An Arboreal Preface

My friends and those who know me best know me as a mermaid, a dryad or a lioness moonlighting as a housebound kitty. Perhaps I am a wearer of many hats and many masks. But, if pressed, I will call myself a storyteller, nothing more, nothing less. There is no dishonor in the title, I often wonder why people seem to think truth and fiction are mutually exclusive. And I wonder most of all at people who think that writers lie. My nom-de-guerre as a writer, artist, storyteller, songwriter, singer with terminal stage fright is Nin Harris; I run mythopoetica.com and various related projects such as Domus Exsulis. I am also a phd student, a university lecturer on study leave, a former educational books editor and occasional book reviewer. These days I also help out at Cabinet des Fées, mostly wrangling with behind-the-scenes technicalities.

The image of a tree appears again and again in many folktales and myths. I picture stories thus, branching out from trunk into twigs, all interlaced with each other, intersecting prose, poetry, fiction, to that indefinable land known as poetic prose. The Wildwood section of The Mythogenetic Grove features these intersections; annotated links to other beautiful binary woods in these pixelated frontiers, articles, essays and bits of fictive prose about mythopoesis and storytelling. I also use the Wildwood to post news regarding my art and fiction projects as well as publications. If you’re curious about the more personal and academic aspect of my being, then you are most welcome to hop over to the Water section, aka: Growing Fins, where my life-experiences are documented in a loose, free-form online scrapbook of photographs, photo essays, musings, recipes and reviews.

Publications

Said the Tree to the Axe(man), in Jabberwocky 3, edited by Sean Wallace & Erzebet Yellowboy (Prime Books)
No. 165, Independence Lane in The Harrow, Vol 10, No 11 (2007), edited by Dru Pagliassotti.

Active Writing Projects:

Writing/Drafting

Novels: Actively Writing

(1) Watermaidens: mythopoeic novel set in the hypertextual world, Domus Exsulis which I created and which has been on the `web since 1997.

Novels: Placed On Hold

( The writing of The Yrole Triptych, my ornate, somewhat Byzantine and quasi-historical mythic fantasy with postcolonial gothic overtones will resume after I have completed my Ph.d. thesis on the postcolonial gothic, since it requires far more time and research than I presently possess.)

(1) The Apothecary’s Casket (working title): the first novel in The Yrole Triptych.
(2) The Archivist’s Lantern (working title) – The second book in the genre-ambiguous three-book sequence mentioned in #1. I’m writing both #1 and #2 simultaneously to ensure that the subtleties and patterns etc are knit together seamlessly.

Novella(s)

The Caretaker’s Tale & The Dragon Who Thought She Was a Tree (to be offered in chapbook/ebook format)

Short Fiction

(1) I Will Not Save Your Damned Princess! (Short Fiction)
(2) Bronze and Silver Coins
(3) The Tollbooth at the Foot of the Mountains (Short Fiction)

Editing/Revising

(1)The Faerie-Maker and the Roma King of Brunswick Street (Short Fiction)
(2) Sang Rimau and the Medicine Woman (Short Fiction)
(3) Merlusine (Poem)
(4) Graffiti Flowers – A Lady Dissonance fragment. (Short Fiction)

Submitted/Waiting

(1) The Orientalist’s House-guest (Short Story)
(2) The Domestic Sundial (Poem)

You should also know that I am not on that social networking leviathan with the initials F and B, since I permanently deleted my account there. If there’s any Nin Harris there, it’s not me, unless that blasted server has regenerated my profile. I have a very strong and adverse reaction against that company’s policies, and will never return. The canny may however find me where the tweets go, but do note – I am selective about who I follow and even more so about those I allow to follow me. When in doubt, it is always wise to ask first.

I prefer good old-fashioned email to social networking and am pretty good about replying to them. If you need to contact me for any reason, here’s a form:

Comments or questions are welcome.