Magic, Myth, and Mystery: World Building with Cynthia DeKett

It’s an enchanting, fantastical world Cynthia DeKett has created for her Three Sisters Trilogy – a magical environment full of physical dangers as well as treachery and betrayal. But what a courageous trio the author empowers to save it from the Reign of Shadow.

     Emrysia, a shifting landscape of fairies, mermaids, and fauens, brings to mind the richly imagined worlds of Tolkien and C. S. Lewis.  The first volume, Awakening, introduces all three sisters while focusing on the “luminarie” named Aryelle; Lament, the newly-released second volume, explores the land of the Mer and its princess, Lureli.  The final installment, in which Eleanor takes center stage, is well underway.

     Writing as C. A. Morgan, author DeKett, a mother of five with a background in commercial art and a profound love of literature, brings a perceptive eye and keen ear to her work.  And while she calls herself an “armchair theorist” -- someone, she says, “who thinks about things and has a lot to say, but who doesn’t really DO much” – she clearly sits still very little.  The Michigan native, who has made her home in the Northeast Kingdom for over twenty-five years, pursues all manner of creative and entrepreneurial avenues while reveling in a homesteading lifestyle. Yet in all she does, her motto is simple: to help others and make the world a better place.

     In her visionary trilogy, DeKett has set her charges upon a frightening path, one colored by more than a touch of Grimm. Luckily, the young heroines embody the author’s heart and “can do” spirit.  Even their names speak to their strengths and to the meaningful detail imbued at every turn. If anyone can rescue Emyrsia from the darkness, these three sisters, under DeKett’s ingenious direction, surely can.

You’ve just published Lament, the second volume of the “Three Sisters Trilogy.” Tell us about Emrysia and the characters you’ve created.  

Emrysia is an uncharted continent in the Chimera Sea, peopled with mythical races and a yet to be revealed connection to our world. When against her father’s wishes, a winged luminarie named Aryelle empathetically heals a wounded messenger, she awakens an age old prophesy, and must embark on a quest to save her world from the Kra’nochta Empa’ana, or Reign of Shadow. Her first encounter with the other inhabitants of Emrysia is almost her last!

There’s something fishy about Lureli of the Mer, who’s been keeping secrets even from herself. When fierce little Eleanor, a fauen of the Aurrac clanherds joins them, the situation goes from desperate to deadly. Their journey becomes a race against time and memories in the second book, Lament, and the focus shifts from Aryelle to Lureli, though the story weaves in and out of the lives of all three main characters, or “sisters” in every volume.

With this series, I wanted to create characters that were at the same time fantastic and relatable. These three could be teen-aged girls anywhere struggling with how to fit in, figuring out just who they are, and learning to play the hand that life has dealt them. But they happen to live in a world steeped in magic, myth and mystery. Each possesses traits both positive and negative, and - no surprise!- achingly familiar.

Some of my favorite characters to write though, play only minor roles, like the Omnicients - three cannibalistic hags who speak only in verse, loosely based on Shakespeare’s stygian trio. Oh, and Althea, Eleanor’s mother, who wears her heart on her sleeve (though she sports a halter) and has a distinct mountain twang.

Cannibalistic hags and a mountain fauen in a halter?

The Omnicients, keepers of the “Dire flora,” are a nod to two of my favorite writers, William Shakespeare and Dr. Seuss. The Swamps of Dire, their home, is a creepy, sentient bog which takes our young trio hostage at their bidding. The Omnicients are just as they sound; “Never changing. Ever growing. With wisdom ranging and knowledge knowing”… and an insatiable appetite for fresh and tender meat!  

Althea, an Aurrac fauen, is the bountiful common-law wife of Nodd as well as Eleanor’s mother. She personally nursed to health all of the cast-off offspring of the Upper Village who have been floated down Mt. Cor with each spring melt. She’s sassy and sentimental, and boss of the cook-fire. You’ll never leave her kitchen hungry  - for food or conversation.

 How did the books come into being?

The books percolated for a long, long time. They began with letting my mind wander while creating a pencil drawing of Aryelle about thirty years ago. Drawing is, for me, a very contemplative activity. As I sketched and shaded, I imagined a world where she would be at home, and adventures she might have. Four or five years later, after moving east, I drew Lureli, and immediately knew they were connected. It took another ten years to complete the trio with Eleanor. But all that time their story was brewing.

The year my fourth child (who was then my youngest) started Pre-K, I finally began to assemble it into something coherent. I still have little scraps of paper and napkins full of notes. Before I began writing in earnest, I developed a five generation genealogy, and a language based on the meanings of the luminarie ancestors’ names.  Originally, the plot centered more around Aryelle’s parents’ relationship, but just like real life, once the kids showed up, their story took center stage. It took me about a year to write the initial manuscript. I sent copies to friends and relatives- a few of them industry professionals – and got feedback. Then came editing, and looking for a publisher. What a bear that is! I soon realized an agent was necessary to get my work past a slush pile, but they were almost as hard to come by.

Finally, I reached out to Reeve Lindbergh, who has always been very gracious and supportive. She taught me the importance of connectivity. I acquired an agent, but long story short, life (and death) got in the way, and no publishing contract came of it. However, the marketplace was changing: rather than start back at square one, I decided to self publish. And now, here I am with two books under my belt and a third in progress. They will form the backbone of the series, but I hope to do a prequel and sequel to round it out, and weave in a little background material that was edited out. And who knows, maybe I’ll do a spin off in another direction with one of the minor characters. But… there are a lot of other stories I want to write too.

How has self-publishing worked for you?

There are pros and cons. Having my druthers, I would have gotten a nice, fat advance and publishing contract. I’m not a fan of the “who do you know” game, and would rather not have to sell myself at every opportunity. I would gladly give up a little revenue for being able to focus more on writing. That said, having more control really appealed to me, especially since I knew how I wanted my series to look.

I worked with local publishers, and with this second book greatly appreciated the dedicated professionalism of Neil Raphel and Janis Raye of Brigantine Media. Their new division for self-publishers, Your New Book, made the process of getting my manuscript to print fairly painless. If only there was a similar magic bullet for marketing, I’d be all set! For any would-be authors out there, forming a marketing strategy ahead of time is a really good idea. Writing is the fun part; it takes a lot of hard work to make a go of it.

You’re from the Midwest. How did you find your way to the Northeast Kingdom?

That’s a great story! I’m from Michigan originally, and came out here for a painting workshop in 1989. I was kind of at a crossroads, looking for a change, and had to choose between a watercolor class in Arlington, VT and an oils class in Mexico City. Vermont won out with the added appeal of a certain young man who had sung a duet with me in our local community chorus before he moved out here. (He had also unexpectedly kissed me on stage in front of a large audience, and I’d never forgotten it!) I dug up his number, and arranged to visit. I flew into Burlington and drove a rental car over, taking Route 2 the entire way, enchanted by the mountains and all these little towns hugging the road. It was so picturesque! I spent a day hiking with Roger, who is a Soil Scientist with the USDA, then attended my workshop, but ended up leaving it early to spend more time with him.

A month after flying back to Michigan, I quit my job, loaded up my little hatchback, and never looked back. Roger and I have been married for twenty-two years and counting. We live on a quiet hillside, raising much of our own food and our five children in one of the most beautiful places in the world. We’re still singing together, leading music at St. Elizabeth’s in Lyndonville. I also sing with the hospice choir, Continua, and even stepped back on stage a few years ago with the St. Johnsbury Players in Jesus Christ, Superstar. Rog and I work hard, and have great friends here. Life is good.

You mention raising much of your own food.

Last year we had a smaller garden and no livestock because I just didn’t have the energy for it. But we usually raise veggies to spare, and either chickens or pigs. We glean what we can from the land – berries and such, and of course, maple syrup. I cook and bake mostly from scratch, and can or freeze food for winter. My husband is a hard worker too, and the kids help. We’d like to keep bees, but haven’t gone that far yet – there’s only so much we can manage at a time. I still spend way more than I’d like to at the grocery store, but… gotta keep those local businesses afloat too, right?

Tell us about your artwork.

My background is in Commercial Art, but I always wanted to be a writer/illustrator. When I first came to Vermont, I worked part-time for Stephen Huneck as a painter and finisher. I also helped start a co-operative gallery in East Burke, but we weren’t very organized, so that didn’t last. My forte is pencil drawing, though I work in a variety of mediums including pen & ink, watercolor and acrylics, woodcarving (Stephen taught me his technique), paper and clay. I don’t do oils much; I’m pretty sensitive to the fumes. My favorite art projects in recent years have been “illuminating” antique wood furniture using mixed media. I’ve created several pieces for charity - even though I’m fan of making money using my talents, art is very personal, and I do my best work when it’s for something or someone I care about.

Do you feel your singing and artwork influence your writing? 

Most creative people I know are creative in a variety of ways. There is something about the sheer act of bringing things into being, whether art or music or even a loaf of warm, crusty bread, that satisfies like nothing else. I’m never truly happy unless I’m creating in some form or fashion, and would hate to have to choose only one means of expressing myself --- it would be like having to choose a favorite child! Also, I believe we all have talents for duel reasons; to make ourselves happy and to share with those who need or appreciate them. Using them is like flexing a muscle, so yes, they definitely feed into one another.

As I mentioned, my drawings led to stories about the sisters’ adventures. Since writing about them, I’ve done sketches of some of the other characters. Singing ties in more loosely, but I do include a lot of poetry, and Lureli sings a lullaby in Lament. (Can’t have a siren who never sings!) I actually came up with a melody for it, and have shared a recording of it with some of my readers as an extra incentive. My youngest often asks to listen to it when I’m tucking her in at night. Singing, understanding rhythm and flow, definitely makes me a better writer. So does appreciating the beauty all around me. It makes me more detail oriented.

When can readers expect the final volume?

I’m hoping in time for Christmas this year, barring any unforeseen difficulties --- though life is stranger than fiction, as they say.

To find about more about Cynthia DeKett, aka C.A. Morgan, and her work, check out her website.

http://www.camorganwrites.com/

Their Songs Never Cease: Gibbons Ruark's "Hybrid Magnolias in Late April"

Gibbons Ruark

 

                         HYBRID MAGNOLIAS IN LATE APRIL
 


                         You bent to whisper to a small granddaughter,

                         Exposing the bald priestly back of your head,


                         Lifting her then and handing her to me:
      

                            See you in April.
 


                         Never the same, these northern magnolias,

                         As the great starred candelabra ghosting,


                         Even before I left them, the deep-shaded
      

                            Lawns of my boyhood.

                        And yet these too break wholly into blossom,

                        What somebody called the early petal-fall:


                        I walk out one day and the limbs are bare;
     

                           Then they are burdened


 


                        With the flared tulip shapes of opening blooms.


                        Two rainy indoor days in a row, then out,


                        The sun is out, and a fallen constellation
      

                           Litters the grasses.


                        What would you be up to this April morning?

                        Muttering to yourself, looking high and low


                        For the good stick fashioned out of laurel?    

                           I have it with me.

                        Patience.  Lean back and light another Lucky.

                        Whatever will kill you dozes in your rib cage.

                        Read a few more pages in the Little
      

                           Flowers of St. Francis,
 


                        Then throw a window open on the fragrance


                        Of even this, the northernmost magnolia.

                        By now the child you lifted in your arms has
      

                           Slipped from their circle
 


                        To cherish and polish your crooked old stick

                        Into a poem of her own so tender and deft

                        I can hold its wrong end and reach you the worn
                           Thumb of its handle.

Perhaps X. J. Kennedy put it best: Gibbons Ruark is a yea-sayer.

The son of a trailblazing Methodist minister, the North Carolina native is the author of eight volumes of poetry.  Deemed by Elizabeth Spires “the most accomplished formalist of his generation,” Ruark regards himself primarily as a love poet and elegist. His poems, widely anthologized and acclaimed for their attention to structure and music, eschew the esoteric and focus most often on what is close at hand and to heart: family, his beloved Ireland, the beauty of the natural world, and music itself, especially jazz.  

In verses often praised for their polish, grace, and authenticity, Ruark celebrates the milestone and the day-to-day.  Mementos – a bunch of cornflowers; a small glass swan -- become cherished gifts illuminating the bonds that tie across oceans and generations. A vacant lot brings to mind dark, feverish memories, as well as images of hope and reassurance.  Violent deaths in an Enniskillen bombing are cast against the fabric of the cosmos, the constellations in the vast night sky.

Yet uplifting every poignant line is subtle praise for life itself, and a gratitude for human connection. It is a sensibility perhaps instilled in the poet through all those Sunday morning hymns and his father’s affirming ministry.  

In honor of National Poetry Month, we’ve asked Ruark to share his thoughts on “Hybrid Magnolias in Late April,” a poem from his 1999 collection, PASSING THROUGH CUSTOMS.  As it turns out, his daughter Jennifer Ruark’s poem “Walking Sticks,” a gift for her father, provided inspiration.  We thank both for permission to reprint here.  Jennifer, with degrees in English from Swarthmore and the University of Michigan, is a managing editor at The Chronicle of Higher Education.  She lives with her family near Washington, D.C.

Gibbons Ruark has been publishing poetry for 50 years. His work has appeared in many publications, notably The New Yorker, Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, and The New Republic; and has earned him prestigious awards, including three Poetry Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and a Pushcart Prize.  A frequent traveler to Ireland, he counted Benedict Kiely and Seamus Heaney among his close friends, as well as the acclaimed American poet, James Wright. Ruark, Professor Emeritus at the University of Delaware, now lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, with his wife Kay.

Tell me about your beginnings as a poet, the writers you read and admired, whose work most influenced yours.

My beginnings as a poet are hard to remember. Randall Jarrell once said that writing a poem is a way of making yourself forget how you wrote it. That said, my earliest influences are probably the Methodist hymns we sang in church and the passages from the King James Bible that were inevitably a part of the church services I regularly attended as a child. In college I became infatuated by highly lyrical poetry, especially the likes of Dylan Thomas, and I suspect he was among my strongest earlier influences.

As I grew older, I began to be suspicious of or impatient with those beautiful but limited lyrics, because they seemed to distance themselves from our ordinary speech, and I grew to prefer the more conversational cadences of poets like Robert Frost and Philip Larkin. This shift is actually documented in verse in my poem called "Larkin," an elegy for the poet written not long after his death. Yeats also has been extremely important to me, but he seems more like a monument than an influence. It is easy to love Yeats's poetry, but like Shakespeare he seems to exist at a level too high to imitate or be of practical aid as an influence.

A poet with whom I feel more kinship, as it were, is Edward Thomas, killed at 39 in World War I. He was, of course, encouraged to write poetry by Frost when the two lived near each other in England before the war, so there is a linkage there important to me. The two poems I have written for him show more about his value to me than anything I say here could.

Tell me more about your father’s influence.

My father's influence is in part inseparable from those hymns and scriptural passages mentioned in my earlier reply. But he always insisted on this: my conduct was not to be judged because I was a Methodist minister's son, but because I was his son. That, I need not say, was inconsistent with his congregation's expectations. His intelligence, kindness, quiet carriage and moral courage have always seemed exemplary to me, though I have not always successfully followed his example. He was ahead of his time in many ways, particularly in the area of civil rights. In 1947, during the first Freedom Rides in the South, he invited the black activist Bayard Rustin to speak at the Methodist Church in Chapel Hill, for which many in his congregation never forgave him. It was this act among many others that made his next move effectively a demotion. And he imbued me with a love of language that has never left me.

Let’s turn to “Hybrid Magnolias in Late April.” How did this poem come into being?

To go back about as far as I reasonably can, in the early 1960's, when I was in school at Chapel Hill and my parents moved from Laurinburg to Rocky Mount, North Carolina, my father suffered a serious but relatively mild heart attack. I wasn't at home so did not get full details, but suffice it to say that pretty soon he was on his feet again and improving. He was supposed to take walks but not to run, and that proved difficult because there were some fairly unruly dogs in the neighborhood, and it was thought that he needed a stick to ward them off. A friend brought an ideal stick, really a longish mountain laurel root, I think, down from the Carolina mountains, and gave it to him. It had a beautiful natural handle shape on one end, and my father sanded and sanded it with finer and finer sandpaper until it was smooth as glass and quite beautiful and he added to that by putting a clear varnish of some kind on it. I loved that stick and at some point (I can't recall when) I told my mother it was the only thing I cared about inheriting. I got other things as well, of course, but when my father died after "successful" heart surgery in February 1970, the stick came to me.

I often walked with it over the years, and eventually, about the time I started going to Ireland in the late 1970's, I started deliberately looking in curio and antique shops etc. for other sticks to go along with it. I got sticks from Ireland, New Orleans, the Finger Lakes and other places, and then people started making me gifts of sticks, so that by the time our daughter Jennifer was in her Junior year at Swarthmore, I had quite a nice collection, gathered rather like a bouquet in a brass umbrella receptacle of sorts I kept by the door. (That eventually wore out and was replaced by a nice tall basket.)

Thus the advent of Jenny's poem, which she wrote for me in the spring of 1986. I loved it of course, and have her inscribed typescript framed and on the wall in the study here. It stayed with me for a long time without my doing anything but taking pleasure in it, and then, a notebook tells me, in late April of 1993, the mystical seven years later, there appear the first inklings (I love that word in this context) that I can find that I was on my way to writing a poem of my own about my father's stick, but with Jennifer's gift much on my mind, as the Irish say.

By that time one of my cherished sticks was one made of cherry and sent to me by Jenny from Hiroshima. (I might interject here that I saw my father last around Valentine's Day of 1970 and that he lifted the 4-year-old Jenny up in his arms and said to me "See you in April, boy." He was dead ten days later, and you will see that those words got into my poem's first stanza some twenty-three years later.) I see, looking at my notebook, that I did most of the work on the poem in two days, April 24th and 25th, then tinkered with it off and on and sent it to The New Yorker on the 28th. It must have been summarily rejected there, since I was able to send it to Mary Jo Salter at The New Republic as early as May 11th.

Fairly early I decided to cast it in the form of Sapphics, and equally early I knew the last word would probably be "handle." Since the Sapphic stanza is quantitative verse and English measures are traditionally qualitative, Sapphics have normally been thought impossible in English, but one can try an approximation anyway, as I have done in several other poems.  I think that one reason my poem is in any traditional form is that it is in fact about tradition, handing feelings and standards down over the generations. I know I never thought about this at the time, but the reason it is in Sapphics in particular may have to do with its kinship to "Lecturing My Daughters," also a poem about my father and, in that case, both of my daughters.

Salter returned the poem to me on June 3rd, expressing the hope that I could work out what she saw as the awkwardness of the last few lines. I did so to my satisfaction, returned it on June 8th, and it was ultimately accepted and published in The New Republic for October 4th. The final acceptance letter and any proofs I received I cannot currently find.

Jennifer Ruark

 

                         WALKING STICKS

There is a comfort in walking,

the easy rhythm of one foot

falling solidly to earth

and one foot surely following.

And with your newest walking

stick, a third beat, tapped out

by the shiny tip on the end

of a slender Irish blackthorn.

You left by the back door, pulling

it from the bright brass can,

shifting it in your hand

as you set out, to find

the proper place it held.

Your first one is still your favorite:

your father found

the root of a mountain laurel

with a natural grip,

worked it smooth

and polished it.

Now in the backs of dusty shops

you discover birch, maple and walnut,

some cool and clean as marble,

bits of light wood fit with dark,

others with the nub-ends of smaller

branches still attached,

and even one with a solemn-headed owl,

ivory carved to make a handle.

Now one by one you gather

them, but none like the first from your father;

walking with it you remember

one hand fitting into another.

Even as a young woman, your daughter realized the importance of those walking sticks, especially of that one you'd inherited from your father. Tell me more.

Jenny turned 5 the April after my father died in February, so although she knew and loved him, she did not have that much time to get to know him. So her strong feelings and high regard for him are significantly inherited from me in the way that the walking stick was inherited from him. The movement of the whole experience is interesting, I think. It starts out with my inheriting that single stick, then the other sticks gather around it and prompt Jenny to write her poem, and then in my poem I return to the single stick. I say "stick" here rather than "cane" since the latter calls up for me something more formal and not necessarily hand-made. Though several of the sticks I have might not be "one-of-a-kind," a number are and were just cut out of a hedge or off a tree somewhere and then finished to varying degrees. For instance, the one Jenny mentions with the "nub-ends of smaller branches still attached" is an old blackthorn worn by much use which I found in a curio shop in Dublin which no longer exists.

Walking sticks are much in use in Ireland, or at least used to be, and my great old friend Ben Kiely carried one routinely long before he needed it for support. Walking sticks are company on solitary walks. In 1983 when I was with Seamus Heaney in Dublin, I showed him the blackthorn I mentioned and he went upstairs and brought down a stick that had belonged to Charles Stuart Parnell and which had been given him by Conor Cruise O'Brien with papers about its provenance and instructions to pass it on to another deserving Irish writer when he thought it appropriate. More than just a few years ago he handed it on in a public ceremony to the poet Nuala Ní  Dhomhnaill, who was the first woman to receive it. So there's an Irish element in all this as well. Heaney has several poems involving his father's walking sticks, which were likely used by him partly to move cattle as he was a cattle dealer as well as a farmer.  A little 3-line poem about facing the ice in Cambridge when he was teaching at Harvard indicates that he inherited at least one of his father’s sticks.

Regarding the element of support that sticks or canes provide, I can't help thinking that it matters that my mother graduated over a long time from a wheel chair to a walking stick in her eventual recovery from paralysis owing to polio. The image of offering someone in physical trouble help by reaching out with a stick must also be involved. I think offering someone the handle rather than the other "wrong" end might be my invention. I don't know.

Ruark's most recent collection

Why does poetry matter?

I've just spent an afternoon with my friends who play Irish music, so my first impulse is to say that every poet is a failed musician. Walter Pater said: "All art constantly aspires toward the condition of music." At a certain level I think that is true. When one writes a poem he is trying to make a piece of verbal music.

But at another level poetry wants to be not equal to but somehow better than music. Since, along with physical touching, we want words to convey our deepest feelings, in one sense one wants a poem to tell something that matters in the most musical way possible. So form has always mattered deeply to me. It is a way of turning words into music.

The other feature of poetry that matters most to me is perhaps best conveyed by the title of the old hymn which gave its name to one of my books, Rescue the Perishing. What poetry does is to save what would be otherwise lost.

This interview appears in the April 2015 issue of The North Star Monthly.  Check out their site: 

http://www.northstarmonthly.com/