Helloo!

I am huge fan of Juliet E Mckenna’s excellent Green Man series. This is a fascinating and constantly evolving fantasy series missing the modern rural world of the UK with classic folklore and filled with great characters. It was a pleasure to read the latest entry The Green Man's War by Juliet E McKenna  which I loved and it was a pleasure to invite Juliet back to the blog to talk about the book

How do you like to booktempt people into reading The Green Man’s War?

I find a good start is asking if they enjoy reading urban fantasy. If so, would they like to see that well-established template flipped? How about a male mortal central character surrounded by female supernatural forces and facing dangerous challenges in the British countryside? A lot of people want to know more...

Usually, Dan is more like an investigator but in this case, we have a more active enemy up against Dan himself? What drew you to this type of story for the series?

Throughout my writing career, at the start of every new book, I’m determined to never rewrite a story which I’ve already told. Dan has been stopping supernatural forces from causing trouble in the mundane world for a while now. It was time he faced a different sort of threat. Since every action prompts reaction, I reckoned it was time for those supernatural forces to push back. I mean, there’s never only one of any particular monster…

The starting scene has a very unusual robbery, but you also had a strange real-life inspiration for this. What happened?

We were visiting Burford one day last winter, when my husband saw a small bronze statue of three dancing hares in a jeweller’s shop window. As established readers will know, hares, particularly hares in threes, crop up in the Green Man books, so we went in to buy it. Everyone in the shop stared at us, startled. The door should have been locked with the ‘Closed’ sign still up, but a distracted member of staff had forgotten about that. Why were they distracted? Because the manager and staff were in the shop that morning to compile an insurance claim after being robbed the week before. A gang of men armed with hammers and knives had ambushed the keyholder outside, forced their way in, and stripped the shelves and display cases. Now we were the startled ones, ready to apologise and leave. But the nice people asked what we wanted, and they were happy to sell us the little bronze statue, as well as telling us about their experience. We told them about the hares and the Green Man books.

Later on, I started thinking about how Dan would react, faced with that situation? He’s tall and strong, and he’s used to having that physical advantage whenever he faces a threat. But he wouldn’t be able to do a thing in a situation like that. Since I was considering writing a story where he would be on the back foot, trying to find out what was going on, I decided that would make a very good start.

Avoiding spoilers this story introduces a new particularly creepy supernatural enemy Dan has to battle. How much fun was it to create someone who really gives Dan a run for their money in strength and magic?

It was very satisfying, once I realised that I could turn the fragmentary, sometimes contradictory bits of folklore I was finding about this particular supernatural menace to my advantage, rather than getting frustrated by the scattered and incomplete references. Especially because that meant Dan wasn’t going to find any easy answers about how to deal with them. 

When approaching a Green Man novel how do you decide which folklore you want to use and do you find yourself having to stop and save things for later?

I start with a handful of disparate stories and mythic figures that have caught my attention in my reading. Once I start to see how some of those might fit together, and create something new, the plots for these novels develop their own momentum and internal logic. That invariably means other bits and pieces that I’ve noted down from my reading turn out not to fit. I’m not consciously saving these bits of folklore for later, more putting them back in the box until the best time to use them appears. That opportunity often turns up in the following story.

What else can we look forward to from you in the future and in this weird world of social media where can we find out more?

December 2024 sees a collection of my short stories published by Newcon Press. Selecting the stories for Different Times and Other Places was a fascinating exercise, and it’s offered me the chance to share a few pieces that aren’t easy to find. There are two completely new short stories in there as well. One of them sees Dan Mackmain encounter an unexpected guest for the Green Man.

Early next year I have a story in an anthology, Lincolnshire Folk Tales Reimagined. SF&F readers will recognise at least one other name in the table of contents; Aliya Whitely.

At the moment I’m gathering ideas for the next Green Man novel, and working on a proposal for another fantasy project. That’s coming together nicely, but that’s all I’m going to say about it for now. There’ll be updates on my blog at www.julietemckenna.com, and people can sign up for automatic email alerts about those. Bluesky, Mastodon and Facebook are the places to find me for posts about interesting things and social media interaction. Twitter is announcements only these days.  

What great books have you read recently?

SF&F smaller presses are publishing really good work at the moment. The Disinformation War by SJ Groenewegen is a compelling, very effective, and very British near-future dystopia where the privatisation of unemployment and poverty management leads to unpleasantly plausible consequences. The story is all the more chilling for an absence of melodrama, and benefits significantly from the author’s incisive outsider’s perspective and their intriguing CV. I shall be looking out for other titles from GoldSF.

Andrew Knighton’s The Executioner’s Blade from Northodox Press is a solidly entertaining swords and low-sorcery read. It’s a good example of the mature and thoughtful fantasy being written these days. Stories which reflect on people’s actions and characters, good and bad, without sinking into the dispiriting nihilism which I find so tedious in so-called ‘grimdark’. Don’t misunderstand me, this is miles away from consolatory fantasy. Times are bad and dire stuff happens, but while the executioner of the title strives to address a miscarriage of justice amid a religious war, hope and humanity endure.

The Heart of Winter by Shona Kinsella retells a traditional Scottish folk tale with deceptive simplicity. With its teenage protagonist Brigit, I can see this being labelled as YA, and an absence of ‘adult content’ certainly makes this a good read for anyone of whatever age who prefers to avoid blood and bonking. Don’t think this novel is in any sense twee though. The story’s foundation in reality is as hard as bedrock. And there are layers here; reflections on the choices we make, both as part of a community and to assert our individual freedoms. When unexpected consequences follow, Brigit must weigh up rival, even conflicting priorities. She and other people will be irrevocably changed by her decisions.