Southern Fried Chicas

Please join us in welcoming Drollerie Press author Joely Sue Burkhart. After you read her post, leave a comment and you’ll automatically be eligible to win a copy of her latest book, The Rose of Shanhasson.

And now here’s Joely!
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When I grow up as a writer, I want to be known as “Robert Jordan meets Laurell K. Hamilton.”

At least that’s what I thought when I was a one-year-old writer just starting out. Four years ago, I didn’t know what point of view was, let alone genre and shelving. My two favorite authors were Robert Jordan, fantasy author of The Wheel of Time series, and Laurell K. Hamilton, (horror, dark fantasy, erotica?) author of the Anita Blake and Merry Gentry series. So it was natural, I suppose, that I wanted to take the best of both worlds and create my own story with epic fantasy, blood, and steamy sex. What was wrong with that?

Evidently quite a lot, as I came to discover.

As a reader, I love big meaty fantasy series, but I’m often dissatisfied. I want MORE. I want more relationships, more romance, and yeah, more sex. But I also find many “fantasy romances” and “romantic fantasy” rather lacking. I love detailed cultures, rich worldbuilding, big plots, and quests; however, if the romance is done well, then quite often the worldbuilding suffers, or vice versa.

So I decided to write what I could not find as a reader.

One well-meaning person laughed when I told them of this dream: You aren’t Laurell K. Hamilton and you’re not Robert Jordan. You can’t get away with combining genres. You can’t sit on the fence. Fantasy readers won’t be happy because of the gushy romance and sex; the romance readers won’t be happy because of the epic quest of the story, the strange cultures, and the violence.

She was right, sort of, but I had to learn the truth in a roundabout way.

The Rose of Shanhasson was my first completed novel, delivering me as a newborn writer five years ago this September and setting my feet on a steep rocky path. I suffered through constructive RWA contest critiques until I learned exactly what POV was after all. I learned everything I could, rewrote the story, and then learned some more. However, in 2004 I actually quit the story, which is painful to admit. I’d come to believe the dream would never live, and so I tried to create another dream, abandoning all I knew to force my growth in a different direction.

I tried to jump down off that cross-genre fence and broke both my legs in the fall.

As I healed, though, I learned that roots have a way of defining who you are, no matter what branches may be grafted to the trunk. My roots were clear, founded in Shannari’s epic story of love and betrayal, Shadows and Blood, darkness and light.

After writing other stories, I came back to Rose late in 2006 and wrote it from scratch again–not a “revision” but a complete rewrite from page 1. I didn’t finish that draft until the beginning of 2007. Then I tried my hand at writing a shorter novella set in a companion country of the same world, and to my great excitement, found Drollerie Press.

You might characterize some of our stories as speculative fiction, mythic fiction, slipstream, new weird, urban fantasy, dark fantasy, paranormal, magical realism, mystery, science fiction, romance or horror. Any of those would be true, but there are story elements that never die: the quest, the coming of age tale, the epiphany; and there are elements that will always fascinate us: tales of creation and dissolution, who we are and where we come from; stories about magic, love, mystery, and life. We find those ideas especially intriguing when presented within the framework of myth, legend, and fairy tale.

Whoa, hard to characterize stories heavy in fantasy, myth, legend and love: right up my alley! Shannari has found a wonderful home at Drollerie. More importantly, through her journey, I found myself as a writer. Lo and behold, I’m not Robert Jordan. I’m not Laurell K. Hamilton. I’m Joely, haunted by a Shadowed Blood with an ivory rahke, who refused to let the dream die even when I tried to let it go.

The Shadowed Blood is a story I’m giving away via Friday Snippets each week on my blog. More free reads can be found HERE.

–Joely Sue Burkhart

Joely’s Blog
Drollerie Press