ghosts, threads of wyrd, real hauntings

CW: bereavement, loss

If those are too heavy for you, I'll see ya next week with more slice-of-life Lennie x

Threads of Wyrd is a romantic series with magic. That part is pretty clear.

Whether you'd put it under magical realism (though, as a white person, I'm never sure if I should use the label) or romantasy (within which, it is admittedly subtle), there is romance in each book. It's also set in the late 1800s and early 1900s, which means it's historical fiction or historical romance. As with romantasy, its subtlety may mean it fits hist fic, but I don't shy away from the historical romance label.

Maurice, after all, is a romance. Notably, its ending can trigger derision.

I spoke on Maurice once during a panel, and people snickered when I said the end was gentle and beautiful. Regardless, I don't do high versus low culture debates; I agree with Raymond Williams: "culture is ordinary." To call something childish or banal in its optimism or love is silly. Fairy tales can be so brutal, anyway.

But no matter where you want to put Threads of Wyrd, it's always romantic, it's always got witches and stuff, and it's a meditation on grief, too. Not in a maudlin way. I've been thinking about this story, or some version of this story, for about six years. Finally, it solidified as an expression of love for a place I had to leave, and it came to fruition while I was experiencing bereavement.

The leaving wasn't any easier than the bereavement, the latter was just more recent. To my body and mind, they seemed the same. It's taken months of therapy to tone down the perceived similarities because I didn't grieve Brexit as it happened. I didn't have time. There was too much to do, including apply for a new category of visa and pass a viva. If I hadn't switched immigration schemes (which cost money; it always does), I might not have been able to sit the viva at all. When I went to secure and submit the correct paperwork, a nice advisor at my university left me in a conference room while he spoke to the Home Office for over an hour.

Nobody knew what to do. Admirably, I didn't throw up once that afternoon. What was the point, I'd asked myself, if I didn't even get my fucking doctorate? Wouldn't that be funny?

Then my grandfather died in January 2022. Five days after I rang to tell him Happy New Year's Eve, to which he said he'd drink whisky with me on my impending birthday. He didn't lie, but he didn't know what was coming.

There was a subsequent phone call, this time from my mother. I didn't talk for hours after that one, breaking silence to pass the news to my father because my parents divorced when I was six. I didn't want my mother to have to tell my father that her father, who my father had loved, was dead.

But I had woken up in the dark, hours before then, blinking mole-like at my phone and trying to figure out why I was up at all. 3:43 was his time of death; it's the time I woke. People ask, sometimes, if I'm religious.

No, but I believe in being kind, the moon, weird shit, physics, my gut, and ghosts. (They aren't always like beloved Alastair.) Another thing people seem to want to know is which of my characters I'm most like: it's Alastair, without a doubt. Meanwhile, Paul, Alastair's husband in all but law, was most influenced by the idea of grief. Not my own, specifically, but probably what I saw when I watched my grandmother lose her partner.

The impact of my personal grieving process is more like becoming weather-worn. Reshaped into something a lot more like the man who'd died, the guy whose energy my wife says was already like my own "in a hat." I think she's right, and there are striking parallels between our natal charts. If you believe in that sort of thing. Kind of like believing in ghosts. I grieve and let grief become hauntings; my grandmother grieves and lets grief become a sedative.

Change and loss and grief drift through Threads of Wyrd like ghosts. Reflecting on what happened while I worked to publish these novels, that's no surprise. But I don't think it makes them irredeemably sad... if anything, it adds depth to the romance. Ultimately, they're quite hopeful stories. But then, I'll pilfer anything and steal hope like it's legal tender.

I like to think it's 2011 somewhere. It didn't happen; it's happening. (A piece of Google tech snaps the picture that proves it. I find the picture years later.) My grandfather is taking care of outdoor plants and forgetting about his tea. Maybe I'm about to call his house, asking if I can come over. He'll pick up. He always picks up.

I feel similarly when I look at a selfie taken in front of The Alex, or in Tombland, or in a friend's flat in Earlham House. It's 2013, or 2015, or 2017. Maybe I'm about to go for a pint, or walk around the Close, or watch my wife accidentally sabotage our pal in a game of Spelunky. I'll get some Chalk Hill Best. I'll stroll past plague pits covered in lavender. We'll all laugh and they'll restart the same level while I drink wine.

Possibly the strangest, strongest, and most unspoken thread in the series: all these things are still happening, or about to happen, and ghosts are everywhere. It would be worse not to be haunted.