Excellent question.
I would love to tell you that this is the result of a carefully considered, meticulously prepared project over which I have complete control. It would be a lovely lie with which to begin this blog.
The truth is, I don’t really know what I’m doing. But since you’re already here, I might as well introduce myself, dear lost souls. After all, if you have found this place, it is probably already too late to turn back.
My name is Maena. I was born in France, but in a few days it will have been ten years since I moved to Sweden to live with my father. Well, “with my father”… After ten years, I suppose I’m allowed to call it home. Even if part of my brain still seems convinced that I came here for one extremely long weekend with far too much emotional luggage.
I have been fascinated by mythology, legends and folklore for as long as I can remember. I am especially fond of stories in which someone enters a forest despite every warning, accepts a gift from a deeply suspicious old woman, or answers a voice calling to them from the bottom of a lake.
Human beings have always had a remarkable talent for making terrible decisions. It is very useful when you write fiction.
I invent creatures of my own as well, usually by mixing several European traditions together until I end up with something unsettling enough to ruin my sleep. Since I see no reason why I should be the only one suffering, I write stories about them.
Ten years ago, almost to the day, my mother died.
Fuck. Ten years already.
It looks even more absurd written down.
Sometimes I can go several days without thinking about her. At other times, it feels as though my headmistress has only just called me into her office to tell me she was dead. I can still see the room, her face, and that exact second when the world decided to become something else without bothering to ask my permission.
My mother was occasionally horrified by the stories I wrote—which, in hindsight, was probably an excellent indication of quality. But she never asked me to stop. Quite the opposite. She encouraged me to show them to people, to share them and to keep writing, even when my characters had an unfortunate habit of dying in ways that were not particularly suitable for bedtime reading.
Every year on this date, I isolate myself and think about her.
Sometimes with tenderness. Sometimes with anger. Usually with both, because apparently grief would be far too simple if it limited itself to one emotion at a time.
I loved my mother. I still do. But there are things I blame her for as well, and the dead have the remarkable bad manners to make themselves unavailable for difficult conversations.
That is not what this post is about, though. Not today.
This year, I wanted to do something different. Something alive, if you’ll forgive the spectacularly questionable choice of words.
So here I am.
With this blog, I want to finally share a part of my world: my short stories, the creatures living in the margins of my notebooks and, occasionally, my paintings. Some of them contain naked bodies, blood or faceless figures. Consider this a friendly warning. I don’t issue many of those, so please appreciate it.
I will also write about European folklore—its monsters, its ghosts and the fears that cross borders while merely changing their names. I promise to write actual articles, rather than reheating a Wikipedia page and serving it to you with three gothic adjectives and a photograph of a misty forest.
I don’t yet know exactly what this place will become. Perhaps a proper blog. Perhaps a carefully catalogued collection of bad ideas. Most likely a little of both.
But if my stories manage to move you, unsettle you or make you look over your shoulder twice on your way home, then they will have done their job.
I hope you enjoy reading them.
And welcome to the margins.
— Maena