Author’s Note: The Grotesque of Silvanus

On Thursday September 22, 2022, I published The Grotesque of Silvanus, a short story on Wattpad.

Interestingly, the rankings are throwing this story more under Dungeons & Dragons, but I’ll take the #9 in Halflings ranking. Do I want to dominate the #halflings tag? Maybe I do (shrug); don’t judge me.

This is the first story where Jayleigh Warmhollow appears. I wrote the story to coincide with Halloween and the All Hallow Tide season, and within it, I wanted to explore the mythology of guardians.

When I first sketched out this character earlier in the year, I gave her “Warmhollow” as a surname, but throughout writing this story, I kept writing it as “Wormhollow” which, in retrospect, sounded cooler for a Druid character, and I considered changing it. The character, though, isn’t supposed to be repulsive and that’s kinda the image I get with “Worm” so the “Warm” stuck with her. When I was reading the story aloud, I kept saying “Jay-LAY” rather than “Jay-LEE”, which really annoyed my testers. Needless to say, it’s taken me a little while to get used to saying her name right. :)

This was my first story featuring Jayleigh. I picture this character as an avenue to explore nature lore and old secrets. Structurally, when I’m writing her stories, I’m looking to hone some skills as an author with poetry, song, rhythm, cadence, and voice. This story features a lot of colorful, dark descriptions, one song, one poem, and numerous places within the narrative that I played with rhyming.

Jayleigh is a wise and aware character and I write her with a voice that exceeds her 22 years. That wisdom came at a price, however, and I explore a little bit of her origin story in this piece, explaining how she set fire to her house and accidentally killed her parents, and, how she attempted suicide at 14. She’s young, but she has a lot of miles, so she uses a lot of high-falutin words. I also eluded to another character that’s intertwined with Jayleigh, Kindle Muckwalker, who is a Ranger of the Aevalorn Wilds and helped train Jayleigh to survive in the Wilds after she ran away from home. This character has a lot of backstory and pain to be resolved, and the story ends on those notes.

Because it’s a Halloween story, I, of course, had to make one of the guardians Jack of the Lantern who I pictured as a duplicitous spirit. One side of that coin is maniacal laughing crazy jackolantern, and the other was a goofy cross-eyed kind of persona. The scarecrow was the first guardian that I thought of for the story, and the Green Man was the guardian that I chose to make grumpy, bad, and bitter for somewhat obvious reasons. Guardians like these are all around us in the modern world and many young people aren’t exposed to the mythology. In this story, I wanted to make a tour of the lore surrounding each of these guardians and explain the “why” they’re here in the first place. Maybe, just maybe, readers will have a keener eye when they walk the streets or visit a family member, finding an old man’s head in the garden, or seeing a scarecrow, and think of their connection to myth. I meet many young people these days that just walk by these things and never notice them, and that’s a shame :)

I also needed to introduce Garwig, Jayleigh’s sidekick. Yes! It’s fully my intention to bring Garwig away from the sanctuary at times to go on new adventures with Jayleigh. I bet you didn’t see that coming?

I chose Silvanus because it’s an old name and has two references. The first is to the Roman deity of nature and the second is to D&D where a Silvanus God there is pretty much an echo of the Romain version. It’s a nature deity so the use of a Green Man and the need for a holy sanctuary/garden seemed even more relevant. The Free City of Mumling also appears in my current long form work in A Goblet of Bone.

Just work with Jayleigh is coming but I’ve got a busy Q4 ahead of me. I’m kicking off another short story on Amazon Vella; I’m writing Bartram’s Goblet of Bone book; I’m going to be editing and cleaning up the Ballad of Skyer Dannon for Wattpad; and I’ll be turning that into my first fantasy fiction book sold through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo by the end of the year. So I hope I’m able to find some time for her. :)

All the best - thanks for reading!

R

Who is Jayleigh Warmhollow?

Character Description

Jayleigh (Jay-LEE), a Halfling of the Parishes, has a talent.

She can hear the songs sung by the land and plants; feel their tenors and vibrations; she communicates with nature through song.

Jayleigh is a young lightfoot Halfling, just twenty-two years old. She was orphaned at an early age due to a fire that took her parents.

She’s a Druid and, following her parent’s death, spent a great deal of time in the Aevalorn Wilds with another halfling character, a ranger named Kindle Muckwalker. Kindle taught her the ways of the Wilds and how to survive.

Stories

Jayleigh’s themes concern nature, religion, and superstition. Besides Kindle, I’ve plans to write a story that includes a collaboration between Jayleigh and Skyer Dannon.

When you’re coached on writing, people will tell you to read what you write aloud to hear its cadence. This character is my answer to that problem. Jayleigh’s adventures are about poetry, rhyme, rhythm, and the sounds of nature. When I write these stories, I’m really trying to put my creative descriptions into overdrive; I try to write poems and songs to go along with the narrative.

She first appeared in the short story The Grotesque of Silvanus.

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