The Blight of Hollowmire Is One Month Old!

The Blight of Hollowmire has been out in the world for a month now, and I have to say, I'm ridiculously proud of this book.

The inspiration behind it was a bit of a tangle of different things, but one of the biggest was wanting to write a complicated, imperfect, messy and lovable older woman. Someone who isn't perfect, who has complicated feelings about herself and the world, and who's trying to figure out who she is when everything seems to be changing.

I also wanted to explore perimenopause through a sort of magical allegory. All those strange, frustrating, (often) frightening thoughts and feelings that can come with this stage of life, and the way women are expected to just get on with things while their bodies, identities, and sense of themselves are shifting beneath their feet. What if all of that came with a little actual, world-threatening magic? Enter Vireth! My white-haired, oxblood-eyed spitfire whose powers of rot and decay are becoming rather difficult to ignore.

I wanted her to be messy, prickly, vulnerable, and occasionally a pain in the ass… because that’s real. Women get to be all those things, too, and we all deserve love and hope and honor throughout it all.

Which brings me to… Renard. I wanted to give Vireth the perfect foil: an older, strong knight who has seen the world and done his share of fighting, but who is also coming to terms with his own limitations and his participation in some patriarchal systems and less-than-honorable quests. He's not some flawless hero who has all the answers. He’s also not a morally gray shadow daddy who’ll burn the world for her. Rather, he’s a man who will keep her from burning the world down… and hating herself afterward. He's a man learning that strength doesn't mean being invulnerable, and I wanted him to be a beacon of hope for Vireth even when he can't magically fix everything for her.

Of course, there's also plenty of unsettling fae magic, adorable creatures and terrifying monsters, lots of poisonous mushrooms, a kingdom slowly starving, a rather alarming prophecy, and a romance complicated by the fact that Renard may eventually have to kill the woman he's falling for. You know, the usual.

But underneath all that, The Blight of Hollowmire is a story about feminine rage, hope, change, identity, and learning that the parts of ourselves we're taught to fear might not be the parts that need fixing.

A month in, I'm still a little in awe that this strange, fungus-filled story is out there for people to read. Thank you to everyone who's picked it up, reviewed it, or told someone else about it. It means more than you know.

If you're in the mood for dark fae romantasy with older characters, slow-burn romance, unusual magic, and a heroine who's decidedly not here to make herself smaller for anyone, you can find The Blight of Hollowmire by Lily Riley on Amazon.