quotidian, your everyday existence. It is funny how people say, you know, escape from escaping to fantasy, I think we just escape into fiction. We do escape, we do absolutely. And I think one of the things that's true of fantasy and that's true of historical stories as well, is that because we've got a bit of a remove from our everyday world, it allows us to actually talk about a lot of things that are very, very now and very, very relevant, but we've got that sort of that veil of fantasy or we've got that distance because of the history that allows us to deal with things in a way that's a little perhaps just a bit more gentle or subtle, rather than kind of hitting it head on with a race of contemporary story. So tell us a little bit about your latest books, what they're about and what subject matters you've covered. Well, it's often only when you talk about your books, you realise what they're about. I don't know if you have that. I mean, you want to suddenly sound very sort of tidy enough about your thoughts, don't you? My books are, they're not a series, they're all separate standalone stories, but they do have a few things in common. So Secret Nightingale was my first one that's set in 1919, just after the First World War, it's very much a sort of historical story, but it's got a lot of fairy tale in it. Our castle by the sea is my second book, that's probably the most historical it's set in the beginning of the Second World War and in this one that there is a magical element of an ancient myth about these standing stones on the cliff top here, that's our heroine, but believes in this mystery, believes it's completely true. So all my stories set in the past, all of them have got that bit of magic, that bit of fancy kind of bubbling away, beneath the surface. It goes to Ghostwater is my third book, it's a gothic mystery story set in the late district turn of the century, the year 1899 into 1900, and this one is probably my most sort of classically influenced ones, there's a lot of bothering heights and jane and that sort of thing in there. So my two most recent ones, these have come out within a few months of each other, it's all been crazy, good crazy, but crazy here. So Sisters of the Lost Marsh, this came out in November, it's the only book I've written that is set, it is set in the past, but it's a non-specific past, it's it's it's got the feeling of it just sort of being perhaps a sort of a no-when, but it's a it's a pre-industrial very isolated, very rural community and it's got that feeling of a little bit of a fairy tale world about it, there's a lot of fantasy via kind of folklore, it's that sort of feeling about Sisters of the Lost Marsh, ancient curses and superstitions, that sort of thing. I might read you a little bit of this, actually, and then my most recent book, The Mermaid in the Millpond, is probably my most straightforward combination of historical and fantasy. So we have, this is an industrial revolution story, it's a novella really, it's for a British published called Barrington Stoke, who writes stories specifically accessible for people who got who are dyslexic, who struggle to get into books or reluctant readers, that sort of thing. So they're, I think they're really cleverly designed by the way, not to make this a plug, particularly for Barrington Stoke, but I do think they're amazing. So they're all on the print-on-off white paper, there's lots of illustrations, throughout them, and the font, the language edit, everything is really, really sort of carefully put together to make sure they're really accessible. So it's set in England during the Industrial Revolution, and it's about a girl called Bess, who escapes or thinks she's escaping from a London workhouse, around about the year 1800, and has been offered the prospect of being a pauper apprentice at a cotton mill in the Midlands, and it is not what she thinks it will be, and essentially she's sort of signed up to kind of a slavery working in this in this cotton mill. And to, to contain the youngsters who are enslaved at the cotton mill, they're told this terrifying story that there's a bloodthirsty mermaid that lives in the mill pond, and if they try to escape, she will get them. And it works as, as I suppose as a metaphor, because it's about, it's very much about freedom, and so, I don't want to give too much away, but we have Bess trapped in Slaived in the mill, and then we have this mermaid character, and the ambiguity at first is it real, is it a myth, is it just there to terrify the children, but the sense of a beautiful, powerful, fierce creature being trapped, and the idea of a mermaid trapped in a mill pond is this small bit of water contained by the weir that she, that she can't get out of. Sorry, go on, go on. So that story made me think of a, a story which I suppose is now a historical fantasy, though maybe it was contemporary at the time, is the Charles King Lee Water Babies, which if people don't know, is a very intriguing Victorian story about a chimney sweep who gets turned into a water baby. It's written by, from a sort of, it's a religious story, it has a lot of moral lessons. There were two very scary people under the sea. Well, one scary, one nice, Mrs. Doors, you would be done by, Mrs. Dunn by, as you did. The second one obviously punishes you, and the first one is all cuddly. I remember vividly reading a version of this with, I think it was Lucy made, well, illustrations. So illustrations are really part of that reading experience. Were you aware of the antecedents to your story when you wrote it, or is that something you found out since? No, I think, I think having been a, you know, a bookworm and an English teacher, I think all of this stuff is, and it's not always conscious, you're right, it's not always consciously there, but it's all, it's all in there, isn't it? And it all, it all kind of comes through. A lot of my books have got quite obvious, sort of, intertextuality, and, you know, in the placings of those well-loved stories are very clearly there. So in Nightingale Wood, for example, main character of the bookworm, and she talks about a lot of her favorite books, the books she's reading, she's been doing little women, and that sort of thing. A lot of the books and the fairy tales that are part of the story are, are flagged up within the story itself, but it's not always obvious, it's not always obvious to us as we're writing, is it, that the influences that we have. So I didn't think particularly of the water babies, when I was, when I was writing this one, I did think of that there's a grip, one of the less-known grim brothers, fairy tales, the nixie in the mill pond. And so that's something that I was aware of. It's a very different sort of story, but it's the concept of this supernatural creature in a very, that's supposed an industrial, or a very, every day sort of a place. And also that, there's a very odd little poem, this is particularly this influenced Sisters of the Lost Marsh, actually. Do you know, overheard on a salt marsh that poem by Harold Monroe, with the, have a little goblin. I know it because you told us already on our writing course about this poem. So it's so weird. It's so weird. So we have a little goblin talking to a nip from begging for her glass beads, but the thing I love best about it is the title, it's called Overheard on a Salt Marsh. So you just, and the whole poem is just the dialogue between, between the goblin and the nip, but it's overheard. So then it implies, obviously, that the poet, or the writer, someone was there, and they heard this. And it just, and then immediately it creates a whole, a whole story, a whole possible story surrounding that. But anyway, an example of how sometimes we're aware of our influences, and they, and they shape us, and they shape our work. But sometimes they just, things just sort of seep through, don't they? And we, we definitely know it. So you can have something like a mermaid in the mill pond, or a water baby, and each age, the metaphorics, symbolic use of it, is very different. So you were talking about freedom, and the sort of, yeah, captivity and cruelty. I suppose in a sense, anti-industrial revolution conditions of work story. Yeah, yeah. The water babies did have a anti-chimney sweep and forming the child layer. But it also had a very strong, sort of, baptismal, almost death metaphor running through it. Yeah. There's a lot of a bit quiet, quite unpleasant stuff in it as well. I think I did notice that as a child. I just kind of read it. But now I look at it and think, oh dear, this is all a bit, yeah. Anyway, let the past be the past. We can't tidy it up. But just thinking about this issue of writing historical fantasies, I would absolutely love to hear you read some of your work. But we can have that as like story time a little bit further on. But I wanted to ask you about what you admire in other people's historical fantasies. I was just thinking of the ones that I've come across, sort of, were in my mind. There's things like Outlander, which is page onto screen, and the discovery of witches, which has sort of time travel aspect to it as well. And then there's, yeah, I've got to check. I've got the right, is it, I always get this wrong. It's Jonathan Strange. Jonathan Strange, Mr. Narell. No, I always get that wrong. That's a brilliant one, isn't it? So brilliant. Because it's a sort of a, it's a, it's a, it's a different version of the world, we know, isn't it? It's, it's a, it's exactly like the world, we know, except, except for the magic. It's so clever. I've just read Piranasi, which is, I really want to read that. Yeah, I prefer Piranasi. In though, it was a lot shorter, which helped, because I, I found the long reads, you know, you have to really invest in a world. You have to commit me to do. Yeah. Piranasi, I think is, it's sort of a step outside time, but it's in a historical place, and it references historical events. So that's a very interesting use of historical fiction. It's interesting. It's talking about time, time travel, and times that, because two, two of the books, I would say, some sort of the realm of classic children's fantasy, historical fantasy that have influenced me would be Moon Dial, Helen Cresswell. I don't know if you know that. It's a lovely, very odd, about a girl, a sort of critical point in her life. I think her mother is in a coma or something. She's staying with an aunt. Always staying with an aunt. I'm used to that. I'm used to that. You're the responsible aunt, so you don't care where you go, and what you get up to. Staying with an aunt, and I think there's the grounds of a stately home, and there's a sort of, well, she thinks it's a sun dial, but it's not a sun dial, it's a Moon Dial, and the Moon Dial has the power to transport her back in time, and she's there in this stately home, as it was in its hay day, and she meets a child who's a servant there, that's me. I was just going to say the other one, the other one is Thomas Midnight's Quentin, and both of them have this sense of, I suppose that classic feeling to it, and because of the time slip, it is somehow timeless as well. The modern day could be any time, and it doesn't matter where, if that's the 1960s or now. Thomas Midnight's garden is lovely, isn't it? So that for people who don't know, it's about a boy staying, he's been quarantined, hasn't he? He's been chicken poxle measles, or something like that, and he's staying in his flat. He's been sent away because his brother has it. Oh, that's it, I think that's it, yeah, so he's staying his way. Yeah, so again, he's staying with an aunt and uncle, I think, on the end of the flat. And it's a bigger house that's been converted, right? It was a grand house that's now flats, and there's a little old lady who lives in the flat upstairs, and she's quite, she's a bit mysterious, isn't she? And then he can't sleep, and every night, and he starts creeping out into the garden, creeping outside, and it's unclear whether it's sleepwalking or, or if it's actually happening, and I love that ambiguity, by the way, it's something I'll come back to in a minute, because playing with ambiguity, and is this real? Is it happening? Is it a dream? Is it a story within the story? That kind of thing, that's something I really love playing with in my work. So we're not sure what's happening, and he goes out, and instead of that little scrubby yard outside the back of the flats, it's transformed his beautiful gardens of the grand house that it once was, and he meets this little girl there, and they become friends, and the lovely, lovely twist of the story at the end, we find out that the girl... You're spoiling the end! That doesn't everyone know, well, shall I not say? No, no, you're allowed to say. I think that's a lot of enough. It's been out for a long time. So the little girl he meets and becomes friends with is actually the past self of the old lady who lives in the flat upstairs, and it's all about her childhood and growing up in a house, and of course the lovely ambiguity is then, well, who's the ghost here? Is it him? Is he the ghost in her past? Or is she the ghost in his present? And it's really... Yeah, it's really magical, and brilliant, brilliant concept, isn't it? It's Philip Appears, Philip Appears, yeah, and Deemings Island's Helen Cresswell, yeah. The detail in that, which I love in Tollsbynight Garden, is the clock strikes 13, which is just a so simple idea, but that's what I remember, the clock strikes 13, and then the world sort of melts and becomes this other... That's it, yeah, that's it. Very powerful. Yeah, it's lovely. So good. I was going to ask you, you mentioned earlier that doing a historical... doing fantasy, but doing historical fantasies allows us to deal with subjects in a sort of sideways look at them. What subjects are... we've mentioned the industrial revolution, but in the Sisters of the Lost Marsh, for example, what subjects are you dealing with there? Well, there's a strong kind of feminist theme in Sisters of the Lost Marsh, so the girls grow up in a very, very superstitious society. It's society ruled by superstition in their village, reading and writing, as seen as a sort of witchcraft, so people are very, very suspicious of you. So they have to keep it secret that their grandma has taught them to read and write, and she has this secret library hidden away in her room in the house, in the farmhouse. And then they live with her and their father, who's a very unpleasant, embittered sort of a character, and we sort of find out a bit more about his backstory later on, but one of the superstitions in this community that they've grown up with is the curse of six daughters. And it goes like this, be sure the first girl marries well a second in the home to dwell. A third maid can do little harm if set to work upon the farm, four and five must both be wed, or six will bury you, stone dead. So Willer and her and her five sisters have grown up. Sorry, I shouldn't laugh, it sounds very grim. It is grim, but it goes at a less than poems or worth it. All that morbid love poetry. So yes, so they've grown up under the shadow of this curse, and with the father who fears and despises his own daughters because of this curse, which he absolutely believes in. And it's about this idea of within this bubble of a fantasy version of our world. It's about identity and for young people being able to choose who they are and who they want to be and what they do with themselves, what they do with their lives. There's, and obviously not just girls here, but there is a feminist theme in there as well, the idea of girls being property of the father and to be married off. And a lot of, I suppose, yeah, but Willer describes it as her choices have already been chosen. And, you know, I think it depends on where we're talking about in the world today, within some parts of the world, within some cultures, these things are still horribly relevant. But even for the children, I thought I was a teacher before, before I took full time writing, but even for those children who we would think of as growing up relatively free from these sorts of things, the pressures on them are still extraordinary and pressures not just from families and parents from society and from these days, in these days, social media, all these sorts of things. So it's about, it's a big picture and it's about having the confidence to find out who you are and to choose and to make your own choices. It's kind of at the heart of that one. Yeah, I think that one of the ways of understanding our present is to look for patterns of behaviour that were similar in the past. So one of the ones on social media that strike me is is actually from Jane Austen, you know, when Lydia elopes and it's like a scandal, it's like one faux pas means that she's out. The family is disgraced and it reminds me of those things on social media where you do one posting that's a bit cruel or something comes up in the past or you did one unwise gesture or whatever it is and that's that's it. You can't get it canceled. Yeah, so we need to find an intelligent way of dealing with the fact that we are flawed human beings, we make mistakes and unwise choices. The hashing up for Lydia is not quite as factory because she ends up trying to marry her. Well, she, you know, you don't think she's going to have a very happy marriage, but it seems very similar to what happens when someone's reputation has really been gone through the ringer and yeah, yeah, no, they're definitely are completely different examples coming from different set of social understandings and, you know, yeah, but they have a very similar and that's what I think history helps us see. Yeah, I think so. I was just going to actually it made me think of what you were saying about history. My second book outcastle by the sea is about what happened to the enemy aliens as we called them, so about 80,000 or so people from Germany and Austria and Italy as well who'd come to the UK as refugees to be safe, vast majority or refugees. At the beginning of the Second World War and we locked them up in internment camps because Churchill famously said collar the lot because there was there was there was history, people were terrified of spies and all of this sort of thing, but there was a immense amount of fear, anger, hatred, prejudice that was tangled up in the ways in which these people were treated. And that was something when I sort of do my research for this book, this book was very much around, very much around Brexit time here in the UK when I was working on this book and it just, I was, you know, I was so appalled by the amount of fear and anger and I was seeing in the media and that sort of thing. So it was talking about the ways in which we view each other, the ways in which we talk about people from other countries or from other cultures within our own families to our children, in the media, in politics and in times of conflict as well and how easy it seems to be for people to become the enemy, for an entire nation of people to become the enemy, rather than being able to sort of view individuals as individuals. And I was just really interested in how, you know, how can we find compassion here, how can we find this ability to judge an individual as an individual and not as part of this huge hated homogenous kind of mass. So I was dealing with some issues that were really quite, quite powerfully felt at the time, but yeah, through the lens of this historical story. So you mentioned you'd like to read us a little bit. Have you chosen a passage that you'd like us to listen to? As we are very fantasy, I thought I would read to you the tale of the marsh king that's in Sisters of the Lost Marsh. So the girl's mother died, but she was able to read and write and she has left her daughters a collection of stories that she's written, sort of fairy tales to do with the Lost Marsh where they all live. And this is the story of the marsh king. And it's a story that takes on great significance for Willa, our main character in the story. And there's, I was talking about ambiguity in how we're not sure is the story real, is the story kind of seeping into our characters world. So we've got, I won't give it, I'm so tempted to tell you things, but I won't. I'll just share with you the story of the marsh king. So Willa's reading this story to her three younger sisters, the triplets, late one night and she has to read it in secret, obviously, so her father doesn't hear. Just one story, I said, and you've all got to lie still as stone and close your eyes. Six bright eyes snapped shut. Beware the dangers of the marsh, my darlings, I read, tilting the book into the candlelight so I could make out mamas faded twisty letters. Beware the Maya, do not lose your way and never let fear be your guide. Darcy nodded very seriously, her eyes shut tight. Many winters ago, an evil sprite roamed these marshes. He lured folk out into the Maya with his willow the whisper lantern. The marsh folk were afraid of him, afraid that he would use his false blame to ensnare the souls of their loved ones and to steal their livestock. The evil sprite fed upon their fear, he grew fat and gleeful, he used folks' fears to control them and the more frightened they were the stronger he became. He built himself a strange little castle on the Maya, he made himself a crown of bones and he called himself the marsh king. There were only two people who did not fear the marsh king, two sisters called Gloria and Githa Greenwood. They wrote the marsh king down in a book, all the wicked things he did and all his cruel tricks too as a warning to others. The marsh king found out about the book and it was the first time he had ever known fear himself. He was afraid folk would hunt him down with torches and docks so he used his dark magic. He spread whispers that writing was witchcraft, that the Greenwood sisters were witches. He stirred up fear and suspicion until the villagers turned against the Greenwoods and burnt their farmhouse down. The book was destroyed in the blaze and Gloria Greenwood was killed. But the marsh king didn't stop there, he conjured curses and jinxes so that folk were too frightened to rise up against him. He whipped up superstitions which blew like dandelion seeds all over the lost marsh and took root wherever they fell. Fear flourished. Folk became afraid of everything, afraid of books and cleverness, magpies and black cats, blood moons and even their own daughters. And in this way the marsh king ruled over people who were mere shadows of themselves, frightened and cowed. He drugged them like sheep and he drugged them like cattle and they did not question their own misery. Young Githa Greenwood was broken with grief after her sister's death. Folk called her the sun-dead soul. What sun-dead willa? Sun-dead means she felt torn apart, ripped down the middle. She would sit night and day by her sister's grave up on the hill, gazing out towards the shadowy Maya. Months passed. May blossomed and the corn grew tall, hay swayed in the meadows ripe for siding. The days lengthened towards mid-summer like a dog stretching in the afternoon sun and the marshes shone like gold. On the night of the mid-summer moon, Githa Greenwood set out onto the Maya heading straight towards the light of a mysterious lantern that flickered there. But Githa had a lantern of her own. She took out her little tin tinderbox and struck a bright, bright flame. Then all alone she walked into the darkness. And she was never seen again. Oh, did the marsh king get her? Perhaps, but listen, the marsh king was never seen again either, and it wasn't long before his castle crundled down into the Maya. Dead then, said Deedy. Good, nodded Dolly. Defeated, perhaps, but not dead, whispered Grammy's voice from the doorway. A magical being is not as easy to destroy as all that, especially one as cruel and coming as the marsh king. Thank you. Imagine the round of applause from those. I'm imagining. I'm imagining. Yeah. Thank you. So in a way, you're writing in a sitting in a position because you're using myths and legends, which is quite close to a straightforward historical fantasy, because historical novel, because of course our lives are woven in with story and people and families have stories and the rest of it. So do you see a difference between writing a sort of straightforward historical novel and historical fantasy, or do you not even think about those terms when you start writing? I don't think, I don't think, I don't really think in genre terms, I think, because I mean, there's so much blurring between between them anyway, isn't there? So I suppose this story has got more fantasy in it through folklore. But a lot of my stories, it's more teetering on the brink of a magical realism where we have that sense of it. And I think this is something that history gives us actually, which is one of the things I love about using a historical setting, because it makes it feel really real, really concrete and really real. If we're, you know, if we've got the story set within the Second World War, set within the Industrial Revolution, it gives us this context, it gives us this, like a kind of a backdrop on a stage, it makes us feel safe, we know where we are with this, we know a little bit about this time. And that I think makes it all the more fun when you bring in this element of the supernatural, this element of fantasy. And I think it just creates that eerieness and that moment in which we get that sort of shimmering between reality and fantasy. And I think it makes it all the more powerful. Actually, someone, another writer I wanted to mention particularly, it's Frances Harding. Oh, of course. Yeah, the Lightry. The Lightry. And Cuckoo song and these stories which have used very, very real feeling historical settings. And then she takes it, I would say, further into the fantasy world than I do. But I never forget reading, I think Cuckoo song was the first one I've heard that I read. And I didn't really know what to expect. And I was just reading it and I had that, that brilliant moment when I realised it was like a genre shift. And it was just like someone kind of whipping the, whipping the rug out from beneath your feet and just everything. And I think like, you know, when you get those moments in which we actually exclaim out loud, I was just, wow, what? And it was amazing. And I think she does that absolutely, absolutely brilliantly. I think the Jonathan Strange and Mr. Nora was like that. It was another book which had a sort of you may be able to find other books beforehand, but suddenly there was other books like it that came on afterwards. Yeah. Or remind us of things that have already existed. Night Circus, who's that by Erin Morganson? Yes. Yeah, between us. Between us, we've got a Google brain. I've recently, having sort of picked it up in an Oxfam shop, I think. It was on my to read list. And I think I was surprised by quite how historically based it was as an element of sort of, is it that the film about the two contending magicians, the prestige, I think it's called? Well, it's an element of that. Which I hadn't realised from the way it was packaged in the front cover. So if anyone else out there hasn't got around to it, I would highly recommend it. It's a really great read. Very much enjoyed it. Yeah. Another one I thought of was the miniaturist. Yes. Which is another book I really, really enjoyed. Although, I've really, really wanted, I've really wanted an answer with one of those books where the supernatural element of it is just left. And you're... Do you know, it's a bit naughty, really, but my definition between a literary novel and everything else is, literary novels don't give you answers. No, I support well. Having these open-ended, slightly opaque. Yeah, I'm fine, fine. I kind of, I quite like to know the answer, too. I'm just, that's a bit of a joke. That's not the only form of literary novel, but it does, I've just read a historical novel by a gentleman called Andrew Miller, called, and now he shall be entirely free, which equally ends completely ambiguous. You don't know if they die, you don't know if they, they, they escape. And it's obviously on purpose and it's patterned, but I was thinking, hmm, I want to know, you know, and I'm, you first, you have to make up your own ending. Yeah. But I think, I do think, there's a point at which I just go, no, that is just cowardly. Come on. Come on, you mean Cooper. We've gone Cooper. Actually, do you know, Sarah Waters, Little Stranger? I haven't read it, but I've read quite a lot of Sarah Waters, but not that one. I think she's fantastic and great at twists and so on. And Little Stranger is, um, it's a ghost story, really. It's a ghost story, and it's about, um, she, there's a almost kind of plausible sort of scientific explanation for the, for the ghost within, within it. And it's, and it's a story that ends, and you, I think on first reading, I thought, but what, but how, but what happened? And, and it felt like it was all kind of, you know, just hanging open at the end. And then going back, going back to it afterwards, and I could see, like you talked about the patterning, and it's there, it's all there, all the answers are there in, in, in the story. But that's a, that's a brilliantly, brilliantly written historical, historical ghost, ghost story slash fantasy. The turn of the screws a bit like that as well, isn't it? It has that element of ambiguity about the, the, the status of the ghosts and, and who, yeah, when they're coming from, and what, yeah, making it, making it seem like logical, I think, because the thing is, it makes sense. And, and the woman in black, the, the more, um, the, yeah, Susan Hill, I'm not sorry, Susan it. So that's, that's, perhaps I will come back to ghost stories in a, a future event, because I think the whole question of what you do with the supernatural in, if that sort is a fascinating, um, subject bigger than I think perhaps we've got time for now. But, um, thinking about historical fantasy, and we always end where in all the fantasy worlds is the best place to be something. Um, and because you've written a story about a mermaid in a mil pond, I thought I'd ask you, Lucy, if you had the choice again to any of these fantasy worlds to be a mermaid, where would you choose to go? Any of the fantasy worlds we've talked about today? Any, any, not just ones we talked about today, any of them. I've got, some I wouldn't want to go to, which are far too polluted and sort of, yeah, the last one of the mermaid. Yeah, it was only the first one that sprang to mind was Nania, but I'd be freezing, wouldn't it? They do have mermaids in Nania. Um, on the void, on the void of the dawn treader as the, as they go further west, it becomes a bit like the Indian Ocean. It's like crystal blue water. Yeah, Lucy looks over the side and sees the mermaid people down below. So, and the water's sweet. So I think that's probably okay. Yeah, okay, yeah, we'll go with that. So the bit that's not that's not cursed with the eternal winter, we'll go, yeah. Yeah, it's after the spell broken. We never got the answers to whether or not rest of Nania was under, you like the bits that aren't Nania, the, the other, but they under the same spell. That's all affected. I'll have to ask an expert. I'll find out. I think for me, I know the one that I wouldn't want to be in it, which is Netherlands, because the mermaid and that always annoyed me, because they're, they're written to be a bit jealous and there's a crocodile as well. And there's a crocodile. So it seems quite a small place as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I definitely wouldn't want to be in the mill pond. That's, that's for sure. That's out. So I think, I think the best place to be a mermaid for me would be to be in the world of what's that marvel, Aquaman, it's DC, Aquaman. Yeah. We get cool, cool outfits. We've got a couple of lovers swimming around. Yeah, it's actually one of the funniest films if you, if you add start analysing it, the right at the end of Aquaman, his Nicole Kidman, his mother sort of suddenly appears and after a big battle, she suddenly appears in a very posh frock and everyone else has been slugging it out. There's some, there's some moments which are unintentionally funny and Julie Ann Bruce appears as a great sea monster, you know. Amazing. This sounds like a test, I'm going to have to watch it. It's going to be just for the comedy value as well as the vastness of the world, I think. Yeah. Be a mermaid in the world of Aquaman. Yeah, okay. I was just thinking, actually, Game of Thrones, the kind of, what's the Mediterranean, is it King's Landings? Is that the Mediterraneany bit in Game of Thrones? I think that's sort of, yeah, somewhere, I mean, basically, I'm just going somewhere warm. It's fairly suicidal to enter the world of Game of Thrones. Yeah, I mean, yeah, yeah, not really. It wouldn't end well. We've become tired by some ghastly people from somewhere, or dragons or something. Yeah. Anyway, sorry, we've, but these are fun little tangents to think about and it's from these kind of tangents from where next idea has come from, so who knows? Who knows? I think your Caribbean mermaid story is on the way. Thanks very much for being of this Lucy and thank you, everyone, for listening. Thank you, thanks for having me. Thanks for listening to MythMaker's podcast, brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. Visit OxfordCenterForFantasy.org to join in the fun. 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