Heir to the Lamp Creates Magic

 

Manic Monday Post!

 

By Michelle Lowery Combs, Author of Heir to the Lamp

Dear Readers,

It’s a potent fantasy, one that captures the minds of many young readers and sticks with them forever. As an adult, I’m always on the lookout for everyday magic around me: a perfect sunset, the smiles of a sleeping baby, the flow of a perfect piece of prose; but I also enjoy, thanks to some favorite fairytale and fantasy stories of my youth, contemplating the possibilities of cloaks of invisibility, talking animals, and parallel universes that can open themselves up to someone simply waiting at a train station.

When I began planning Heir to the Lamp, my first young adult fantasy novel about a teenage genie, I knew that the story would include more than a little magic. I set out to research genie folklore, which would set me on new paths of discovery that paralleled, crisscrossed, and intersected one another until they would have looked like a road map if plotted out in black and white. There was so much to explore. I’d never imagined the roots of so many mythical and fairytale creatures could be traced back to the genie, or djinni as it’s called in one of the oldest traditions. Angels, demons, ghouls, sprites, faeries and leprechauns—all thought by some to be genies by another name. And then there were the magical objects associated with the versatile djinn—everything from the Arabian Nights style brass lamp to mirrors and polished scrying glasses used to imprison genies at the will of their masters.

The possibilities for Heir to the Lamp seemed endless, and I had a great deal of fun turning the idea of the genie’s lamp, a traditionally unbearably cramped prison for unfortunate djinn, on its head. In my favorite fantasies from childhood, it was most often a character’s experience with an enchanted object that lay at the heart of his or her story: The Hobbit and his ring tricked from a golem, Snow White and her stepmother’s sinister talking mirror.

In Heir to the Lamp readers will discover how a seemingly ordinary oil lamp turns out to be anything but and connects a teenage girl to a 3,000 year-old genie. I have never ceased to wonder at the countless examples of real and ordinary magic all around us as we go about our day to day lives, nor will I ever grow too old to imagine the possibilities of mermaid combs, seven league boots, or a brass oil lamp that contains an entire ocean and private island waiting to be explored. I hope you enjoy Heir to the Lamp!

Fictionally Yours Siempre,

Michelle Lowery Combs

(As posted by a guest author for Fictionally Yours Siempre)