About E. K. Hall
I grew up in New England. And though years have taken me to distant places, leaving me many a memory which I shall always hold dear, I still call New England my home.
There is something very special in the feel of this small corner of our earth. Though distinctively American, New England has always kept its bygone, almost old-world charms. The soul of the area still distinctively wants to be colonial.
There is a rugged industry to all who have called this area their home. The native peoples marked this land first, though sadly they are now gone save for the remnants of their languages in our place names. Later European settlers who persisted struggled through tough winters to be rewarded with temperate springs, warm summers, and cool, colorburst autumns.
That hardy and honest resilience remains in the fields and farms and the pioneering men and women who now make these northeast lands their home. I find a peace here and a comfort.
When I long for such restful moments, my thoughts return to our apple orchards on hilltops, our lazy rivers coursing by shores of maple trees and attentively fenced farmland. I write in large part for my own happiness, and so my narratives sit most placidly here, in New England.
Story, Narrative, and Hope
We each tell ourselves narratives of who we are as persons; they form the cores of our concepts of self. We tell similar tales of who we are as a people and community. Sometimes these narratives represent what we are, sometimes only what we wish we would be.
As persons, we are each works in progress. Our concepts of self are fluid. Because we struggle so that today will be better than yesterday, and tomorrow greater still, stories and narratives are fundamentally the languages in which we speak to ourselves and to one another. It is story that defines us, keeps us going, and gives us hope.
They are powerful tools. In mankind's darker moments, we have unquestionably used narrative to separate and divide. But the true strength of story lies in its ability to bond and to heal. In story we learn, we teach, we discover. We play with alternate versions of ourselves. Narrative is the medium through which we find commonalities between peoples that we might grow closer and greater.
Perhaps through better narratives we may divide less. The best stories bring a deeper understanding of each other, a greater commonality, a single purpose.
The Fantastical Versus the Beautifully Common, Sublime
Though the stories I write would, at first glance, most closely align with fantasy, they are not high fantasy. There are fantastical elements to the tales, but they are foremost stories of people and struggle, of challenge and yearning. They are stories of love gained and sometimes lost, so that it can only be remembered by its absence.
Though there are fantastical elements to the tales, these are stories first of people, and the fantastical is only to serve the narrative. It alters but the lens through which we experience the characters and their surroundings; always the condiments, never the main course.
In my view, this is how such fantastical elements should play: a border to the brushstroke, but never the distracting focal element. For isn't the true magic of life in those real, rare moments which we shall forever so readily recall? A sunset shared by those in love, an embrace between family long separated, the first sight of a child just born?
Narrative is about struggle, because life, and those magical moments within it, are about struggle. But it is in those minutes of true wonder where life gives us its most sublime gifts. For those who pay attention, the passage of time is but the transformation of possibility and hope into the cherished, warm memories of magic in our pasts.
Here's to hope, to charity, and to growth. That we might shoulder some of each others' burdens. That we might all walk a little farther and climb a little higher because of it. Let us write our own song, simple and sublime, together.
Thank you for reading,
E. K. Hall