If you’d like to be included in this slot, please get in touch: estherchilton@gmail.com. Poems can be up to 60 lines and prose 2000 words. If you’d like to add a short bio and photo, then great. All I ask is that there’s nothing offensive.
Please welcome Andrew McDowell to my Guest Writer Spot this week. Andrew is a very talented writer. I’ve enjoyed lots of his poems, but he also writes novels and has been very successful. Here, Andrew delves deeper into the mythical creatures in his books. I’ll now hand over to Andrew:
I featured three mythical species in Mystical Greenwood. With Beneath the Deep Wave comes two more. Both were chosen not only because they were aquatic (as I’d wanted to focus more on aquatic life in the second novel) but also because they originate from the kind of folklore I was researching and using to help build my world.
Kelpies
I remember first reading about kelpies, just like the first of the three aforementioned species, in the Harry Potter book Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. It was also the first time that I’d seen the famous Loch Ness Monster associated with a creature from myth. So, after reading more about them, I knew that this would be a great creature to incorporate into the plot, especially given that they were found in Irish and Scottish folklore, which would go with the “Gaelic-ness,” of my world, as one member of the first critique group I was in put it.
I tried to stay faithful to kelpies and how they lure their victims into a trap in the scene I wrote. However, the kelpie’s appearance was only one scene. But we’ll see whether I can incorporate them once more in the third book.
Selkies
Selkies, on the other hand, came into the fold another way. Originally, a character associated with them now was written as a mermaid. However, that species, just like the elves, dwarves, and centaurs, had been cut for fear of overcrowding. I didn’t want to go down that route again, but it was during a casual conversation one day at work several years ago when a colleague first mentioned selkies to me. So I was inspired to read more about them, and I felt they were more unique and would be a wonderful addition to my world.
Initially, I’d hoped to include selkies within Beneath the Deep Wave. Sadly, spoiler alert, I never was able to fit them into the present. However, the way it worked out, I presented them as a “mythic” creature that once existed within my world but may have become extinct or gone into hiding; the same character has selkie ancestry but is not a selkie. I won’t reveal which character for the sake of those who haven’t read the book. In the end, I think that for Beneath the Deep Wave, it worked out well.
Stay tuned to see whether selkies make an on-the-page appearance in the last book.
Purchase links
Here are purchase links for each book:
Author bio
Andrew McDowell is the author of the fantasy novels Mystical Greenwood and Beneath the Deep Wave, the former of which was a finalist in the 2019 American Fiction Awards, won the 2021 Maryland Writers’ Association Novel Contest, and was an honorable mention in the 2021 Top Shelf Magazine contest. He studied at St. Mary’s College and the University of Maryland, College Park. Andrew has had poetry, short stories, and essays featured in anthologies and literary journals. He has Asperger Syndrome, an autism spectrum disorder. Visit andrewmcdowellauthor.com to learn more about him and his work.
Links
Andrew McDowell – An Author of Many Parts
Andrew McDowell, Author | Facebook
Andrew McDowell, Author (@ammcdow.bsky.social) — Bluesky
Andrew McDowell (Author of Mystical Greenwood)
Amazon.com: Andrew McDowell: books, biography, latest update
Esther Chilton 
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