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C. S. Lewis Remembered 5/10/2021 4:37:16 PM
C. S. Lewis has earned an exalted stature in literary history. While his religious tracts may confuse me, his fantasy adventure to Narnia rings with a heartwarming harmony.
While he lived decades before me, we share a beach. He vacationed many summers at this beach. I was born in the Irish town with this beach and, while it’s hard to say our toes touched identical sand or pebbles, historians can record for posterity my connection to C. S. Lewis.
He may have loved a swim in chilly North Atlantic waters. I can truthfully say I didn’t.
What I can say is that I revered the wooden bridge that crossed the stream that ebbed into the delta that adjoined the ocean waters but a few meters beyond the beach proper. Each time I stood on the bridge as a youth, I dared it to collapse. To my mother’s relief, it never did. As an adult, two decades later I mourned the loss of that bridge. For, after my family emigrated, I returned to find the rickety bridge of my youth replaced by posts anchored in concrete and planks four times stronger than what I remembered. I jumped on four of the planks and the bridge didn’t quiver, much less shake enough to scare a boyhood friend above the opposite bank.
C. S. Lewis must have relaxed on the summer beach. The wharf or sands provided no portal to a world beyond that I can discover. He found his fantasy portal in a wardrobe in an estate that he may have visited nearby, but one that I admit was never owned by me or my family.
Yet, he left a longing in me. A longing for fantasy. Not to experience, but to write about.
As waves driven by the tide submerge a beach, my attempt to write fantasy stayed hidden as I wrote mystery, and then romance. The Gold Award for One Paper Heart honored my efforts, but it wasn’t a fantasy. Multiple earlier mysteries like A Body to Bones, The Bones Dance Foxtrot or Baby Bones were fantastic in their own genre, but not a fantasy.
Research showed me a “fantasy” could be of several types, nonetheless, common elements existed. Mysteries met the definition of adventure and the struggle for mastery. However, stretched to the limit, mystery writing wasn’t fantasy writing. My award-winning romance also didn't satisfy all the criteria for being a fantasy.
I looked to C. S. Lewis. What was in full view, but not utilized by my writing was a “portal.” His wardrobe was a “portal.”
Research also told me I needed to add magic with rituals and to stress that words have power. C. S. Lewis in Narnia showed words had power while the girl initially pushing through the back panel of the wardrobe didn’t recite specific empowering words.
His protagonist could be labeled “naïve.” I didn’t wish this to be a modern day application. Nonetheless, I grabbed on to the fantasy ideal that the protagonist will struggle to master his or her destiny.
With a restriction imposed by a pandemic, and not willing to find a crowded beach, I imagined a teenage girl in a cave with a teenage boy who’d traveled through his portal. Blended together, this, my story became “Find the Girl, A Fantasy Novel.”
The story now exists. My name as author front and center on the cover.
When international travel resumes, I will again stroll across my childhood beach and say to myself, with pride, that I’m a fantasy author, perhaps not as worldly known as C. S. Lewis, but with the same internal pride as I envision he had on being able to express his innermost thoughts on paper in fantasy book format.
An excerpt of my effort, Find the Girl, A Fantasy Novel, is set forth for your enjoyment if you click the following link: Find the Girl, A Fantasy Novel.
