Hello friends!
So when I was around 9 years old I invented a ghost story that terrified my girl scout troop. Little did I know then how it would influence the path of my life.
So I wrote about this entirely true and utterly ridiculous scene from my youth over at Kensington's Between the Chapters Book Club. Check out "The Girl in the Woods"...
Darlings... I had JUST posted on Instagram about my Edgar Allan Poe shrine... And not an hour later, what launches?
"Not More Lovely than Full of Glee", set on a cold December 24th in a distant past, my sequel to Poe's "The Oval Portrait", has launched as a back-to-back audio drama with its inspiration, thanks to the amazing folks at PseudoPod!
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I mean, look at the log line: "AUTHORS: EDGAR ALLAN POE and LEANNA RENEE HIEBER!" I nearly fainted.
I'm so grateful to the PseudoPod staff for championing my work and creating this beautiful double bill!
"Not More Lovely than Full of Glee" is a Christmas 'ghost' story about what happens after the events of Poe's "The Oval Portrait"...
It's now live, for free, via PseudoPod, in digital + audio! Donations to PseudoPod encouraged!
Darlings, can I just say what a thrill it is, what an honor it is, what a joy it is to see a lifelong dream come true? To be situated next to THE legend, the man who remains my foremost inspiration, it is just the most *incredible* thing. It's impossible to put to words what it feels like to see my name next to his name. He is my everything. I would not be a writer if it were not for him.
I wrote "Not More Lovely than Full of Glee" for A WINTER'S TALE: HORROR STORIES FOR THE YULETIDE in 2020 and I had a dream that someday I'd see my sequel placed side-by-side with what inspired it. "The Oval Portrait" remains one of my favorite Poe stories, short and terribly chilling, and I felt I had something to say about the woman whose life was painted away...
Listen / Read via PseuodPod in the Escape Artists Podcast Network! Happy Holidays! Happy Haunting!
Check out this really fun interview with Actor, Teacher & all around gifted lady Kate Glasheen! In this interview I talk about a life in the arts and everything that has made me tick as a writer, performer & creative individual. Tips & insights for any and every artistic person!
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Divining the Past
One of the intense delights of writing historical fiction—even when it blends into fantasy as mine does—comes from delving into the past via research. Sometimes, before covid, that research involved travel. I write about the ancient Hittites, which took me on trips to Turkey, the location of that Bronze Age empire—to archaeological sites, museum collections, and gorgeous physical settings. Definitely fun. But other times, getting to know the past means deciphering obscure texts. You might assume “deciphering obscure texts” would not be on anyone’s list of intense delights, but you’d be wrong. Definitely on mine.
Not every moment in human history provides equal access to us today. Occasionally, the random events of war and historical preservation nearly obliterate whole cultures. This sort of erasure happened to the Hittites, a cosmopolitan and sophisticated people in the 13th century BCE whose primary rival was Egypt under Ramses II, the pharaoh in the Biblical story of Moses. Fortunately, we humans are clever about resurrecting the past through archaeology. The Hittite world thus revealed is irresistible to me for several reasons: this patriarchal society’s greatest leader was a woman, they genuinely believed in what we’d call magic, their politics and intrigue are entertaining but pragmatic, and I feel the sheer joy of escape into an exotic time and place that nonetheless feels deeply familiar.
What about those obscure texts? Among the main resources now available about the Hittites are thousands of fragmentary clay writing tablets and their proposed translations. They provide fascinating glimpses from long ago.
In my recent novel of historical fantasy, Of Kings and Griffins, I have a pivotal early scene in which the question of who will rule this vast and powerful empire rests on a divination. In the United States and elsewhere, we have elections; the Hittites had divinations. There are a surprising number of parallels. I spent hours studying the available information about divinations from tablets. Such mining into research produced a rich vein of psychological insights that I hope my readers will find refreshing.
Divinations, curses, spells, and all sorts of magic are interwoven into the Hittite way of life. In the case of my key divination scene, the diviners have determined that the gods are angry and not willing to give their blessing to a ruler until some human failure is repaired. (Imagine a scene in the White House on election eve…) The task of the diviner is to identify that failure and what must be done to fix it—and then convince the ruler-to-be to take that action. All by means of yes and no questions only. And of course, the ruler in question is listening in on this process. Tension, egos, drama. Great stuff for storytelling.
In building this scene, I faced a problem that was also a pleasure. I had to tease out from the tablets a coherent picture of what this diviner would actually say and do, and with what objects or other physical “props.” My favorite scholarly source on divinations, a dissertation by Hannah Marcuson, uses the word “opaque” of the techniques described in the tablets. Sometimes we have “scripts” of what a diviner said in a particular divination, but those words include symbolic references that are hard to interpret. Also, physical actions take place in conjunction with the words, but we can’t identify the devices used in those actions.
For a scholar, the project focuses on presenting the conflicting evidence and leaving the giant holes in it wide open. For a writer of fiction, the project requires weighing and deciding on the details to build one continuous vision, like watching a scene in a movie. No gaps or incomprehensible terms allowed. Sometimes I can fill the gaps with elements from other Hittite activities. I became a fan of Marcuson’s dissertation because she did that very effectively, gathering the actual accoutrements of my chosen divination from the known “tools of the trade” that this priestess used in different contexts. Perfect!
After I filled my head with this historical evidence, I immersed myself via imagination into the body and soul of that diviner and watched what she said and did. Writers are adults who have carried their imaginary friends into adulthood. On that writing day, my friend was a sign oracle diviner from the 13th century BCE.
Here are clipped excerpts from that scene as Kantuz, the sign oracle diviner, reads the will of the gods, with the anxious assistance of the Grand Votary and my main character Tesha, herself a priestess and political leader.
The votary
leaned closer still to Kantuz’s ear. “If we cannot place Crown Prince Urhi on
the throne . . . then who? Keep us from civil war. Restore the divine
favor—”
“Are there
forbidden questions?” Kantuz asked. Her eye caught Tesha’s.
The Grand Votary hesitated. Drops of sweat
beaded on his forehead. His eyes closed for a moment and then opened again.
“Listen to the gods. Ask what you must to repair whatever angers them and win
them over to Crown Prince Urhi’s throne.” His voice, a whisper, nonetheless
carried deep concern. In its sympathetic resonance Tesha heard genuine
apprehension about the stability of the throne. She would prefer him to be easier
to dislike.
. . .
Apparently,
the Grand Votary trusted Kantuz, and he feared hiding the truth more than
revealing it. Tesha glanced across the throne. Urhi’s posture had the hardness
of ice. He and the votary might not agree on that.
Tesha
exhaled and shook out her hands under the cover of her full skirts.
Kantuz lifted a variety of wooden and ceramic
figurines from each relevant divider within the three boxes. Some figurines
stood for a category of person, like “king” or “heir.” Others represented
ideas, like “sin of the heart.” Interpreting what they meant all together when
they fell onto the linen was a confusing process that took a great deal of
study. Kantuz filled each of the lot vessels with these tokens.
. . .
In a
strong, carrying voice, Kantuz asked, “Do the gods bless the throne of Urhi,
son of Great King Muwatti?” It had never been the plan to have such a large
audience for this process, but the failure of the bird augury left little
choice—not for a true and honest reading.
Kantuz
shook out a sign from the narrow-necked vessel and placed it at the edge of the
linen cloth. Tesha stretched forward to see the carved figure—the token called
the “deity.” Kantuz shook from the second vessel, and two tokens fell out. She
covered each with a square of linen to mark them as the receiver tokens, the
tokens that would be acted upon. Then she shook from the third vessel, and one
token fell, a flat ceramic piece with a face etched into the clay and a thin
gold band wrapped around it, the “king,” but with a black thread also wrapped
around it to add the placement of “to the left.” Tesha swallowed, trying to
free the tightness in her throat.
Kantuz uncovered the two receiver
tokens and announced the answer. “The deity takes hidden anger and sickness and
puts them to the left of the king. The reading of these signs is: the gods say
no.” Kantuz cleared her throat and added, “I will continue the oracle to find
the hindrance and clear it away.” Kantuz gave the Grand Votary a narrowed glare
that pointed to the complexities she would face.
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Thank you Judith for the thrilling post!
Of Kings and Griffins is available on Amazon. For more about Judith Starkston and the historical background of her novels, go to her website. About Of Kings and Griffins:
A vicious king, vengeful griffins, and a scheming goddess. Can Tesha outmaneuver foes from these three different worlds?
For Tesha, priestess and queen, happiness is a world she can control, made up of her family and the fractious kingdom she and her husband rule within the Great King’s empire. But now the Great King is dead, and his untried son plots against them. Tesha fights back with forbidden sorcery and savvy. In yet another blow, the griffin king lures Daniti, Tesha’s magical blind sister, into a deadly crisis that Daniti alone can avert.
As danger ensnares everyone Tesha loves, her goddess offers a way out. But can Tesha trust this offer of divine assistance or is it a trap—one that would lead to an unstoppable bloodbath?
Escape into this award-winning epic fantasy series, inspired by the historical Hittite empire and its most extraordinary queen.
Of Kings and Griffins, book 3 of the Tesha series, is also easily read as a standalone.
I’m very blessed to be a part of the small Make Art Not War
collective of diverse creative women. Check out our #MakeArtNotWar hashtag on Twitter to follow what our group is up to.
Our most recent prompt in our group creativity initiative is
for one of us to pull at Tarot card and for us each to write our thoughts about
the card, discuss the card as found in our own decks (we fascinatingly have so
many different decks between us) and any related ideas that the card brings to
mind.
Stina Leicht drew the High Priestess for all of us and this thrilled
me. It’s my favorite card.
The High Priestess represents wisdom, feminine intuition and
power. For me, the card represents a certain amount of “life goals” – exploring
ever further and ever deeper into the realms of spirituality and divine
insight. I think of the High Priestess as my guiding light; my North star.
When I first began giving over to more mysticism in my life,
a process and journey that has been nothing short of life-saving and wondrous,
the Mythic Tarot deck came into my life, chosen because my debut novel series,
the Strangely Beautiful saga, deals with Greek Mythology and that’s how
the Mythic Tarot breaks down its journey through the entire deck; through Greek
Gods and Classical figures.
The High Priestess in the Mythic Tarot deck is Persephone.
While Persephone has always been one of my favorite figures in Greek Mythology, I also reinvented her in my Strangely Beautiful saga and the Goddess I created remains one of my favorite and most mysterious of characters; frustrating, maddening, breaking apart, inspiring, luminous and ultimately selfless; giving herself over into the mortal form of a strange young woman who is so full of love that by the sheer power of her heart she ultimately saves everyone around her.
For me, tapping into the wisdom that the High Priestess bids us consider means, like it did for my heroine, opening the heart, sometimes wider than we even think is possible. If we can strain at the seams sometimes, as long as we monitor our boundaries, we can find out what's truly possible emotionally, spiritually, physically.
It’s a particularly resonant and fitting draw for me and for Stina as well, seeing
that “Persephone” is critical for us both. I boldly adopted that classic name and
bestowed it upon the heroine of my Strangely Beautiful saga; Persephone “Percy”
Parker. The title of Stina’s exciting upcoming novel is Persephone Station, and I can’t wait to read it!
May the High Priestess shine and bring wisdom into your life as she has done in mine. I hope you’ll take a moment and meditate on the power of introspection and intuition that she bids of those who draw her.
Follow #MakeArtNotWar on Twitter! Subscribe to my blog here, check out my website at LeannaReneeHieber.com and my Torch and Arrow Etsy shop of Gothic, Neo-Victorian, Steampunk accessories, art, signed books and other reimagined curios!
Join/follow us in our creative ventures! #covengoals
Members of the Make Art Not War Collective:
The
single most influential book of sci-fi/fantasy/horror in my life, by far, was my
first volume of The Collected Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe. That tattered paperback went with me everywhere, it
was my best friend at a lonely time, and Poe’s words spoke right to my young
heart. I’d been exposed to Poe in grade school, earlier than most thanks to a
progressive program. Poe became a distinct catalyst. By the time I was a
pre-teen I had already begun drafting a Victorian-set Gothic novel in the vein
of The Phantom of the Opera (Leroux’s classic being another influential
book). |
| Edgewood High School staff, Leanna at center: To left, Becky Simpson and right, Sue Combs: Influential Teachers |
Now, Edgewood High, class of 2018, my goodness, is
this moment exciting or what?! When I’m asked to give a bit of advice from my
own experience working in fields I love, the core lesson really is to follow
your dreams. I know, it sounds so trite and worn out, but the core of what
makes you- just you, original, unique you,
is priceless. A group of writers could each be given the exact same writing
prompt and all of us would come up with completely different stories. Don’t
worry about being any other voice but your own. Cherish diversity and
uniqueness within yourself and in others. Foster your own individual strengths.
Take moments along the way to lift up others around you as you grow, learn, develop
new insights and become more well-rounded. A mind that’s constantly learning is
the healthiest. We’re all individuals, but no one makes it in the world alone.
Everything ‘takes a village’ as they say, and because of everyone’s inherent
uniqueness, everyone has something special to offer. 
Being involved
with this is fitting, because phrases about holding on to the light have been
my exact inscription on most of the books I’ve signed for readers, or variations therein.
Holding onto light, both figurative and literal, is the crux of my entire STRANGELY BEAUTIFUL series. 
In
a much broader swath of thoughts and experiences, my ETERNA FILES series, the latest of which just released, ETERNA AND OMEGA, is a
Gaslamp Fantasy series of Supernatural Suspense set in 1800s New York City and
London. These books are made up of a wide spectrum of quirky characters from numerous
diverse backgrounds. These characters deal with all kinds of issues and
struggles, private and public, and for them, battling the paranormal helps them
with battling their own internal demons. 
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