Interview+Giveaway: Glossolalia by e rathke

Interview with e rathke, author of fantasy Glossolalia

“My name is Ineluki. I come from past the mountains and ice. It took me many days to reach here. All I know are dead. Will you take me in?”
And so begins a calamitous year at the edge of the world.

Chief for the year, Aukul’s life has never been better. His people respect him, he spends his nights with the love of his life, and his skills as a butcher and chef improve every day. Then Ineluki, a young stranger, wanders into town with nothing but an empty book. He begins telling stories of the world beyond the one they know. His stories challenge their reality and lead to a summer of unprecedented disasters.

One by one, the villagers begin dancing. Dancing tirelessly, as if in a trance, until they die. Believing Ineluki is to blame, Aukul confronts him on the worst night of his life.

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Excerpt from Glossolalia

Umok was the first to see the boy. There was nothing special about the boy except that he wasn’t one of us and didn’t seem to be an Uummanuq. Not that anyone really knew, then, what the Uummanuq looked like. Not really. But he was too tall to be one of them and much too short to be one of us. Maybe strangest of all, he was dressed as a woman. One of ours, not the Uummanuq women, assuming anyone knew, then, what the Uummanuq looked like when they weren’t smashing our homes down. But he wore a loose, open vest, his trousers tight and reaching just past his knees. In his hands, a hidebound book.

It was a clear day, just past spring, and though the edge of the world is known for its deathly cold, our summers are quite warm. Warm enough to wade out into the sea and gather crabs or lobster. Or even to swim out to where the leviathans burst through the water, spraying the skies with their misted breath.

Umok was so distracted by the boy that she dropped her arm, accidentally flinging her gyrfalcon, Feo, to the ground. When Feo shrieked the way she does, the boy turned to Umok and smiled a big toothy grin. To hear Umok tell it later, the boy had fangs like a wolf and eyes that glowed with menace.

We’re not prone to superstition, but much changed that summer and especially come winter, when the days last barely a blink and the nameless ones call out to us in the long night, and mothers wake to missing children, never to be seen again.

But the boy didn’t stop when he saw Umok. It was like he had a set destination. Like he knew where we were. And maybe that’s the most shocking of all. That he just wandered out from the dark green summer mountains and walked right to our little village at the edge of the world with nothing but the clothes he was wearing, an empty book, and a mouthful of words that would change the shape of all our lives.

An Interview with e rathke

-What inspired you to become a writer?

The first book that made me cry was Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card. I was probably eleven. I simply didn’t know books could do that. Didn’t know books could hit me so hard in the chest that I lost my breath, that tears could come to my eyes because of words I read quietly to myself about imaginary people.

That single moment is one I’ve returned to often in my life. I have always and had always been a compulsive reader. As a child, I could never find enough books to read. As an adult, I’ve read over a hundred books per year since I began keeping track back in 2011. Even young as I was when I first read Speaker for the Dead, I knew books could elicit emotional responses from me.

But I didn’t know they could shatter me.

I’ve been chasing that feeling for most of my life. Many books have made me cry. Many books have made me weep like a baby while I keep reading, the page blurred by my tears. But there’s something powerful about a first experience.

I wanted to change some child’s life the way that book changed mine, I suppose.

-If you could visit your book’s world for a day, what one thing would you do?

Not sure I’d want to go there! But if I could, I would probably just hike the mountains and hangout at the beach. I’m a simple person who likes simple things, so relaxing at an isolated village at the edge of the world sounds pretty nice to me.  But it would have to be summer. I hate the cold.

-It’s two in the morning. What does your protagonist reveal in confidence? (Don’t worry, we won’t tell.)

Aukul would agonize over his position as Chief for the year and how powerless it is to have a temporary position of power that will be handed off to someone else when the year’s over. He’d rage against the unknowable ways of the Mountain Girls, as much priestesses as leaders of his people.

He’d tell me of his dreams and desires, of the life he hopes to have, of the man he hopes to be. He’d tell me of all that he loves and all he’s afraid of losing. But mostly he’d tell me of Umaal, his lover, the only one he’s ever truly loved, and all the days and years he hopes to spend in her arms.

-Which of your characters would you go out for drinks with?

Probably Pakuuq or Ypatek for completely opposite reasons. Pakuuq is that quiet friend, steady as a mountain, that you just feel comfortable with. Ypatek is the kind of friend who has seen you at your drunkest and also who you’ve seen at his drunkest. The kind of friendship only made through years of bad decisions made together during a time of life known for poor decision making.

-You’re in a tavern, and a dwarf challenges you to a duel. What do you do?

Anyone who knows anything knows dwarves are strong with seemingly inexhaustible stamina. Anyone who knows me knows that I would not last long in a fight with anyone or anything—there’s a decent amount of evidence that my cat beats me in a duel whenever I need to groom him—so the first thing I’d do is shift blame.

Whatever I did to make this dwarf so mad? Yeah, that wasn’t me. It was this guy next to me. Maybe that troll standing by the door or that elf staring dreamily out the window. Your quarrel’s with one—or both!—of them, my good dwarf. Me? I’m just an idiot. Hardly worth of your esteemed time.

But you should hear the things that elf’s been saying about you and your beard. Just vile, nasty stuff. Not the kind of thing I’d repeat, let alone listen to on purpose. And that troll? Well, I promised my mother as a child that I’d never curse, so I can’t even begin to repeat it.

But, really, if I were you, my good dwarf, I’d cut them down before they spread anymore lies. Meanwhile, I have an appointment across town, you see, that simply cannot wait.

-Is there a genre you could never write? Which and why?

Genres are like costumes, yeah? I’d never say that there’s a specific type of costume I would never wear because even saying that is going to get me eyeing that exact costume the next time I’m browsing around online.

I’ve never written a strict romance or thriller, but I sure wouldn’t mind trying! Of course, that’s not to say I’d be successful at every genre. But I’ve tried a lot of different ones over the years, from experimental literary to far future SF, so I’m willing to give anything a go.

Or, you know, I probably wouldn’t be able to do hard SF. I just…I don’t care about getting the science right, especially if that got in the way of the story I was trying to tell.

About e rathke

e rathke writes about books and games at radicaledward.substack.com. A finalist for the 2022 Baen Fantasy Adventure Award, he is the author of Glossolalia and several other forthcoming novellas. His short fiction will appear in Queer Tales of Monumental Invention, Mysterion Magazine, and elsewhere.

• Goodreads Link

Giveaway

e rathke will be awarding a $50 Amazon or Barnes and Noble GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

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