mollyringle | Entries tagged with ballad for jasmine town

My lovely and delightful author friend Melissa McTernan was one of my early readers for Ballad for Jasmine Town, and said recently that she found herself still occasionally thinking about the book, months later. Which to me is such a high compliment! And it has led me to ponder: what is it that makes a story, be it book or show or film, stick in our heads longer than usual?

Plenty of shows or books are perfectly engaging while we’re watching/reading them, but after we’re done, they drop straight out of our consciousness. We barely give them another thought.

Then there are those we can’t stop thinking about. What is it about those? What qualities make them that way?

I have more pondering to do on this, but I have a preliminary theory. These “sticky” stories are ones in which things don’t turn out entirely perfectly.

The ending might be satisfying on the whole, but there are elements that hang around to haunt us, because what happened to some characters was incredibly unfair, even tragic, and there’s no fixing it. (Except of course with fix-it fic!) Problems we want to fix, but cannot, are much likelier to linger in our heads than problems that got neatly tied off and resolved.

Ballad for Jasmine Town has more of those tragic elements than many of my books do. Without giving spoilers, there are some huge unhappy things that befall a whole lot of characters, and even with (okay, minor spoiler) restored peace as the ending mood, those events cannot be undone.

And now that I think about it, the various series for which I have become an obsessive fan have all had that quality. Lord of the Rings has the Grey Havens. BBC Merlin has le morte d’Arthur (a.k.a. That Damned Ending). The Untamed has a brutal body count that includes beloved and/or innocent characters. And so on. Much as I insist that I need sufficient lightness and fun and hope in my stories—which I do, truly!—it would seem I also need a certain amount of sadness that grips me and won’t let go, if I’m going to become a hardcore fan about it.

Frodo and Sam sad at the Grey Havens

Merlin and the dying Arthur in the BBC Merlin finale

As a fandom-loving person, one of my favorite sites at which to go down rabbit holes (that saying itself being a fandom reference, of course) is TVTropes.org. Despite its name, it does not confine itself to TV shows, but encompasses all of popular culture: video games, literature, music, theatre, anime, you name it. It has accurate and often amusing names for the over 30,000 (!) tropes listed on the site, and it cross-references each one with the books, shows, etc., that contain examples of the trope. It is fantastic fun, and I can easily lose an hour there anytime.

(A quick sidenote before we continue: Tropes are not a bad thing. You’re thinking of clichés. Those are to be avoided. Tropes, however, are storytelling conventions. As TV Tropes puts it, “tropes are tools that the creator of a work of art uses to express their ideas to the audience. It's pretty much impossible to create a story without tropes.”)

Today I was browsing the site for examples of the tropes in my own books, and found a good basic one on The Fair Folk.

As usual, TV Tropes knows what's up! Their entry is spot-on for what I have learned in reading about the fae, and is more or less what I show in the Eidolonia books (Lava Red Feather Blue, and the upcoming Ballad for Jasmine Town), as well as The Goblins of Bellwater, which isn't set in Eidolonia but has a similar system.

Excerpt from TV Tropes:

"The fairies of old weren't cute little bewinged pixies who fluttered happily around humans. ...Often, they would interact with humans with no thought to the consequences of their actions, or they would be tricksters that deliberately delighted in the utter mess they made of mortal lives.... At worst, they're like serial killers with magic.

"...There actually were plenty of myths and folklore about fairies who helped humans, though they were still believed to be dangerous if angered— but then again, the belief that supernatural beings are helpful to humans that show them kindness and angry if neglected is ubiquitous in many traditional religions and folk beliefs, including Greek Mythology."

I, too, have noticed the remarkable similarity to the Greek gods, in the diverse personalities, powers, and whims of the fae. No wonder I was drawn to write about both.

First, a quick piece of writing news: I recently finished the first draft of Ballad for Jasmine Town, my next book! It takes place on Eidolonia, the island of fae and witches where Lava Red Feather Blue is set, but you won't need to have read Lava Red Feather Blue to understand it. Each book can be read as a standalone. The manuscript is currently incubating undisturbed for a month or so before I open it up again for revisions, but I will of course have more to tell you about it in the future.

Meanwhile: we are almost to my favorite holiday, Halloween! In my opinion the US needs more holidays where we wear costumes, roam the streets at night, and exchange chocolate free of charge. Not to mention all the spooky movies and books we treat ourselves to this time of year.

This got me thinking that I should rank the top five most Halloween-suitable books among my own writing. Here is what I came up with, and I admit I am perhaps cheating since one of them is a three-book series:

5. Sage and King – Only scary if you have a phobia about spells that turn you or your body parts into plants. Assassin magicians can be mean that way. Overall mood is fluffy and steamy, though.

4. Lava Red Feather Blue – Not too scary on the whole, except for one scene involving a dark passage through a fae-realm forest of birch trees whose purpose in life is to terrify and/or kill anyone who enters.

3. The Persephone’s Orchard series – It is about the gods of the dead, after all, and there are some cruel murders and a dash of human sacrifice. (The Bronze Age; these things happen.) But said gods are basically lovely people in my version.

2. The Ghost Downstairs – This one has several traditional creepy haunted house moments, which I personally think are some of the spookiest scenes I’ve written. But it’s also essentially sweet and romantic throughout in terms of mood.

1. The Goblins of Bellwater – To me this novel isn’t truly scary, but I would say it’s my eeriest and most unsettling book, so moodwise it’s probably the best Halloween fit.

As for films, we have so far dusted off two old favorites for weekend movie nights, both of them comedy monster movies: Tremors and Young Frankenstein. Truly delightful!

Do you have any favorite reading or viewing for Halloween season? I want to hear about your costume too!

Be well and pace yourself on the candy.

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Molly Ringle

You've read the book; now see the blog!

Entries tagged with ballad for jasmine town

What makes for one of those stories you can't stop thinking about?

TV Tropes knows what's up with the fae

My most Halloween-suitable books

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May 2025

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