Guest Post: The story behind The Laughter of the Sun eco romantasy series by Andie Holman #guestpost #romantasy #ecoromantasy #newrelease #nnlbh
- N. N. Light
- 2 days ago
- 8 min read
I’ve loved fantasy and magic since I was little, and believed there was a secret world where animals could speak, and faeries lived in the flowers. This curiosity led me to a thirty-year career in natural medicine, believing the body had an inner wisdom, if only we knew the language. Throughout my career, I wrote blogs, newsletters, and a book on scars, all aimed at educating my patients, but you can only say so much about kale and chia seeds.
The idea for The Laughter of the Sun eco romantasy series came out of the blue. I was reading about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and my jaw dropped open. I didn’t believe it was real. Then I read every ocean has its own collection of human debris, trapping sea life and polluting the oceans. I was so angry. I thought, what if the sea life could speak? What would they say?
In my previous writing career, I took medical studies and explained them in ways everyone could understand. I needed to talk about the pollution, but writing it in science-speak wouldn’t work. It was too grim, and the human mind can only take so much depressing information. So, I thought about using scientific facts in the world-building for a fantasy story.
First, I needed a champion for the ocean. I wanted my lead character to be a woman, fighting personal battles within the ocean pollution. I knew she had to surface and make a change there, as that was the origin of the garbage. So, a mermaid. And not just an innocent wee thing like Ariel. No, I wanted a fierce mermaid on a mission, an intelligent warrior, ready to fight for justice and the innocent.
My stories address climate change and its impact on animals, whether land or marine. I gave them a voice so they can share their experiences and what it’s like to live in human destruction. We see life through their eyes, such as turtles struggling to hatch male babies, which is difficult when the sand is too hot. Or how wildlife gets tangled in abandoned fishing nets, the most common trash in the oceans. In book two in the series, The Sorrow of Bees, we experience the beehive, with its social structure and division of labor. I researched bees for months, becoming evermore enamored with their peculiarities, their joys, and their deep sorrows. I loved every minute of the research, even when it left me in tears.
The romance side of the stories allowed me to explore character development. After all, relationships are often the catalyst for our own inner change. What if my mermaid mistrusted men based on the society she grew up in? How would that affect her when she went to the surface and had to work with others? And how would two wild mermaids interact with the people on the land? Some may see them as juvenile, but I see them as strangers in a strange land, trying to reconcile their origins within a new societal structure. But innocent, they are not, as their magic depends on intimacy, a twist on the fables of sirens as seductive killers.
I made the love stories sensual, not explicit. There are plenty of books out there with five-alarm chilis for spice, and those weren’t the books I wanted to write. After all, mindless sexual encounters were par for the course for my Mers, and I felt an exploration of their emotional conflicts would be more interesting. The first book is all about Jelly and Mako, and in the second, Mori gets the spotlight as she wrestles with her desires.
Initially, I didn’t want violence, but I needed a villain. Thus, the rogue Fae set on ruling the world as they once did. There’s nothing like revenge as a motivator for evil, as well as their ability to manipulate humanity. In Book Two, we go into the Hellhole, a Fae prison where Leif is captive, and discover the deep depravity of the wicked Fae, and what they’re willing to do to their own people to achieve their twisted goals.
I’m writing Book Three, focused on the Arctic warming, and what impact that has on the animals living there. I introduce the spirituality of the land, and how everything connects with the wild ice, or lack thereof. Book Four may take us to see the bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef, or the destruction of the Amazon rainforests. Perhaps both. For now, I’m researching Greenland sharks, who can live for hundreds of years, and narwhal matriarchs, whales who go through a menopause.
It is a joy to write these books, weaving the science into the stories that provide education through entertainment. One reader referred to my books as ‘eco romantasy,’ saying they were probably the first of their kind. If so, let me blaze that trail, hoping others join in to teach us. So long as we have an environmental crisis, we have plenty of material to work with.
Scroll down to read more about Andie Holman’s new release…
Title: The Sorrow of Bees
Author: Andie Holman
Genre: Fantasy, Romantasy, Eco romantasy
Book Blurb:
Tell the bees, for they understand heartache.
Dark magic comes at a cost, one that Jelly, warrior mermaid, must pay. After a brutal ritual gives her Fae powers, a vital piece of herself is missing. She must abandon everything and everyone to find it.
If she fails her mission, her lover’s brother will never again see the sun, trapped in a horrifying dimension called the Hellhole. If she fails, her lover Mako may not forgive her. If she fails, she will never forgive herself.
She’s sent to a queendom so foreign she can barely breathe, transformed into a body she can’t possibly understand. Grappling with the enormity of her task, she struggles to appreciate the sorrows of the pollinators.
But she must if she wants to succeed.
Excerpt
JELLY: The tungsten cube hung low on my chest, right over my heart. It thrummed with a steady beat, and my vision abruptly changed. The bees at the entrance, who at first appeared to be plain insects, morphed into sentries with crossed swords. I resisted the urge to gawk. The bee on the left spoke sharply. “State your business!” Her voice was pure power.
I bowed my head, thinking it wouldn’t hurt to be humble, even though I was a giant comparatively. “My name is Scyphozoa Vetula, but please, call me Jelly. I am a mermaid, claimed as a Fae by Mother Kokuro. I am missing a piece of my soul, knocked from me during a ritual with the Surfecti, and Sundidarta, the Soul Seeker, assigned me a task. To complete it, and retrieve my soul, I must see your queen.” I raised my head. The bee whispered to another behind it. It took flight deeper inside the hive.
I stayed on my knees, studying the soldiers. Their antennae flexed, as if smelling the air, or me. They stood on their hind legs, leaving four free, two of which held the swords aloft, a menacing gesture, even though I loomed over them. The one on the right studied me coldly. I kept my eye on the stinger at the end of her body. It looked wickedly sharp and barbed; the nuances highlighted by my strange new vision. More bees bearing weapons crawled closer to investigate, twitchy. The bee from before returned, whispering to the guard. She nodded once, never breaking eye contact with me. She issued a command. “Change.”
The cube exploded over my chest, washing me in a golden flash of light, and I squeaked as the hive entrance slipped from my view and the grass blades became bigger, towering like trees above me. The world burst into colors I’d never experienced, everything so vivid it almost hurt. The flower above my head wavered in patterns that hadn’t been there before.
I reached to wipe at my eyes and squealed when I found a segmented leg covered in comb-like hairs. “Bring her up,” the guard bee said from high above me. I squeaked again as four bees came from behind and lifted me beneath my legs, setting me on the shelf at the entrance to the hive before zipping away.
I tried to speak, but it came out garbled. The sentry on the left chuckled. “Give it a minute. You have mandibles and a proboscis now. Speech is the last thing to settle.” I glanced down at my body, split into three segments. I experimented and fluttered my wings, almost falling backward from the shelf, a squawking noise escaping me. One guard grabbed me and hauled me back down. “You’re not ready to fly yet. Keep those still.”
I panted through my strange mouth, trying to catch my breath from my fright. Everything was going dark from lack of oxygen. The other guard laughed. “Look, she’s trying to breathe through her mouth. You don’t have lungs, so stop that before you pass out. Breathe through your abdomen. Along the sides. You have small holes. Force the air through those.” I imagined breathing into my belly, and my sparkling vision restored to normal. I twisted to look at these holes, then grabbed for my neck with my strange hand, or foot. The pearl was there, but tiny, the size of a grain of sand.
The guard smirked at the other. “Wait for it…”
I yawned open my strange jaw and cleared my throat. An exquisite bouquet of scent hit my face, and I swept up my foot to pat it. I found my voice with a shout. “I’m smelling with my head! Where’s my nose?” Engulfed in Mother Nature’s perfumery, every flower’s scent was overwhelmingly gorgeous. That combined with the colors made me want to weep from the beauty.
The guard explained. “You have sensilla, thin hairs with olfactory receptors, lining your antenna. Hot tip: if you smell bananas, it’s an alarm pheromone released by someone giving a sting, alerting us there’s a threat nearby. Return immediately to the hive. And to get it over with, no, you don’t have ears. Hairs on your body collect vibrations in the air, specifically on what you would call your knees.” I waved my antennae through the breeze, as if sticking my face in a rose, soaking in the glorious fragrances.
The guard gestured to the bee behind her, who eyed me with kind curiosity. She introduced her. “This is Manda. She will take you to Queen Isabella. She’ll explain everything. Well, as much as you need for now.” The two sentries stood back, uncrossing their swords, and I crept forward on six unsteady legs, wings tucked in tight, following Manda obediently.
Buy links:
Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-sorrow-of-bees-andie-holman/1147150002?ean=2940180601384
Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1730362
Author Biography:
Raised by pirates, Andie believed faeries lived in the snapdragons. She’s loved fantasy stories forever, and left her career in medicine to research climate change for the world-building in her magical series, The Laughter of the Sun.
Many places have been home: Bermuda, West Virginia, England, Colorado, and now, a small sliver of Canada, nestled in the Pacific, where she lives with her husband and menagerie of animals.
Years ago, she wrote Love Your Scar, a non-fiction, self-help guide to freeing restrictive tissue. It will seem out of place, another world, another time, compared to her current writing.
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