Notes on Heartwood, Heartblood
This story was written as a chapbook for the auction table at Swampstock XI and was composed over a week or so in mid-July 2004. (The finished volume went home with one Matthew Turley, who won it with the high bid of $15.)
Like most of the recent Jenny Haniver stories in prose, it's told by Jenny in first person. The events it chronicles take place sometime after The Vasty Deep and before the start of the first Adeptus story arc - though within that frame, it moves back and forth through time, a device I'll leave to the readers to decide if it works. It was written to be accessible to an audience with no prior exposure to Jenny's adventures, and so makes as good an early entry here as any.
It's also in small part an homage to the late Manly Wade Wellman, whose "Silver John" stories told of a haunted Appalachia as weird and spooky and unnerving as any landscape of Poe's or Lovecraft's. He was a true (and overlooked) master of American Gothic, and while I don't pretend to have a fraction of his magic, the least I can do is tip my hat.
For the purposes of this site, "Heartwood, Heartblood" is probably a bit long (5,300 words or so), though I haven't really had enough time with it to decide if that's too much or not enough. But for a week's work, I'm fairly happy with it.
The chapbook contained the following preface, which should serve as a fairly decent introduction:
On, then, with the tale...
Like most of the recent Jenny Haniver stories in prose, it's told by Jenny in first person. The events it chronicles take place sometime after The Vasty Deep and before the start of the first Adeptus story arc - though within that frame, it moves back and forth through time, a device I'll leave to the readers to decide if it works. It was written to be accessible to an audience with no prior exposure to Jenny's adventures, and so makes as good an early entry here as any.
It's also in small part an homage to the late Manly Wade Wellman, whose "Silver John" stories told of a haunted Appalachia as weird and spooky and unnerving as any landscape of Poe's or Lovecraft's. He was a true (and overlooked) master of American Gothic, and while I don't pretend to have a fraction of his magic, the least I can do is tip my hat.
For the purposes of this site, "Heartwood, Heartblood" is probably a bit long (5,300 words or so), though I haven't really had enough time with it to decide if that's too much or not enough. But for a week's work, I'm fairly happy with it.
The chapbook contained the following preface, which should serve as a fairly decent introduction:
Just in case you've come in late, it will soon be apparent that the following short story, an episode in the adventures of Jenny Haniver (urban mage and scion of the ancient and mysterious House Urantica, and that's about all you need to know going in here), is very much a part of a larger and more complicated narrative.
And it may be distressing to learn that none of this has been published to date in a traditional format; to which I can only say that I trust this whets your appetite for the Adeptus comic series, on the horizon in (we hope) the not-too distant future and starring the same bespectacled and irreverent heroine as this present tale.
However, I feel compelled to warn you that Adeptus picks up some time after the events of "Heartwood, Heartblood" leave off, and some few threads left dangling here may not be gathered in for some time yet. So readers wishing to know the context of Jenny's conversation with Rafe Urantica, or the circumstances under which she left the Guild of the Great Art (referred obliquely to in the line "You walked away from it all before"), are advised to be patient. All shall be revealed in time.
Dan Layman-Kennedy
July 2004
On, then, with the tale...
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