An Interview with M.C.

Tell us about yourself!

This question is always tricky for me for some reason. I guess I’ll go with the basics. I grew up in Nebraska, got a taste of international travel in high school, and knew that whatever I did as an adult, I wanted to travel. I’ve visited seven countries (eleven if you count airport stops) and lived in Nepal for three years. I fell in love with kdrama while I was in Nepal (not a lot to do for fun + lots of easy access to Asian television) and decided my next stint would be somewhere further east. I’m currently teaching English in Taiwan and learning Traditional Mandarin and Korean. In my spare time (ha!) I write.

What does noblebright fantasy mean to you? Why is it important?

I have been reading books ever since I could sound out a string of letters and make sense of them, so I’ve read a LOT of books in my life. Some of them were amazing and I regret not making a master list so I could go back and revisit them, but an awful lot of them were a waste of ink and paper. The ones that have stuck with me were the ones in which brave people make the hard choices and stand up against evil. I don’t want to read a story in which evil wins, because I don’t want to live in a world where that is true. So, for me, noblebright is a reflection of the real world, the truest world, where things might not be so great now, but ultimately we are promised that good will win. 

How did you start writing?

I’ve been writing since elementary school. I’ve still got copies somewhere of my earliest attempts, neatly written in cursive and amusing in their naïveté. I hope I’ve improved since then! What I think really pushed me to write later on was two things—one was a frustration with the books I’d encountered. For every good one that made the world seem a brighter place, I’d read several that were eye-rollingly bad. I wanted to write the kind of story that I

was most interested in reading, in the hopes of helping out someone else like me.  The second thing is the fact that as in introvert, I tend to process things internally and through writing much better than I do in spoken conversation. Bleddynwood in particular was written, for the most part, while I was in Nepal and about 8,000 miles from home. I don’t know how much of that longing for home yet feeling apart while there made it through, but it definitely helped me process!

What are some of your favorite books/authors? Why?

Ooh, another tough one. I’ll start with the oldies: I love Persuasion by Jane Austen. I enjoy her other books too, but I think they often make better movies than novels. Fanny Burney’s Evelina is also a treasure, as well as almost all of Georgette Heyer’s Regency novels. I think I like them because the characters are unique, the adventures are fun, and the endings are happy. Continuing the forward march in time, I’ll mention C.S. Lewis, who proved it’s possible to write deeply allegorical books without beating the reader over the head with theology. In my lifetime (give or take a decade or two), we have The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle as well as The Secret Country Trilogy by Pamela Dean. The first holds a special place in my heart because I had an old VHS of the movie that I wore out as a child before discovering it was a book, too. The Pamela Dean books were like a Narnia where they spoke Shakespeare and the kids got to stay at the end. What’s not to love? I’ll round out my list with the late, great Terry Pratchett who inspires me to satirical heights, and the fabulous W.R. Gingell whose characters and adventures are as fun as any Heyer romance.

Please tell us about your world and your characters.

The world is a sort of “what if” approach to the past. What if magic had shaped the course of history, changing people’s movement, revolutions, and even the landscape itself? You might—just might—end up with something like the world of the Bleddynwood. The characters were easy—I started with a framework from the classical “Beauty and the Beast” and superimposed a gender-reversed version of my family. I never liked that the sisters were often indifferent or downright evil in

the original, so I gave Ammy the opposite—which probably made it that much worse when she had to cut all ties with them, but there it is. As for the Beast, I tried to imagine what being trapped between man and animal must have meant for him, because way too many reimaginings either make him out to be a whiny pushover (*cough*Disney*cough*) or some sort of trashy romance novel cover model (“ooh, he’s a beast, but isn’t he attractive?”). I didn’t want either. I went with the Polar Bear King model and had him trapped, desperate to be free, and fully aware of what he was and what he was capable of. Hopefully I succeeded.

Do you have any works in progress? Tell us about them!

I do! Book #2 is on track to be released in March. It’s called Spirit Song, and is a loose retelling of the Donkeyskin story. I also plan to put out a short story in the next couple months. Beyond that, I have a couple of ideas in process that will hopefully turn into books. One is set in the universe of Bleddynwood, and the other is a full-length Pooka story. I’d tell you more, but I don’t really know anything more myself; it’s been a busy year of moving overseas and learning languages…hopefully I’ll find more writing time this spring!

Where can we find you online?

I have a presence on Facebook (www.facebook.com/MCDwyer) that I update occasionally, but you’re welcome to follow to stay up-to-date on when the next project is coming out. I look forward to seeing you there!

You can also find M.C.’s short story “Don’t Wake the Dragon” in Fell Beasts and Fair: A Noblebright Fantasy Anthology.