Working Out Themes, Characters, & Where Those Ideas Came From

Somehow, once you see a physical copy, you take your own work more seriously. You begin to wonder what it all means.

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Hello, there. I am the self-published author of The Monster in Her Garden. It’s a mighty weird experience figuring out the themes of your own book once it’s out there.

In the story, a pesky suitor intrudes on a woman’s life in the country. Mayhem erupts because of her illegal pet dragon. It culminates in a choice of who shall live and who shall die.

Readers call the setting highly dystopian — yet it is based on colorful, beautiful Renaissance Italy.

It’s a short, fully illustrated, professionally edited, German-art-covered fantasy. It’s a thirty-minute read (self-published on Amazon).

Self-publishing on Amazon is quite the ride! But it doesn’t compare to the self-growth of analyzing your book once it’s on the shelf. Somehow, once you see a physical copy, you take your own work more seriously. You begin to wonder what it all means.

Who Designed, Edited, Illustrated It?

My goal was to take my short fiction project as seriously as possible. So, I surrounded myself with a spectacular team. Before I launch into my stuff, I must give them the credit they deserve!

Ninth House Media provided editing and design for both the e-book and paperback. I highly recommend her “book shepherd” services.

Sara Jean created wonderful interior illustrations. (She also does tattoo art).

Signum Noir created the cover art. The cover she dreamed up is of Ponzie, the illegal, deadly pet dragon my story revolves around.

*These are not affiliate links. I won’t receive any money if you work with these wonderful women. They’re simply fantastic.*

“The Monster in Her Garden,” or “Ponzie”

Where did those ideas come from?

When I try to remember when I wrote this story, I can’t. I don’t actually know where it came from or how I got the idea. However, I recall wanting the fictional names and words to all be Italian in feel. That was my reactive way to stand out from other fantasy writing, which tends to be Old Englishy.

Medieval Times and the Renaissance happened all over; so did the enlightenment! And Europe is big, you know? I figured, why does it all (high fantasy) have to be somewhere English, French, Germany-ish? I, like every writer, wanted to stand out. It’s especially true when you’re new: you’re afraid you’ll both blend in and stand out as terrible. So I gave everything an Italian name scheme here, and weirdly enough, it’s one of my favorite things still about this story.

But where on earth did this story come from? What sparked the idea, and what did I do to shape it into something with an ending? I wrote the first draft of it when I was 17. Or was I 16? I just haven’t a clue.

However old I was then, the story remains something about how it feels, even still a decade later for me, that in life, sometimes you are asked to kill something you love because it turns out it just isn’t right to put it before real things. It’s about how you can’t serve two masters. That was something I had been told then; now, it’s something I know is true.

Working out themes and characters of your own work

“You can only pick which master to serve in life and not choose whether to serve a master.” That was something my mentor told me as a teen. At the time, that really ticked me off. Yes, it troubled me, so naturally, I made some art about it. This. That’s what I realize now upon analyzing my own work’s themes and characters.

“The Monster in Her Garden” is a story about a person who thinks they serve no one, suddenly realizes she has had two masters all along and has to go all-in, stat, with one of them. Life is like that for avoidant, anxious lovers. I think.

Now, that’s what Ponzie and Amara and Jacopo’s story is mainly about to me.

It so happens that I have the same wild sense of what a romantic love in a man looks like now as I did then, so I enjoy Jacopo as much now as ever. He is that good-looking, seemingly foolish guy who knows more about really MEANING what he feels than you ever can hope to understand as a confused girl afraid of all liaisons. That’s who Amara is and who I often am. I like to think he is charming to other dreamers, too. Winsome.

Ponzie might have the saddest, truest part of the story. I can tell you he is a study in what it means to be a kept love. He is the heart of the tragedy. In real life, I have always had a phobia of being totally reliant on someone else for my livelihood. Somehow, that worked into the themes of my first fiction.

Setting — fantasy Italy or post-9/11 America?

It is also true I have, in the background of my mind, a whole world for this story that isn’t written. It’s a place where a clever queen passed a sweeping law in the wake of a shady, high-profile murder. A country where fear of technology and advanced weaponry guide the decisions of the rulers. A kingdom where only those in charge can wield power available in tech and weapons to change or subdue. Fun story stuff!

I want to say something biting, self-congratulating, and/or sarcastic here about how aren’t we lucky that that isn’t what real life is like. But the truth is, only in some places. In some places, the opposite is true: that it’s only individuals who have the technology and advanced weaponry, who have power at all, and the law-and-order system in place is the underdog fighting for its life.

But that’s not Amara’s world. In this fantasy world where Amara lives, she — the individual — is the underdog, and I think that’s like you and me.

Maybe a setting where a queen passes sweeping legislation after high-profile murder, then technology and basic weapons become feared, crummy, and mainly in the government’s hands is exactly the kind of story a woman from the 9/11 era would come up with. But like I said, I haven’t a clue how I came up with this story! I definitely wasn’t sitting around thinking about how to make a political allegory about 9/11, though.

This is just simply the way it is, as far as I can tell, in Amara’s world… Power remains in the hands of the ruling class and certain edgy/quasi outlaws like her. The good stuff, like guns and ponzone monsters, remains out of reach from the masses. Nobody’s got excellent technology and weapons. It’s only the government and edgy people like Amara who have any advantages at all.

Synopsis for the Curious — “The Monster in Her Garden”

“A fierce maiden in a cottage. A poisonous monster. A wandering suitor who jeopardizes everything. What will our heroine do?

The suspense in this illustrated, dystopian romance will hold you to the end.

Fans of dark fantasy authors like Neil Gaiman (Stardust) and Dianna Wynne Jones (Howl’s Moving Castle) will find something similar to love in the style of this, Savanna Rain Uland’s first short story.

The forbidden dangers of this flowered world will whisk you away. The characters’ choices between life, death, and love will draw you in. It is a brief read that will stay in your mind for a long time.”

— “The Monster in her Garden” by Savanna Rain Uland, back cover

Analyses Get Funny

Analyses get funny. Here is something true, though. I just want readers to see this beautiful garden, and escape into beauty. And then to get caught into the sudden snapping need to pick who you love most; to get caught in the flashing discovery of how deep your love and your grit go, alongside Amara.

Insecurity is a stall point

It’s a violent story. I was insecure about that for a long time.

I only found out that it’s violent via some gossip. Someone spilled to me that one of my first, most special readers mimed the stabbing in its pages and then shook their head in a private review amongst themselves after I did a public reading! I was embarrassed, humiliated that I wrote bloody stuff; it felt embarrassing to be caught writing that when I was what I actually am in real life.

So I did not write new short stories for many years after I first wrote this one. There was that shame. But there were also school, jobs, responsibilities, hard things, tremendous distractions… just, it never stopped bothering me that I had spent my childhood thinking I was an author but seeing I didn’t have any fiction out there.

About ten years passed. Then unexpectedly last fall, someone reminded me of “The Monster in Her Garden.” They said they liked it and remembered it and it was good and I took heart. I decided to bring it out, polish it, and let it be seen again.

That someone was my mother. I dedicated the book to her.

When you’re the author of a piece, you can analyze the themes on an intimate level: the level of what you were going through during creation. Amara has phobias. Jacopo was insecure without his ‘family.’ Fears delayed the crisis, but also the progress for them. That was exactly the life I was living as a creative.

Write — Read — then Know Thyself

When you read this, you’re reading my beginning as a published author. Of an artist showing their face. Getting out there.

It’s a pleasure to meet you.

This won’t be my last, and it may be my most humble and simple, but this is my first published piece of fiction. You can grab an e-book copy of it here, though I’m most in love with the beautiful bound print version.

If you read it — thank you for sitting down with your tea wherever you are and saying to yourself, this here story is what I would like to do right now.

A side-note on facing the fantasy genre

Fantasy can be a forbidding genre to people who don’t already like reading. Can I convince you to view fantasy more like cotton candy than foie gras? It’s just fun. It’s just good eating. And, I promise, the character names won’t be too much of a mouthful.

Komodo Dragons, Dumb Love… and Good Luck

Thank you for picking this up. I hope you have some memories of bright flowers ready to summon in your mind when you read this story to help picture it. Also, experiences of Komodo dragons and small pet dogs. Of times you stuck it to the powers-that-be only to end up in a real bind. Of middle-management individuals you hated dealing with like the Apothecary so that you can feel the burn there, too.

Most importantly, I hope you have some memories of pure, dumb love. That will help you to the end of this tale.

Fellow fantasizer: “The Monster in Her Garden” is a little excursion into a colorful world of danger, color and love, and I hope it takes you there.

Analyzing my own book’s themes and characters once it was “real” (published) certainly took me somewhere colorful! When I held it in my hands and pondered it like a reader, something emotional happened. It deepened the strange, unique love between a creator and their creation.

Sincerely,

Savanna Rain Uland

Dark Fantasy and Paranormal Realism Author

www.savannarainuland.com

The links to “The Monster in her Garden” are affiliate links — the author receives payments for any purchased copies of her story.