With global events reaching a boiling point, I've been thinking quite a lot about what makes a hero or heroine. Because it's an historical fiction blog, that's what I'm focussing on, but I'm pretty sure these thoughts can pass over onto other genres too. The first thing is that the hero/ine does not have to be the main character. Tolkien said that Samwise Gamgee was the real hero of The Lord of the Rings (which can hardly come as a shock to anyone who has read it) but he was not the main - or even the second - character. If you are writing with an ensemble cast, this is a more obvious distinction. Chances are, if you have only one major character, they are also going to be the hero/ine. Next, consider that a hero/ine does not have to be right the whole time. The important thing about their decisions is twofold: They always do what they believe to be best for other people They always work (and hopefully achieve!) to put right any harm their choices have made These t...
For today's #HistFicThursdays blog, I'm delighted to be sharing this flash fiction piece from Judith. Set in the realm of magical realism, this is a story of Ancient Greece... The Mermaid of the Aegean Thessalonike’s sigh as she awakens becomes the wind upon the waves, spiralling over the deep. The foam is her hair: the curls she inherited from her father… she still feels the water which washed them, trickling from the flask. She had laughed at how it tickled her scalp and ran into her ears as her brother poured it onto her head, his own curls bent over hers in devoted concentration. It was that memory which had propelled her from the earth and into the sea when word came of his death, casting herself into the ocean to escape a world without him. Yet she had awoken from sleep not death, her body and soul still united in the deep… and the enduring significance of that flask excruciatingly clear. Her wrath at him for destroying her death split the sea into grey ribbons, and her s...