This is the last week re: the discount across ebook platforms for WATERMYTH (ends 29 FEBRUARY 2024), although I am participating in #smashword's promotion period in March so you can wait till then if you were wanting to grab a copy via smashwords.
Short description: Regya has been set a task: to take the potentially deadly Mermaid Storytelling Exam. She has been placed in Yrejveree, the mythical island of exiles to which many Amors have brought their Psyches. Can a mermaid armed with the powers bestowed by her storytelling craft, her Javanese engineer housemate and her mermaid landlady defeat these beings intent on conquest?
Do you like slow-burn epic fantasy mashed up with domestic fantasy? Ever read an epic fantasy that started in a kitchen and thought, "Damn, I wish there was more of that!"
Well, so did I and that is what I took into writing this series!
Think kitchens, a Kitchen Witch, lots of loving descriptions of food amidst byzantine conflict, political machinations and wars between merkingdoms. Plus, mermaids and faeries in a postcolonial portal fantasy universe. That's the Cantata of the Fourfold Realms, and Watermyth is the first novel.
I also talk about #WatermaidensDay, which will be next week . It shares a date with #Valentine because uh, one of the influences for Watermaidens and Watermyth in general was the fate of poor Ophelia. I always felt she deserved a better life and so I wrote a whole army of watermaidens into my stories. I guess that should be another blog post, huh.
In 1996, I wrote a 17-19 page* poem revisiting the myth of Cupid and Psyche from the perspective of a Psyche who never found her Cupid again. A year later, I created a hypertext project about the island upon which my Psyche found herself. In 2009, I began the project that would become the Cantata of the Fourfold Realms, around the premise of "What if instead of ONE Cupid, there was an entire civilization of them?"
Watermyth, the first book of my slow domestic fantasy takes over epic fantasy with mermaids, sirens, faeries, weremaidens and a whole lot of myth and history,
Update of my 🎙 Author #introduction since my debut novel was finally published on the 7th of January, 2024.
Hi, I'm Anita. I used to be published as Nin Harris and under that name I have had fiction and poetry published in Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons, Uncanny Magazine etc. I write baroque planetary romances, dark fiction, Gothic fantasy, #domesticfantasy with #mermaids and #darkacademia settings. I have just published my debut novel, #Watermyth and am working on its sequel, #Rosemirror. I am also a literary academic, a musician and a composer. I have a great deal of imposter syndrome about all of the above, particularly about calling myself a musician and composer given I'm only getting a formal education for most of my musical needs in the past four years (apart from #classicalguitar for which I've had classes off and on since 1995). But I have been making music/composing my whole life.