A warm welcome to Amanda Meuwissen joining us today to talk about new release “Interpretive Hearts”.
Humanity in Fantasy & Fiction
I don’t care for unhappy endings, and when someone responds to that with, “but it’s more realistic,” I usually spout the same comeback: I get enough reality in real life. I want fiction in my fiction.
Now, that’s not to say that, as a writer, I don’t focus on realistic conflict. Very much the opposite. I take my characters through the ringer before I let them reach their Happily Ever After, but in the end, I want hope, lessons learned, and for readers to be left with a warm feeling of satisfaction.
You don’t need to focus on contemporary, mainstream settings, however, to accomplish a truly human look at a story. Fantasy and sci-fi are very effective tools for putting equivalents to normal life that make us look at things differently, and how a high fantasy story approaches class struggles, war, religion, whatever, is going to be entirely different from how a space odyssey might. It all depends on what the author wants to say.
As a fan of anything off the norm—fantasy, sci-fi, horror, superheroes—I am often awed by the richness in all those genres and how they can be drastically different but also share important parallels.
It should come as no surprise that I love mythology when I’m a superhero fan. The connections there are obvious—great men and women with the power to face off against impossible odds.
One of the series I’m most proud of is my Lovesick duology, which tackles superhero/supervillain dynamics and how afflictions like depression and trauma can be humanizing even for ‘gods’. I have another Dreamspinner title coming out in December that tackles people with powers, After Vertigo, where the main character is powerless and afflicted with sometimes crippling anxiety.
I’m even fitting a little myth and legend into my current WIP, a Vampire x Human love story with the characters recounting the myth of Hades and Persephone, tongue and cheek about their own budding relationship. The fantastical applied to what makes us human puts a different lens on things we might normally forget, take for granted, or find mundane.
That’s why I take it very seriously when I tackle a quieter narrative about just normal people living with normal challenges. There’s nothing supernatural to the release I’m sharing with you today, Interpretive Hearts. It’s a tale of chronic pain, recovery, adjusting to impairment and how that can affect someone’s whole life, while needing more than ever to connect and let people in.
It is a love story, but the MC, Teddy, has issues from recent surgery and retirement from his career as a ballet choreographer, and his physical therapist and love interest, Finn, has his own secret trauma to throw a wrench into their romance.
It’s all very human, very real, and as I tend to write from real life experiences, either personally or from those close to me, a lot of truth translates onto the page that I find therapeutic when writing and that I hope readers find comforting too.
Humanity in our fantasy and in all our fiction is so important to foster hope and what I always loved about reading and getting lost in stories while growing up. Yes, sometimes I want to see a magic spell or superhuman feat with that, but I also want the emotions of someone breaking down simply because they had a bad day or a rough life, and they need something as simple as a hug, a kind word, or a caring partner to lift them up again. I hope readers find and appreciate some of that in Interpretive Hearts.
In the competitive world of dance, Teddy was a flawless performer and hardass choreographer who students feared and admired in equal measure. But hip surgery ended the glamour and drama, and now Teddy is recovering at his beach house, lost and listless.
Until he meets Finn, his neighbor, who is too perfect, gorgeous, and kind to exist—but very ill timed. In a seaside town as small as theirs, they can’t avoid each other, especially since Finn is also Teddy’s new physical therapist. But Teddy isn’t the man he used to be, and though Finn flirts shamelessly with him, Teddy can’t believe a has-been dancer is worthy of someone so young and full of life.
Finn’s sunny smile is also hiding heartache. Pursuing Teddy challenges both his professionalism and his self-preservation, but if he can convince Teddy to trust him, maybe they both can heal.
Amanda Meuwissen is a primarily gay romance writer, as well as Marketing Operations Manager for the software company Outsell. She has a Bachelor of Arts in a personally designed major from St. Olaf College in Creative Writing, and is an avid consumer of fiction through film, prose, and video games. As author of the paranormal romance trilogy The Incubus Saga, the superhero romance duology Lovesick, and much more, Amanda regularly attends local comic conventions for fun and to meet fans, where she will often be seen in costume as one of her favorite fictional characters. She lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with her husband, John, and their cat, Helga, and can be found at www.amandameuwissen.com.
Thank you for letting me stop by today to announce this release and chat about fiction. It’s always a pleasure!