Welcome to my weekly Author Spotlight. I’ve asked a bunch of my author friends to answer a set of interview questions, and to share their latest work.
Today: Warren Rochelle lives and writes in Crozet, Virginia, with his husband and their little dog, Gypsy. His short fiction and poetry have been published in such journals and anthologies as Icarus, North Carolina Literary Review, Forbidden Lines, Aboriginal Science Fiction, Collective Fallout, Queer Fish 2, Empty Oaks, Quantum Fairy Tales, Migration, Clarity, Innovation, and other publications. His short story, “The Golden Boy,” was a finalist for the 2004 Spectrum Award for Short Fiction.
Rochelle is the author of five novels. The Wild Boy (2001), Harvest of Changelings (2007), and The Called (2010),were all published by Golden Gryphon Press. The Werewolf and His Boy, originally published by Samhain Publishing in 2016, was re-released from JMS Books in August 2020. His fifth novel, In Light’s Shadow, was published by JMS Books in September 2022. His first story collection, The Wicked Stepbrother and Other Stories was published by JMS Books in September 2020. His second collection, To Bring Him Home and Other Tales, was published in September 2021, by JMS Books. His third collection, The Great Forest and Other Love Stories, was published in November 2024. JMS Books has also published two stand-alone stories, Seagulls and Susurrus, in 2021 and 2022.
Thanks so much, Warren, for joining me!
J. Scott Coatsworth: When did you know you wanted to write, and when did you discover that you were good at it?
Warren Rochelle: When did I know I wanted to write? I first read The Chronicles of Narnia in the third grade, and I fell in love. I decided then and there I wanted to be a writer. Some years later (I think I was in the sixth grade), I wrote an awful rip-off of Narnia in homage. Instead of a High King, I had a High Queen. Somewhere in her realm was the Plain of Fire and the Plain of the Moon, so named for the color of the grass growing on each plain. Instead of centaurs, I had bucentaurs, who have bovine (or ox bodies). I spent some serious time exploring mythology to find this chimera. I thought I was very clever. Mercifully, more specific memories are hazy and the manuscript (in a three-ring binder) has been lost.
Discovering I was good at writing came slowly, most often in affirmations from teachers, from elementary school through college. I won an Honorable Mention in a Scholastic contest in the 9th Grade for a poem about a green-skinned boy, half-human, half-alien, who couldn’t handle his telepathic powers. Getting published in both my high school literary journal, Different Drummer (of course, and no, I did not wear a lot of black) and my undergraduate literary journal, Cellar Door. Both helped me know I was good at writing. These may sound small change now, I know, but at the time, they were needed affirmations.
JSC: Are you a plotter or a pantser?
WR: Oh, I am a such a plotter. Depending on the story, I have developed elaborate time lines, dynastic family charts, flora and fauna, and more than a few maps. Outlines are my friend, although they are never set in stone. Rather they evolve as the story evolves. My outlines are more rough road maps, suggestions as the way to go. I do, however, have to know the ending before I can start. This is not a scene or a dialogue, but rather an image, a place, an action, such as on the beach, or in the white city. For example, in the title story of this collection, “The Great Forest,” I knew Edvard and Luc are together, leaving. In my first novel, The Wild Boy, I knew my heroes were on a beach. That beach turned out to be in a dream. In my last novel, In Light’s Shadow, I knew Gavin and Torin would be in bed together. That bed turned out to be in an underground sanctuary, while a wild magic storm raged above them.
JSC: What is the most heartfelt thing a reader has said to you?
WR: What’s one of the most heartfelt things a reader has said to me? What immediately came to mind was what a former student said after she finished reading In Light’s Shadow: A Fairy Tale: she felt seen. I knew I had done what I set out to do.
JSC: What was one of the most surprising things you’ve learned in writing your books?
WR: In the concluding story of the collection, “Robert and Phillip and the Bookstore,” like the Myth of Baucis and Philemon, which inspired the story, two trees grow together. I looked up this phenomenon and found the word, inosculation, which is defined as “a natural phenomenon in which trunks or roots of two trees grow together in a manner similar to the artificial process.” To inosculate means to “to join by intertwining or fitting closely together.” The term comes from Latin, “osculum,” meaning kiss. I kept reading. Inosculation usually happens between two trees of the same species, but as in the myth, it is not uncommon for this intertwining, or self-grafting, to happen when the trees are not the same species.
In the myth, one tree is a linden, the other, a willow. Jupiter rewarded the couple for their hospitality and kindness by saving them from the dire fate of their neighbors, and by giving them a temple in which to live. Then he said they could ask for whatever they wanted. Philemon has two requests: that they live in this temple and serve the gods, and “let neither of us to ever have to live alone. Grant that we may die together.”
When their time comes, they are transformed into two trees, a willow and linden, and they grow together from the same trunk. Their trees are inosculating. Wow, perfect! Robert and Phillip make the same request of Zeus and Hermes that neither have to be alone, that they die together. Their request is granted; they die at the same time. However, they are not transformed into trees, instead, two trees, a willow and a linden are planted where their ashes are buried, and these trees grow together.
JSC: How did you choose the topic for this collection?
WR: All my stories seem to be love stories of one kind or another. The topic is always there, to be reimagined again. I think the topic chose me a long time ago.
What is it that draws me to love stories, in particular queer love stories? That’s a good question. A simple, and somewhat rambling, answer is I find myself writing out of my own heart. I didn’t really fall in love until I fell in love with another man. We tell our own stories, what we know and what we need to know. Le Guin says, and I paraphrase, that all literature has political and social weight; it is rhetorical. An argument is being made, validation is being given. That queer love stories are no different from other love stories must be made evident. Love is love is love.
JSC: What were your goals and intentions in The Great Forest and Other Love Stories, and how well do you feel you achieved them?
WR: What were my goals and intentions in writing this collection of short stories? I believe that love is the greatest force in the universe. It empowers us and it makes us stronger. Love helps us to find out who we are and who we are with another person. We are often a better person because we are loved. Someone has deemed us worthy of being loved and cared for, of being wanted. When we are loved, we are more ourselves, the selves we were meant to be. I wanted to explore and examine being in love, being loved, in a variety of places and times, including other planets and alternate universes, in our home towns, the end of the world, among other places and times.
I wanted to examine love under stress, when it may be lost, or stolen, when it is tested. In some ways, all of my stories are love stories, especially queer love stories. One writes what one knows. I would argue that this aphorism also means writing what one needs to know. That’s another interview.
For example, in the title story, “The Great Forest,” Edvard is the ugly duckling of his family. He is the unplanned child, always lacking the luster of his older brothers. He feels he is a constant disappointment to his parents. Suffering from anxiety and panic disorder, and extreme shyness, he never has had the chance to discover himself and to know of what he is capable. Then, he falls in love. By loving Luc, he learns who he is. He learns he is capable of far more than he ever believed. When Edvard’s lover, Luc, is given to the Holy Trees to serve them for seven years, Edvard learns what it means to be empowered by love.
How well did I succeed in achieving my goals and intentions? On the whole, I feel I was successful. On the other hand, I also feel achieving story goals is always a work in progress.
JSC: What inspired you to write The Great Forest? What were the challenges in bringing it to life?
WR: What inspired me to write the title story of this collection, “The Great Forest”? To answer, I want to first discuss the source for the world of the story, Wertynger, 11.9 light years from Earth, a human-colonized planet in the interstellar Human Community. It took me a few years to find Wertynger. That journey started in the 8th grade, when I discovered my passion for alternate history. An excerpt of MacKinley Kantor’s What if the South Had Won the Civil War was published in the Sunday magazine section of the local paper. I was fascinated. I found the complete book, and started to write my own version of what if the South had won.
My Confederacy survived 100 years after the war, but without a happy reunion with the United States and Texas, which is how Kantor’s story ends. My history was much darker than his. How could it not be? The Confederacy fell after a successful African American revolution. After that, a biological World War III, a plague-caused collapse of the Northern Hemisphere, Reconstruction and the Second Renaissance, and finally, 700 or so years later, Wertynger. The human colonists found they shared the planet with sentient trees. Many humans worshipped them, but even so, learning to live with the Trees proved difficult.
So, where did the Trees come from? Narnia, maybe. Or the Ents of Middle-Earth. Possibly the nymphs of classical mythology. I don’t know, maybe all three. The idea of the Trees was more fleshed out when I read several books on redwoods and sequoias, The Hidden Life of Trees, by Peter Wohlleben, and Forest Walking: Discovering the Trees and Woodlands of North America, by Peter Wohlleben and Jane Billinghurst. Inventing and exploring the worship of the Trees, brought me to humans serving the Trees, as their mobility and voices. Add in a conflict, two lovers, and one false start, and then, the story in the
collection.
I always find world-building a challenge, even though it is a lot of fun. How best to present an alien culture of sentient trees? What happens when humans interact with them? Showing Edvard’s struggles with extreme shyness, anxiety, and panic disorder involved a good amount of research. Figuring out how Edvard could rescue Luc from the Trees presented an interesting conundrum. I thoroughly enjoyed these challenges. For those who might be interested, I always include a Works Consulted Bibliography.
JSC: Were you a voracious reader as a child?
WR: That you ask this question makes me think there are writers who weren’t voracious readers as a child. This surprises me; they seem to go hand-and-hand. To be a good writer is to be a good reader, especially in one’s genre. Reading other stories helps one to be a good storyteller. But there are other paths.
To your question. Yes, I was a voracious reader, a bookworm. I inhaled books. My father could tell you about being called to school to pick me up more than once. I was in the library; I missed my bus. Falling in love with The Chronicles of Narnia convinced me I wanted to a writer when I grew up. The hour-long bus ride home was reading time. I wish I still could read in a bus or a car. One of my brothers told me I disappeared when I was a kid—into a book. True. I read and read and read.
Still do.
JSC: What are some day jobs that you have held? If any of them impacted your writing, share an example.
WR: What are some of the day jobs I have held? I divide my day jobs in two categories: professional and part-time or summer jobs. My professional jobs are just two, school librarian and English professor. I was a school librarian for eleven years. I taught English for twenty-three years. My part-time and summer jobs ranged from childcare and camp counselor, to lab worker for a zoology genetics lab at UNC-Chapel Hill. I can tell you the difference between male and female Drosophila melanogaster (common fruit fly), if anyone is interested.
To answer the question: Yes, my day jobs impacted my writing. One example is from is one of my of school librarian jobs. I worked at an American overseas school in Cartagena, Colombia. I lived there for two years. The conclusion of my first novel, The Wild Boy, was set in Cartagena. Cartagena has also shown up in other stories. Another example is that I have had more than one hero/protagonist who is a librarian, or an English professor.
JSC: What are you working on now, and what’s coming out next? Tell us about it!
WR: What’s coming out next? I just finished and turned in “In Love’s Light,” a short story for a charity anthology of JMS Books, Love is Free, forthcoming from JMS Books in January 2025. The proceeds of this anthology will be used to support the ACLU. This anthology is an act of resistance.
What am I working on now? At present, I am working another story or novella collection focused on shapeshifters. So far, I have written 2 selkie stories, and am contemplating 2 werewolf stories. One of the latter I think will be a longer version of “In Love’s Light.”
And now for Warren’s newest book: The Great Forest:
Finding true and lasting love is not always easy, and sometimes comes at a cost. Sometimes, love hurts. Sometimes, love is found next door, sometimes on another planet. Quests must be taken; giant intelligent trees must be defied. A mysterious voice on the radio must be trusted. Can promises made in one universe be kept in another? What is going to happen with the giant comet passes by the Earth? Is love possible as the world ends? Will these lovers have a happily ever after, or at least, for now? Explore these and other variations of love and its difficulties in this new story collection.
Publisher | Amazon | Barnes & Noble
Excerpt
Chesapeake Air and Spaceport, North Terminal, Interplanetary Concourse A
The sun shimmered on the water, as the train pulled into the Chesapeake Air and Spaceport RR station. He gathered his things and walked out onto a winding path, into a garden of dwarf sugar maples and ash trees. The path led him over a little bridge and a stream, and lavender star-shaped flowers. He stopped there to collect himself, to remember what his therapists had taught him, Alana on Avalon, and Gavin and Julia, at Blue Ridge. Deep breaths, center and focus on the safe, on the gurgle of the stream below his feet, the star-shaped flowers, blooming by the water. Interrupt his fear-talk looping, be present now. The main building of the spaceport was straight ahead. The building seemed almost made of sunlight and water. Sea turtles, eels, dolphins, and sea horses seemed to be swimming inside its walls.
Inside, the spaceport would be filled with people from all across Terra, from who knew how many HC planets. And aliens. Strangers, all of them. Breathe in for three, hold for four, release for five. Center. Through the sliding glassteel doors, follow the signs to the ticket kiosks. Everybody was busy, going, coming. Edvard was just one more young human.
He could do this, and he had done it. He could do it again. He could hear Luc telling him that, as he touched him, kissed him.
::I’m coming::.
No answer.
Scattered trees inside, fountains and pools. Whoever designed the spaceport must have wanted it to look as if it was part of the bay itself. Water currents and tree-shapes in the metal and glassteel, the beams, and the afternoon sun visible in a great skylight over the departure lobby. Were those real birds flying overhead? Edvard caught the off-world accents he knew as he walked—Avalonian, Jardinero, New Scandinavian. A trio of enhanced chimpanzees, clearly traveling on business. He tried not to stare at the nest of Kalsons traveling together, with their pointed ears, white-gold hair, and skin. Like Luc and his father. There were a few Kalsons like Manon with skin a darker gold, hair, a deep brown. He stepped back, as did everyone around him, at who he saw next coming down the concourse. Even though the Second Interstellar War had ended thirty-three standard years ago, clearly not enough time had passed for any Zoki to walk through the one of the largest spaceports on the North American east coast without armed HC security. No one had forgotten how many thousands of Wertyngeris had either died or were put in hibernacula for years, or how many of the frozen had been thawed and eaten. No one had forgotten how many HC soldiers died in the war. Yes, the war had ended with a palace coup, led by the Zoki crown princess. She had immediately offered reparations for the atrocities on Wertynger, and they had been paid, and were still being paid.
Edvard watched as the reptilian Zoki, all dressed in white, with ashes on their forehead, walked silently through the spaceport, staring at the floor. According to the treaty ending the war, the Zoki had to publicly atone for eating sentient life. The crown princess, now empress, had suggested fifty Terran standard years of shame and public penance. She had acknowledged that not all Zoki had known or participated, but the government she had overthrown had known, and it had had wide popular support.
Never again.
Someone spat on the floor as the Zoki and their guards walked past. He wondered if fifty Terran standard would be enough penance.
Edvard stepped in front of a ticket kiosk beside a family which was clearly emigrating. Everybody seemed to be carrying some sort of luggage, the three kids, the two dads. He inserted his passport and Universal ID into the kiosk, and selected shuttle to the station, star service to Wertynger, Next available ship, leaving Union Station. An option for stasis for the three week trip in hyperspace? Maybe after week one. Micro-cabin, no, too claustrophobic. Single double, Family? Single. It felt like forever for funds verification. Ding! Transaction complete. Please proceed to Concourse B, Gate 29, shuttle already boarding. Proceed to gate, please have ID and passport ready.
He had done it.