On to problem child number one. 😅 And here I am again with that chronic condition of mine called candor, especially when it comes to my own work. But I'm not going to groan like a parent looking back at those days when a growing child gave me so much sass.
Okay, so I love mazes. I love labyrinths. There's a difference between the two, and while I dig the idea of labyrinths more as a story element in gothic fiction, I opted for a maze for this book because an escape is needed for the romantic relationship to work (vague, I know, but I'm trying to avoid spoilers here).
When I read Stephen King's The Shining, I was immediately drawn to the animal topiary and maze where Danny played (that ghost-child in the tunnel made me nearly crap my pants, let me tell you). Since I was a teenager when I read the book, I didn't know till that moment that, Jesus, a maze could fuck you up.
Fast forward to my post-college years, and I ran across ghost story anthologies of my present hero in classic ghost fiction, M.R. James -- specifically, "Mr. Humphreys and His Inheritance". After years of not even thinking about mazes and how they can, yes, fuck you up, reading that story lit the fires, and there we go again with the muses refusing to shut their yap.
Guys, get a load of this incredible video adaptation of the story using silhouette animation a la Lotte Reiniger:
To add something extra to poor Lauris's troubles, I again turned to one of my favorite horror tropes: the demon lover. And when fused (sort of) with a cursed maze, it all made a hell of a lot of sense, and I just HAD to run with it.
And as for the book's title, not only does "Amaranth Maze" sound good (it does -- a bajillion percent), the plant itself holds significant meaning in folklore: immortality and endless love. In the book, the significance is ironic, again much to Lauris's dismay. The setting being in Sweden plus the book also being a part of the Arcana Europa collection, the use of Sweden's primary economy in the 19th century also ended up working really well for me as the country was progressing in finance at around that time while rural agriculture fell under its metaphorical wheels. So pitting Frederik the capitalist and Lauris the traditionalist against each other (at least at first) also turned into the right sort of conflict given their respective backgrounds.
The Amaranth Maze is currently 50% off in e-book format through September. You can get a copy from the online bookstores listed over here. And, as always, thank you for your support.
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