Today on Jilligan’s Island, I have special guest Pam Halter, author of the new release Fairyeater. (I say “special” because she’s a personal friend of mine — and after reading Fairyeater, I’d say she’s a darn good author, too! 🙂 )

Anyway, to celebrate her new book, she agreed to write a guest blog post about the creation of one of her key characters.  I’ll get out of the way and let her continue. Welcome, Pam!

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The Creation of Tzmet, the Fairyeater

Where did the idea for a fairy-eating witch come from? I get that question a lot.

In 2006, the Scholastic Book Club paper came home with Anna. Not sure why the school thought our developmentally delayed kids needed books appropriate to their age and not their developmental level, but nonetheless the paper came. None of the books were appropriate for Anna, but as a book lover, I looked through the paper anyway.

I saw the book Lady Cottington’s Pressed Fairy Book. It was expensive, so I looked on Amazon. Found it and bought it. Ended up sending it back because it was actually pornographic! Always read the reviews. Just sayin’.

But here’s what happened. I got to thinking about the concept of pressed fairies. Does anyone remember pressing flowers? We’d take flowers that were special (I still have the flowers from the first high school prom I attended) and place them between waxed paper and put them in the pages of a really heavy book. It preserved them, even keeping some of the color.

So, I thought, why would someone catch and press a fairy? Or would they catch and pin a fairy in a shadow box, like a butterfly collection? Or maybe hang and dry them like herbs?

What would happen to the fairies? They are living things, right?

I imagined they would become leather-like. Dried out and kind of supple. Why would someone do that? And what would they do with the dried-out fairies?

Then I thought, well, when you dry fruit, it becomes fruit leather. What do you do with fruit leather? You eat it. So, why would someone dry and eat fairies? What would happen if they did? And, most importantly, WHO would do such a heinous thing?

And boom, Fairyeater was born.

That led me into figuring out what would happen if lots of fairies started dying. I had to decide what kind of magic they might have and how it would affect the world around them. That led me to the dark lord, who clearly needed the power to do something evil, but the fairies prevented it.

How did the fairies prevent the rising of the dark lord? And how could the hero/heroine stop it?

Those are questions for another blog post. Heh, heh, heh …

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Fairyeater: Book One of the Fairy Guardian Chronicles

Pam Halter has been a children’s book author since 1995. The first book in her Willoughby and Friends series,  Willoughby and the Terribly Itchy Itch, won the 2018 Realm Award in the children’s category, and she also received a Reader’s Choice Award in 2015 for her short story, “Tick Tock,” in Realmscapes. Fairyeater is her first fantasy novel. She lives in South Jersey, deep in farmland, and enjoys long walks

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