Writing Between Worlds

“Some stories are not invented — they are remembered.”

When I began writing Echoes of the Otherworld, I didn’t want to build a world from scratch. I wanted to excavate one. Beneath the surface of every standing stone, every forgotten rite, and every whispered omen in the mist, there was a deeper history — a living mythology that still hums beneath the Irish earth.

But the challenge was this: how do you write something sacred without distorting it? How do you tell stories that belong to a forgotten world while honoring the truths they carried?

Stones That Remember

Celtic myth is not linear. It’s not about heroes slaying dragons or conquering kingdoms. It’s circular. It’s ritualistic. It breathes like mist over water — elusive, shifting, present only when you're still enough to notice it.

This is what shaped Ríona’s journey. She doesn’t fight for glory. She listens. She remembers. She walks between the visible and invisible, just like the ancient druids who guided their tuath not with iron, but with word, rite, and silence.

The Line Between Research and Reimagining

I read everything I could. Irish folklore. Pre-Christian spiritual practices. Archaeological accounts of Brú na Bóinne and Tara. I didn’t want to borrow symbols — I wanted to understand them.

But this isn’t a textbook. It’s a novel. So there came a point when I had to ask: What would this lore feel like if it were still alive?

The answer became song-magic. The Heartstone. The Morrígan’s blood-oaths. None of these are literal artifacts — but each one is emotionally and mythologically authentic. Not historical fact, but spiritual truth.

Walking with the Old Gods

The Morrígan is not Marvel’s Hecate. She is not a gothic caricature of darkness. She is older than fear. She is choice, sovereignty, memory. And I had to write her that way — not tame her, not rewrite her into something modern minds could easily consume.

She doesn’t explain herself. She doesn’t need to. Her power comes not from spectacle, but from shadow.

Why Myth Still Matters

Fantasy lets us tell truths that history forgets. And mythology reminds us that not all truths are told — some are sung, burned, or buried in mist.

To write between worlds is to serve as both scribe and seer — not to dominate the story, but to become a vessel for it. That’s what this novel asked of me. And that’s what I hope it gives to you.