Times you realise your magic life is not appropriate to your actual life...

Sitting in the office of one of my university lecturers yesterday, I'm frantically scrambling to write down notes towards all the comments she's giving me on my essay outline for Tennyson's 'Lady of Shallot'.

There's a pause. Either she's gathering her thoughts or she's waiting for me to catch up with my note taking. I don't really care which one as I'm using the time to scribble down the end of my last thought before she starts talking again.

"You're going to have to explain why the Tower does not signify change..."

And then my mind does something like this:


.... before tuning in again to realise that what she's actually talking about is a comparison between the tower and Camelot in 'The Lady of Shallot', also known as the topic I'm writing my essay on.

 I thank god that the only thing that signalled this break in my concentration was my pen pausing over the piece of paper I was writing on, before kick-starting back into note taking.

Melissa Marr and polyamory.

I just recently purchased one of the signed hard cover editions of Darkest Mercy, waiting patiently -and sometimes not so patiently- for it to be shipped over and arrive here in Australia. When it did arrive, I hugged the book to me for a while, and then commenced reading it. Had I not had work towards my English Honours to get done, it would not have been closed again before I finished it.


I was raving about this series online last night, but the re-tweet I just received that acted in reply to a separate question just about made my morning.

Me: @melissa_marr did polyamory!!! An author of YA fiction did polyamory without stuffing it up!! 
Melissa: Belated reply 2 "what r the boundaries in YA?" RT: @persephone20: "@melissa_marr did polyamory!!! An author of YA fiction did polyamory..."

Two things are amazing about this. One: an author that I think a lot of -and would love to study next year in regards to the re-emergence of faerie fiction, particularly in YA fiction- read my comment and replied to me, and Two: it feels like times, they may be a-changing.

That a YA author would not only just bring out a series of books where a polyamorous trio featured as part of a main section of plot, but would then announce that it is a boundary that can easily be crossed in YA seems like a fantastic step into the future for me.

For a while now, I have been looking with dissatisfaction at the common 'love triangle' trope that seems to appear again and again and again in both books and TV shows in the YA genre. Lately, that trope's been becoming a little bit more interesting in such TV shows as Glee where one side of the current love triangle is a girl who's in love with her best friend (another girl).

I guess for me, seeing polyamoury being written into a book like this, without fanfare or controversy, feels to me like I imagine it might have felt to others when the first gay/lesbian couples started appearing in novels as just another option on the kinds of romantic relationships that can be had between people. In Melissa's books, this touching relationship was shown as neither good, nor bad, but just as three people who happened to all love each other individually, having many of the same concerns within that trio as would be had between a couple.

In short: Go Melissa. I think you're doing a great job and I cannot wait to get my hands on the last of the manga books in your 'Desert Tales' series.