I am so excited to finally share my story for the Bloomburrow set for Magic: the Gathering!
When I was first approached to work on this, everything about it appealed to me. So cute! So wholesome! Adventure and community and nature and talking animals? Sign me up! But I was also intimidated, because I’d never read a single Redwall book, and I knew at a glance that it would be a huge touchstone for a lot of people, even if it wasn’t the only one. I armed myself with Mrs. Frisby and Tolkien and Diana Wynne Jones and Frog and Toad and other pastoral vibes, and went to work.
Thanks to the outline and guidance of the story leads, what I got to write was one of my favorite stories ever. Helga, a neurodivergent frog artist with a gift for prognostication, struggles to find her place in the world. Mabel, married mouse mother of three, leads her team of neighbors on a long and dangerous journey with her family’s magical heirloom sword for protection. There’s fighting and spells, fun and drama, giant beasts representing forces of nature, and through it all, there’s hope and light and friendship and love. There’s small people without big powers being brave and helping each other as best they can, even when it’s hard.
And, of course, lots of descriptions of food!
I did so much research on the actual animals I was writing for this, from basic stats like their typical sizes and colorations, to their body language cues and what sounds they make, to, as noted, what they eat. It was super fun coming up with particular gestures and quirks of movement and voices for each character, as well as the overall speech patterns and narrative style. Ensemble casts are always a challenge, because you want everyone to shine, and I’m really happy with all the special moments I was able to give the individual characters.
I also dug into the various plants perhaps more than any sane person should. What would be flowering at a given time? What sorts of things grow in particular climates? How big would a certain flower be in comparison to a mouse or rabbit or frog? What part of the plant is edible or would make a good tisane? I went down so many rabbit holes for this, pun extremely intended.
Perhaps what I most loved was being able to write two things that are personal to me: neurodivergence and family. I channeled a lot of my own experiences and those of my friends into Helga when it came to struggling with attention issues and hyperfocus and underachieving. I, too, zone out at inconvenient times, or disappear into my work and forget to do important stuff, especially eating. I am so clumsy; my super power is getting things caught on other things, even when it seems physically impossible to do so. If I look at a cable, it tangles up and is guaranteed to trip me at some point. And I have imposter syndrome and rejection sensitivity that gang up on me at the worst times and make me want to walk into a lake and burrow into the mud and never talk to anyone again. But I persevere, and so does Helga!
I’m also a mom and a wife, and while I’m not nearly as cool as Mabel, I love my husband and kids and wanted to avoid the kinds of sitcom stereotypes we often see for family relationships. Many of us have issues with partners and parents, but in this specific story, I aimed for aspirational and happy and healthy to fit the overall tone. I showed the kinds of love and deep affection and tender moments that I wish we could have more of, in fiction and the real world. When my husband read it, he kept recognizing bits of our lives that I peppered in, and being able to do that was such a source of joy for me.
I’m hoping to do a full behind the scenes write-up of stuff at some point, the way Seanan McGuire does for her stories, but for now I’ll gladly answer anyone’s questions to the best of my ability, either here or on socials.
And for the record, if I was in Bloomburrow, I would probably be a birdfolk. Caw!
