A letter from Miljah
From the Crowded Hall
There are certain moments in a writer’s life when the world he has carried privately for years suddenly seems to step beyond him.
FanX was one of those moments.
For a long while, Miljah belonged to notebooks, piles of maps, late-night revisions, sketches passed back and forth, and the strange inward labor of trying to make an imagined place feel old enough to have a memory of its own.
Then, for a few remarkable days, it stood in a crowded hall.
People stopped.
They picked up the books.
They studied Luke’s art.
They asked about the realms, the characters, the old wars, the symbols, the languages, and the roads that run beyond the edges of the stories already written.
Some left carrying Heritage of Loss. Others took home At Full Draw. Some simply lingered and talked with us for a while.
Luke and I came away from FanX deeply grateful.
We had hoped people might be curious. We had hoped some might connect with the work.
We were not prepared for quite how warmly you received it.
There is something difficult to describe about meeting a reader at the very moment a story ceases to belong only to its author. A book begins in solitude, but it does not remain there. Once it passes into another person’s hands, they bring their own memories, fears, hopes, and experiences to it.
In that sense, the story changes.
It becomes shared.
To those who discovered our work at FanX, then, welcome.
You have joined us in this most spectacular endeavor as we press on into the rich world of Miljah.
Looking Toward October
Our October newsletter will include an update on The Darkest Tears, the next novel in Tears of the Aashahl.
I will share a little about its progress, where the manuscript now stands, and some of the questions I have been wrestling with as the story continues to grow.
A second book is a peculiar thing.
The first novel introduces the world.
The second must prove that the world extends beyond the horizon.
There are places in The Darkest Tears that have existed in my notes for decades but have never yet appeared on the page. There are older shadows moving behind the Subjugate, and characters who must begin to understand that the events surrounding them are part of something far larger than they first believed.
I am looking forward to speaking more about that soon.
On Old-Soul Fantasy
The October newsletter will also explore something I have been thinking about a great deal lately:
What do I actually mean when I call my work “Old-Soul Fantasy”?
It is a phrase I began using because I needed a way to describe the kind of fantasy I have always loved, and the kind I am trying to write.
Old-Soul Fantasy is not simply fantasy made to resemble older books.
It is not nostalgia for its own sake.
It is, rather, a belief that a fantasy world should possess a sense of inheritance.
The characters should feel as though they were born into a world already ancient.
The road beneath their feet should have been traveled long before they arrived.
Songs should survive after the names of their composers have been forgotten.
Ruins should stand whose purpose no living scholar can entirely explain.
A sword might have a history.
A village might carry an old grief.
A custom may endure simply because fathers taught it to sons, mothers to daughters, and no one remembers who first began it.
These things create the feeling that the story we are reading is not the beginning of the world.
It is merely one chapter in it.
That matters to me.
I want the realms of Miljah to feel inhabited by memory.
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But there is another part of Old-Soul Fantasy that is equally important.
I believe the small things must matter.
Fantasy is often concerned with kingdoms, armies, gods, monsters, and the fate of worlds.
I love all of those things.
But a great battle means little if we do not care about the person standing in the shield wall.
A kingdom is only an abstraction until we know the farm, the hearth, the village lane, and the people someone is fighting to return to.
So much of the fantasy I love lives in those smaller moments.
A meal eaten beside a fire.
An old friend walking beside you when the road grows difficult.
A letter carried across great distance.
A song remembered from childhood.
A promise made quietly, with no witness but the person receiving it.
Those are the things that give weight to the larger events.
Without them, the war is only spectacle.
With them, it becomes loss, sacrifice, and hope.
That, perhaps more than anything, is what I mean by Old-Soul Fantasy.
A world older than its heroes.
People eclipsed by the events surrounding them.
And the stubborn belief that their choices matter anyway.
A Word of Thanks
There is an old temptation among writers to think of publication as the destination.
Finish the manuscript.
Print the book.
Put it on the shelf.
But FanX reminded me that publication is not an ending at all.
It is the point where the road finally begins to gather companions.
So to every person who stopped at our booth, spoke with Luke or me, bought a book, admired a piece of art, asked a question, offered encouragement, or simply spent a few minutes wandering through Miljah with us:
Thank you.
You made those few days something we will remember for a very long time.
Luke and I returned home tired, grateful, and newly inspired.
There are more stories to tell.
More places beyond the map.
More old songs yet unheard.
And many miles of road remaining.
I am very glad to have you walking some of them with us.
— Arden Emil
