The Author
Thea van Diepen spent the first ten years of their life on a tree-wrapped acreage where an inquisitive child might believe in magic. Nowadays, they live in a small city in Alberta, breathing life into characters and worlds and the stories those tell.
They’ve been published in the Tesseracts anthology series, and their works include the White Changeling series, The Illuminated Heart, and the interactive short story The Tree and the Grave.
The Books
You’re my reader if…
…you’re not afraid of words, and you love a good paradox.
Or, to put it in more words:
You’re my reader if…
…you’re not afraid of words.
Style
…you like humour that says: “Moar ridiculous!”, and one or more of the characters say back: “It’s all perfectly normal.”
…you like seriousness that says: “Everything bad that can happen, will”, and one or more of the characters say back: “No way in hell.”
Genre
…you’re fascinated by questions, especially if they include “What if?”
…you like fantasy that asks: “Who is human?”, and where magic is not always in the forefront, yet its existence is integral to the story.
…you like science fiction that asks: “What is human?”, and that uses science to blend the definitions of natural and synthetic, human and not.
…you like horror or dark fantasy that asks: “How is human?”, and where the most terrifying thing isn’t the monsters, but how people respond to them.
…you like science fantasy that asks: “Why is human?”, and that puts the natural and supernatural in the same room and forces them to cooperate.
…you realize that all of those questions can appear in all genres, to a greater or lesser extent, because they all feed into one another.
…you get excited when genres start mixing, or when new ones start appearing.
Content
…you take delight in wordplay and when language is used well.
…you’re excited by new ways of thinking about the world and enjoy exploring new ways to be.
…you are fascinated by the endless possibilities of the human mind, both light and dark and everything in between.
Value
…you believe that ignorance of the truth comes not through lack of opportunity to learn, but lack of desire to see beyond mere assumption.
…you still believe in right and wrong, good and evil, and understand that shades of grey mean that light and dark get mixed up in everyone, not that they’re indistinguishable or don’t exist.
…you refuse to accept that darkness is all there is even if, sometimes, the darkness wins.
…you believe that people are capable of being childlike, even in the midst of and with full knowledge of the world’s horrors.
…and you love a good paradox.