{"id":42189,"date":"2024-06-13T06:30:34","date_gmt":"2024-06-12T18:30:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=42189"},"modified":"2024-06-13T20:21:56","modified_gmt":"2024-06-13T08:21:56","slug":"victoria-m-adams-the-house-at-the-end-of-the-sea-qa-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2024\/06\/13\/victoria-m-adams-the-house-at-the-end-of-the-sea-qa-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Victoria M Adams & \u201cThe House At the End of the Sea\u201d — Q&A #2"},"content":{"rendered":"

I hope you enjoyed Monday’s post just as much as I did. \ud83d\ude00 Now, onward to Q&A #2 and shining a spotlight on Victoria M Adams and her newly released novel, The House at the End of the Sea<\/em><\/strong>.
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Art Credit: Sharon King-Chai<\/p><\/div>\n

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\nVictoria M Adams & The House At the End of the Sea<\/em>: Q&A #2<\/span><\/h3>\n

Helen:<\/strong> What is magic, to you? Why do you use it in your story? What does magic add that a so-called ‘realistic’ tale might not convey?<\/span>
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Victoria M Adams: <\/strong>I’m so fascinated by this question. On the surface of it, in fantasy stories especially, magic is power. It’s the fantasy of being able to do extraordinary things – fly, shoot lightning bolts out of your fingertips, whatever – to wish a thing into being. Dig down a bit, though, and magic is so much more. It has to do with what it means to be a human being, why the world is the way it is. That’s the question magic asks. It asks if there are hidden aspects to the world. If there are things that don’t appear on the surface but which are just as real as going down to the shop and buying a loaf of bread.<\/span><\/p>\n

That, of course, is a gold mine for stories, especially stories that involve liminal spaces, thresholds between worlds, secret histories and so on. Fairy stories. Tales about hidden worlds, portals, beings who cross between our world and another. These stories are saying: reality is so much bigger than the story told to you by your five senses. There’s more going on. Don’t just look on the surface. Don’t just listen to received wisdom.<\/span><\/p>\n

Fantasy for me is about metaphor – not necessarily straight allegory, but creative metaphor. In The House At The End Of The Sea<\/em>, I could have told a story about a girl, Saffi True, who has lost her mother, who has family problems, who discovers that her ancestor built his fortune by making others suffer. But I wanted to turn the screw a bit tighter. I wanted the problems to come knocking on Saffi’s door in a very concrete way, like the Green Knight visiting King Arthur’s court. Unavoidable.<\/span><\/p>\n

Magic turns the screw. It asks: ‘How does grief distort reality, every day? How do past injustices shape our world, here and now?’
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Art Credit: Frank Victoria<\/p><\/div>\n

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\nAn Excerpt from The House at the End of the Sea<\/em><\/span><\/h3>\n

“Sometime in the middle of the night, Saffi woke with a start. The room was full of shifting shadows. It had been cloudy earlier but now a light shone through the window. The moon was up. The shadows were tree branches, shaken in the wind. There was a noise, too, but it wasn\u2019t the branches.<\/span><\/p>\n

It was the sound of laughter on the stairs.<\/span><\/p>\n

People were coming up from the front hall. She could hear voices, the light tread of many feet. The memory of guests filtered through her mind. So Dad was wrong and Grandad was right. They had come, whoever they were.<\/span><\/p>\n

The laughter sent a shiver through Saffi. She got up and tiptoed out on the landing in her pyjamas. The lights were on so she had no trouble finding her way. She crept towards the edge of the stairwell, peering down.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018My Lady,\u2019 said someone from below.<\/span><\/p>\n

Without thinking about it, Saffi moved down a green carpeted step, drawn by the sound of those voices. There was a musical quality to them, sweet and enchanting. She had never heard anyone speak like that \u2013 as if the speaker lived life only for the sake of pleasure and laughter, and all other experiences were unknown. These people sounded as if they had never been angry, or lost someone dear to them, or wept. Saffi longed to be like that. She moved down another step. Then one more, in growing confusion.<\/span><\/p>\n

It seemed to her that there were too many steps. She could never reach the end of them. Her legs felt heavy, as if she was pushing through water. The stairwell stretched on and on like a dim green tunnel. She felt queasy and clutched at the banister.<\/span><\/p>\n

Then \u2013 as if an elastic had snapped back \u2013 she was at the bottom, facing the guest suite. She stopped in amazement. How had that happened? A few seconds ago, she couldn\u2019t walk down the flight. Yet here she was on the landing. The green door was open. Beyond it, she glimpsed figures, flashes of iridescent colour. Satin maybe, or feathers.<\/span><\/p>\n

All at once, Grandma was there too, blocking her view. \u2018What are you doing, Saffi?\u2019 she hissed. \u2018Go back to bed!\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

Saffi hurried up the stairs to her bedroom. By now, her curiosity was roused to fever pitch. Who were those guests? She lay in bed, listening intently, until she heard the sound of her grandparents creaking upstairs. They were talking in anxious murmurs, a strange contrast to the visitors\u2019 easy chatter.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018Answer by the seventh day,\u2019 she heard Grandad say before their bedroom door closed, and silence descended.<\/span><\/p>\n

Who had to answer what? Saffi wondered. Across the room, Milo stirred in his sleep. She tossed and turned, questions gnawing at her. Why were her grandparents so worried? The guests had everyone in a flummox. She even speculated whether they were foreign royalty. Why else would one be called \u2018my Lady\u2019?<\/span><\/p>\n

She must have fallen asleep after that. When she opened her eyes, it was morning. \u00a0Sunlight filtered through the curtains onto her bed.”<\/span><\/p>\n

from \u00a9 The House at the End of the Sea<\/em> \u2014 produced here with permission.
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Victoria M Adams<\/p><\/div>\n

About The Author<\/span><\/h3>\n

Victoria M. Adams spent her childhood bouncing between Cyprus, Canada and the US with her Iranian mother, trying to achieve first place in the \u2018Most Visas Acquired Before Age Eighteen\u2019 sweepstakes. As an adult, she carried on the nomadic family tradition by adding France and New Zealand to the mix, where she worked as an animator, copywriter, tutor and story coach, in no particular order. She currently shares her London home with two humans and a feckless cat.
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Previous Posts:<\/h4>\n

\u201cThe House At the End of the Sea\u201d: Q&A #1<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I hope you enjoyed Monday’s post just as much as I did. \ud83d\ude00 Now, onward to Q&A #2 and shining a spotlight on Victoria M Adams and her newly released novel, The House at the End of the Sea. . . Victoria M Adams & The House At the End of the Sea: Q&A #2 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,19,42,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-friends","category-funstuff","category-guest-interviews-on-anything-really-2","category-other-writers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42189"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42189\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42248,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42189\/revisions\/42248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}