Researching Water Women

Stephanie Willing

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: when I first heard Stephanie Willing’s voice, I burst into tears. And that is a good thing.

Sitting in the waiting area of Chicago O'Hare I got an e-mail from Macmillan Audio with three digital recordings of actors auditioning to read the audio book of the houseguest.

(We will pause a moment for you to think about how glorious that was, and what a big moment for me. How cool!)

Then we will pause another moment to realize that I sat there for a beat, thinking, what if all of these are terrible, I don't want to deal with that. I will have to ask them for more auditions, and they wouldn't have sent me these if they didn't think they were good. Right?

Push the button, my brain said.

So I pushed play on the first audition and it was totally fine. Then I pushed play on the second audition, and it was totally fine. Okay, I thought something will work. These are... fine. It didn't really sound like my version of Alyssa, or Bree, but whatever. I could be wrong.

Then I pushed play on the third recording, and that's when I burst into tears. Stephanie Willing totally totally totally got it. And that is an understatement. Alyssa was talking to me! And Bree! And everyone! 

I instantly wrote back to the publisher, saying: Stephanie!

And instantly got a reply saying that's what we thought too!

 

Stephanie and I chatted on the phone, of course, talking about everything about the book, and then Stephanie told me that she was a writer too. (And lookit that bio!)

 

Of course I said: tell me more!

 

And she did.

 

Her new book is a middle grade novel, called West of the Sea. Out August 15, yay!

 

Of course I said: tell me more. And hey, can you tell the Reds and Readers too?

 

And she did. 

 

(And PS. The book is getting rave reviews!)

 

 

What Ifs and Researching Water Women

Stephanie Willing

 

A writer’s story-brain is my favorite thing. We can look at normal situations and spin plots or universes out of the simplest interactions. One writer friend found a time travel story in a confusing text message thread. Another friend let me rattle on about the conversation I’d had with my four-year old about dragons and trains, and then that friend went home and wrote a short story about dragon trains.

Story-brains. They are the Vitamix of life experiences. They mish-mash and myth-make.

When I slept over at my best friend’s family farm in Texas nearly twenty years ago and saw the wheat fields rippling under a silver moon, I thought, It looks like the ocean. What if…there were mermaids out there?

That idea, and the image of a water creature existing far from (and pining for) the ocean, hatched in my story-brain. I began collecting books on water sprites, sea monsters, and selkies to learn what already existed in myth about mermaids and their kin. But when I sat down in a writing class, it wasn’t the water creature who wanted to speak. It was her twelve-year old daughter, and she was angry.   

The story was changing, and with it, its central myth. The mermaids morphed into selkies.

Watching for selkies on the Isle of Skye…

According to Celtic folklore, selkies are a mythical creature with a sealskin they must take off to shapeshift and pass as human. The story usually goes that an opportunistic fisherman steals the skin of a selkie when he spies her on the beach, and he hides her sealskin. Without it, she cannot return to the water.  She marries the fisherman and has children with him, but when she finds her coat (and she always does), she dons it and leaves him and her children without looking back.

I’d figured out by then that what I was really writing was a fantastical story about a magical mother with mental illness who leaves her family. A selkie lineage would make perfect sense! But as I tried to weave the lore into the book, it was like a skin that didn’t fit. My story wasn’t about being held hostage in a marriage—it was still about Haven, a tween girl who is scared she might turn out to be just like her mother.

The story really needed a solid mythical backbone to support why Haven and her mother could change their skins and breathe underwater. I dug deeper into Scottish folklore and found the FinFolk of the Orkney Islands. They were more nefarious than selkies, but they were fish-like shape-shifters who could pass for human on land. It seemed this myth could work, but I kept searching for stories of Texan cryptids.

Good-natured husband in front of The Whiteside Museum of Natural History in Seymour, TX.

And here my research changed to prehistoric history. When I read about Seymouria baylorensis, I got chills. This 280-million-year old tetrapod is considered a bridge species between ancient amphibians and reptiles. Like Haven’s mother, who was both human and not, magic and monster, Seymouria wasn’t just one or the other—it was both. The myth I was looking for had been real, and it existed right where my story took place, in a fictional town based on Seymour, TX, where I’d first seen the wheatfields. (It also works really well as a metaphor for that in-between place of adolescence.)

The story’s myth took on its final shape. The FinFolk became kitskaras, an (invented) cryptid whose reptilian appearance was shaped by the snakes, alligator gars, and fossilized prehistoric creatures of Texas.

All that rich research and exploration came out of a simple story-brain question. What if…mermaids?

What has your story-brain said to you, and what did you make of it?

Did the idea stay the same or change as you wrote it?

 

HANK: My story-brain is my best friend, absolutely.  She certainly has her own system and rhythm, and is sometimes…the tiniest bit on her own schedule. (But she’s always right. I don't always know it at the time, but eventually I realize it.)

How about you, Reds and readers?

 

Stephanie Willing is a writer and audiobook narrator. She has a BA in Dance from Texas Woman’s University and an MFA in Writing for Young People from Lesley University. Originally from Texas, Stephanie now lives in New York City with her husband and two young sons, and she loves to visit the dinosaurs at the American Museum of Natural History

 

 

  

       WEST OF THE SEA

 

★ “Willing skillfully balances the narrative’s inherently fantastical underpinnings with a nuanced cast whose grounded challenges—including issues surrounding coming out and mental health—add ample heart to this road-trip adventure.” – Publishers Weekly

 

When her mom disappears from their small Texas town, paleontology-loving Haven is determined to find her. But as she uncovers truths about her mom’s identity, Haven also uncovers a monstrous family secret. Her mom can take the shape of a human and, in the right environment, also turn into an amphibious creature known as a kitskara. And now that she’s growing up, Haven is discovering she has this ability, too. And so she, her older sister Margie, and her new friend Rye set off on a road trip across Texas’s Gulf Coast to her late grandparents’ abandoned home, where they’re sure her mom has disappeared to…along with plenty of family secrets.

 

 

WEST OF THE SEA by Stephanie Willing

Viking Books for Young Readers

ISBN: 9780593465578 | on sale August 15, 2023| Ages 8-12