{"id":24491,"date":"2026-03-16T14:44:43","date_gmt":"2026-03-16T19:44:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/?p=24491"},"modified":"2026-03-30T09:45:04","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T14:45:04","slug":"speculative-folklore-and-magic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/blog\/speculative-folklore-and-magic\/","title":{"rendered":"Speculative folklore and magic"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Never fear! I\u2019m working on A Babe in Winter<\/em><\/a>. I just had to adjust the story\u2019s priority because honestly, I wasn\u2019t too keen on telling Mouse\u2019s story at all, much less wrapped up in a quest. And I didn\u2019t want the quest to become a series of vignettes, side-quests, and other such clich\u00e9s. But now that I have abandoned Mouse back to his own mind, I can pick up where I left off in Black as Knight<\/em>.<\/p>\n

But this post isn\u2019t about A Babe in Winter<\/em>. It\u2019s about an idea I had in 1996 and put away. And the idea I had in 2016. And the two in 2017. And the one in 2018. And the one in 2019. I doodled, knowing Idea 1996 would be essential to each of the others, which could exist independent of each other. But then I got to thinking: What if I put all of them together? Intertwined them? Set them in my favorite city with my favorite themes?<\/p>\n

Fairy tales, myths, urban legends, angels, demons, gods, demigods, theology, philosophy, medicine, and science all coming together and conflicting, where they live in a world that views them as a little off, forced to coexist and live under the same bureaucratic restrictions as humanity, with twists and turns made possible because bureaucracy is unyielding.<\/p>\n

Now, look. I don\u2019t read fantasy or scifi. I could be reinventing the wheel. I could be trampling all over genre conventions. However, to me, this is a challenge: To write a world that may or may not have been written, explored, or hinted at with absolutely no regard to what\u2019s been done.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a world where the quasi-immortal mortal sorcerer isn\u2019t the chosen one. He\u2019s the help<\/em>.<\/p>\n

He came to Kansas City during Prohibition to get a decent shot of whiskey without having to sneak around. He couldn\u2019t go home for it. Europe was at war. He only went to South America for one reason. He didn\u2019t want to make the trek to Asia, Oceania, or Africa. So he stayed in the U.S.<\/p>\n

He stumbled over a magical creature, then found an entire underground community he never knew existed, one that was starting to have legal and bureaucratic problems with the rise of the IRS and social security numbers: Papiere, bitte<\/em>. He was asked to become the intermediary.<\/p>\n

He wasn\u2019t doing anything at the moment, he was happy to find a community that could expand his magical horizons and enhance his power, he was dating a beautiful lawyer for the mob and wanted to make his next family (#5) with her, so he agreed without too much thought to the long-term ramifications.<\/p>\n

So now a hundred-plus years later, he\u2019s a lawyer, stuck in a place he\u2019d never have chosen to stay, becoming the locus for magical and mythical beings who need his help. There\u2019s nothing magic about Kansas City other than Warre & Locke, PC, established by Wolfhart Tadius in 1930-something. He employs so many of the magical and mythical that his practice\u2019s nickname is The Island of Misfit Toys. His only living son is ninety-something and sliding into memory care. His only living daughter is eighty-four and pissy about the fact that he\u2019s forever thirty-eight, but she moves back in with him anyway because she\u2019s tired of being the matriarch of her family. His mortal colleagues are starting to wonder why he doesn\u2019t age, and everybody<\/em> wants to know the mechanism of his youth and vitality, and where he goes about every sixty or seventy years.<\/p>\n

But Hart\u2019s not telling. That\u2019s one secret he\u2019ll take to his grave\u2014when he decides to need one.<\/p>\n

His current concerns include finding a missing Christmas icon because the Krampus is afraid her counterpart won\u2019t be found in time; helping a newly widowed ex-faery godmother whose mortality is starting to catch up to her in the form of Machiavellian godfae politics; dealing with a frumpy middle-aged perimenopausal vampire with no guidance and no idea how she got that way or why; sniffing out a budding evil mage who\u2019s tearing up the D\u2019n\u2019D world; keeping his community out of 4Chan and Reddit sleuths\u2019 crosshairs; and struggling with a billionaire surgeon because of his tendency to exploit anything if he can make a profit and puts ketchup on well-done steaks. His grimoire is sorely neglected, his magic isn\u2019t sentient so it can\u2019t index them, and he trusts no one to transcribe his voice notes.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not to mention the delightful and beautiful conservation and restoration librarian who specializes in medieval and renaissance alchemy texts, the first woman to intrigue him since his last wife died in 1960 and the first one to whom he might<\/em> be able to divulge his secrets.<\/p>\n

And worst of all, he still<\/em> can\u2019t conjure food that tastes right, even after over four hundred years.<\/p>\n

He could leave anytime, but he won\u2019t. Because he\u2019s not an asshole.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Never fear! I\u2019m working on A Babe in Winter. I just had to adjust the story\u2019s priority because honestly, I wasn\u2019t too keen on telling Mouse\u2019s story at all, much less wrapped up in a quest. And I didn\u2019t want the quest to become a series of vignettes, side-quests, and other such clich\u00e9s. But now […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[812,539,148,813],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-projects","category-genres","category-kansas-city","category-magic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24491"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24491"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24491\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24991,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24491\/revisions\/24991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}