Today we are joined by author Jennifer Lawrence. Jennifer was recently published in the Morrigan Books dark fantasy anthology The Phantom Queen Awakes along with best-selling authors Anya Bast, C.E. Murphy and more. Below, she gives us some insight into what inspired and led her to submit to the anthology.
“I originally stumbled across a call for submissions for this anthology in a community on LiveJournal that centered around the Morrigan. I’m familiar with the Morrigan from a life-long love of the different mythologies of the world. Additionally, roughly three-quarters of my ancestry is rooted in Ireland and Scotland, the ancient home of the Morrigan. I’ve known since I was fairly young (14 or 15, perhaps) that the Catholic faith I was brought up in wasn’t a good fit for me. It wasn’t that I didn’t necessarily believe in those things; it was more that they didn’t sing to me. I could believe in them the same way that I could believe that the earth revolved around the sun, but they didn’t inspire me with the deep faith that so many saints and mystics have written of.
When I turned eighteen, I began a long exploration into the various faiths of the world, trying to find the one that was really meant for me. I looked into Judaism, and Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism and Taoism. Wicca was interesting, but still not right…and then I discovered the existence, around the age of twenty-four or –five, of the various reconstructionist pagan faiths. These faiths—Asatrú and Hellenist Polytheism and Celtic Reconstructionism and similar paths—all seek to reconstruct or restore, as nearly as possible, the old ethnic pagan faiths of these various countries (Greece and Ireland and Norway and so on) to a modern standing.
And all of a sudden, I had found what I was looking for. I read the old epics like the Táin Bó Cúailnge and the Battle of Magh Tuireadh. I learned about the old gods of my ancestors from Ireland—Danu and the Dagda, Lugh and Brigid, Manannan mac Lir and the Morrigan. I researched their holy places like Tara and Kildare. I dreamed of some day making a trip to Ireland.
And so I embraced the worship of the pagan gods of Ireland, including the Morrigan. There are many ways to honor Her. One way I chose to do so was to go back to taking martial arts lessons, which I had enjoyed when I was younger, but stopped doing as I got older. Learning to better defend myself should I be attacked seemed a perfect form of homage for a goddess of war.
The story I have written for the anthology The Phantom Queen Awakes ['The Washerwoman'] is another devotional work. The Irish honored their bards over almost every other class in their kingdom, save perhaps the druids. Passing down the epics, songs, poems, and other tales from one man to another, preserving their history and literature, was considered one of the noblest acts a person could do. The tale I wrote for this anthology is not an old traditional one, but in sharing it with an audience, I am stepping for a moment into the shoes of those long-dead bards, and I think that in telling it, the Morrigan has paused for a moment to smile in approval.”
Jennifer, thanks so much for being here and for sharing such a personal part of your life and writing with us. If you’d like to ask Jennifer any questions, please do so below in the comments section, as she’ll be popping in and out throughout the day to chat with our readers.
And be sure to pick up a copy of The Phantom Queen Awakes, which includes Jennifer’s amazing short story among others, online or at your local bookstore. Our review of the book is coming soon, so stay tuned to RAO.
February 26th, 2010 at 11:23 am
It’s really great to be here today, Teresa! “Washerwoman” was my first professionally-published short story, but I’ve had a number of other things published as well, from poetry to RPG material to urban fantasy/erotic romance.
Part of the thrill in having my story in “The Phantom Queen Awakes” was sharing space with so many other great writers. The anthology includes stories from Anya Bast, Katherine Kerr, C. E. Murphy, and Elaine Cunningham, so I know I’m in good company!
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February 26th, 2010 at 12:01 pm
Fáilte Jennifer. And thank you for taking the time to do this. Your spiritual journey sounds so much like mine and I have to admit I still have not read the anthology as it is still on the way to me (I live in Kuwait).
I wanted to ask about the thought process behind the story, how did you prepare yourself to write it? Was it easy or hard (I know that sometimes The Mórrigan can make things interesting)?
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February 26th, 2010 at 12:31 pm
Hi, Maya! Great to see you here today.
I don’t know so much that I’d call what I do a process. Generally, my writing starts with two things pretty much simultaneously, the characters and the plot. The characters were the easy part here; at least one of them had to be the Morrigan herself. The story had to be set during ancient Celtic times, so that set limits to the plot.
The Morrigan has many facets: war-goddess, death-goddess, goddess of prophecy, triple-goddess, fertility goddess, goddess of sovereignty. But who else would be sharing the story with her? I didn’t want a battlefield epic, full of blood and gore (indeed, the submission guidelines gently suggested they’d rather not have a story overflowing with the red stuff, a la the Hostel and Saw movies). I knew less about her aspects as goddess of fertility and sovereignty.
That left prophecy, didn’t it?
Those who have studied the Morrigan know that she can predict the deaths of men on the field of war, but that’s not the only way her gift of prophecy manifests. In one way, she’s almost like the bean sidhe, the ancestral ghosts of so many proud Irish families, that scream the night before a member of the family is due to die. Legend states that, if you see the Morrigan washing your clothes in a stream, your death is fated to come soon.
But if I wrote that into the story, whose death was she predicting?
In the end, it wasn’t a soldier, a nobleman, a druid, or a king. It was an old woman, not all that different from the crone that the Morrigan is sometimes portrayed as, washing her family’s clothes at the stream the morning after overhearing an ugly family conversation between her son and his wife. In the end, the story isn’t about absolutes, but about how fate and destiny can sometimes be more flexible things than you’ve been taught.
Everybody dies eventually. And sometimes you realize that being fated to die doesn’t necessarily mean immediately.
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