Elsa has felt awkward and out of her depth for as long as she can remember. In a world where one’s Animal Affinity is a sign of maturity and worth, Elsa’s inability to demonstrate hers has become more than a disappointing nuisance; it’s a narrowing path.
Obscured behind the curtain of society’s disdain, she has no confidence that she’ll ever conquer her Plainness. Frustrated by her failure to fit into their picture-perfect life, Elsa’s family grows more intolerant of her by the week. Her boss, a seven-foot-tall rage demon, is one clawed step away from setting loose his temper and firing her––or worse.
And on top of all that, her cat wants to eat her. Things could be better. But that’s not the direction they’re heading.
A violent gang of wolves prowls the streets of Elsa’s neighborhood, harassing Plain Ones. With the pack’s presence becoming stronger and its threat more real, Elsa’s life is rapidly plummeting from lackluster to perilous.
Her only bright spots are her cousin and a co-worker who seem to know her better than she knows herself. But even though they can see through to what society won’t, will that be enough to protect Elsa from making a drastic choice? In her desperation to shed her Plainness, how far will she go to evolve?
When I first sat down to write Elsa’s story, I wrote one sentence: “Elsa’s family has become meaner than usual, her job is awful, and she has a nagging suspicion her cat wants to eat her.” Then I wrote a page. The next day, I wrote another. At that time, I had no idea where the story would go, but I knew it would be fantastical. As that first draft emerged, I recognized Elsa’s challenging situation in life wasn’t of her own making, and her struggle to find agency would be at the heart of everything. That was a relatable story. It wasn’t necessarily an easy one.
Sometimes you have to write hard things.
Maybe I’m a romantic, but I like stories whose characters end up okay, especially when they deserve to. In my much younger years, I was sometimes accused of “pulling my punches” as a writer. But literature is about conflict and characters making awful choices and sometimes terrible things happening. As writers, it’s important not to shy away from that when the story calls for it.
While finishing an earlier draft of A Narrowing Path, I received news that a friend from college had died, accidentally and quite tragically, on vacation with her family. Thinking through the news and manner of her death subconsciously overlapped into my revisions. The main character, Elsa, makes tough choices when it looks like she doesn’t have enough options to make good ones. I don’t usually write fiction based on the real events in my life, but the way I wrote that part of Elsa’s story was absolutely influenced––and improved––by the way I was processing my grief.
Never underestimate the importance of close cousin relationships.
I have almost two dozen first cousins. I grew up with my extended family all around me, all the time. It was great! Growing up, I was not a naturally popular child and could count the number of classmates I was friends with on the fingers of one hand. While other kids at school had sleepovers and played softball together on the weekends, I could depend on Sunday afternoons at my grandparents’ house with all the aunts and uncles and cousins. We kids were mostly left to our own devices, and I made a practice of observing interpersonal dynamics from a young age, a skill that later would help me tremendously as a writer.
If I was unpopular at school for not being sporty and living too far inside my imagination, when I began writing short stories, things got worse. The first time I read one of those manuscripts, about an epic battle between angels and demons, to my class in fourth grade, the response I got was muted at best and othering at worst. It was clear I needed to keep that nonsense to myself and just read Louisa May Alcott like the other girls. Shout-out to my cousin Paige who handed me her brick-shaped mass market copy of Little Women on the first day of summer that year, a book I devoured so ardently that reading it at the start of every summer became a tradition.
Elsa’s family is complicated. Some of them treat her badly because of how she’s disappointed their expectations of what her life should be. But she has one cousin, completely disconnected from the morass of her parents and sister, who represents a safe, if somewhat dispassionate, haven for her. Cousin relationships are important to me, and they find their way into my writing a lot.
I write slowly; it takes time to layer all the “literary” stuff in.
When my husband and I bought our first home, we moved from an 800-square-foot apartment to a 2,600-square-foot house in the suburbs. We were able to furnish most of that house with the stuff we’d previously crammed into four rooms in the artsy part of town. One friend who helped us move in commented, “It’s like all your furniture has room to exhale.”
A Narrowing Path is a more expanded story than its original form, Finis. When I signed with my new publisher to turn the Animal Affinities books into an integrated trilogy, Elsa’s story gained room to exhale, too.
My first drafts come slowly. Some would call me a pantser or discovery writer; while writing this way feels more artistic, it takes longer. But I’ve made peace with it, because as I go through each draft, revising individual sections as my critique group tackles them before pressing forward with the next, meaningful features––character development, metaphor, themes––weave themselves into the plot. The prose improves. Storylines find their intersections, the foreshadowing becomes more subtle, the subtext blooms. Everything deepens. This is all to the good.
I love working with a small, capable press.
I’ve worked with multiple editors and publishers over the course of my career. Working with a really competent small/indie press has been amazing. In a publishing landscape that could be fairly called bleak and/or disappointing on any given day, it’s been a relief to know the people I’m working with not only prioritize and champion my books but also share my values about the industry. GenAI won’t be part of our process: the artists and designers are human and fairly paid, the editing has been done by humans, and this publisher isn’t going to feed my manuscript into an LLM without my knowledge, consent, or compensation. I always know what’s going on with my project. The transparency is profound; I feel lucky.
It’s necessary to make art during hard times.
By now we’re all intimately familiar with dystopian nightmare. Making art during times of existential dread/threat is tough, but necessary. Maybe literature helps us escape. Maybe it helps us process, maybe it inspires us. Maybe we just need more good stuff in the world to counteract the wretched.
When I was thirteen, one of those close cousins of mine, who was twelve, died suddenly from an illness. It took me decades to process that shock. He turned up in my writing over and over again: the primary way I was handling grief, even if I didn’t recognize it yet.
Things can be hard. My cousin is dead. My friend from college drowned in front of her ten-year-old. My friends are under attack from the government because they aren’t cishet white guys. The planet has a fever and someone is firing the scientists. That doesn’t mean writing is dead. That doesn’t mean I can’t respond to all of it with my art, and thereby help other people respond to all of it, too. And that inspires me to make more of it, to figure all this human condition stuff out.
Because I’m pretty sure that to survive this mess, I’ll need to.
Angélique Jamail is an award-winning Lebanese-American author whose poetry, essays, and short fiction have appeared in dozens of journals and anthologies and been featured on the radio. The first time she read one of her short stories to an audience was fourth grade; the reaction to it was a character-building experience. Her other books include the poetry collection The Sharp Edges of Water, and she’s the creator of the zine Sonic Chihuahua. She serves on the Board of Directors for Mutabilis Press and is the Director of Creative Writing at The Kinkaid School. She resides in the Houston area with her family and their cats; she has otherwise lived inside her imagination pretty much her whole life.
Angélique Jamail: Website
A Narrowing Path: Blue Willow | Bookshop.org | B&N | Amazon
