Stefanie Seay
Stefanie Seay is the author of Ordinary Fantasy, a blog of short stories and random thoughts. She has also published her first e-novella, The Whale and the Mermaid, in September of 2021. When not working on her latest piece of prose, Stefanie enjoys running, as well as cooking with blatant disregard for recipes. She lives in the North Carolina Piedmont with her husband and four children. Since all authors seem to mention their pets, Stefanie is obliged to report that her family has a fish and four chickens, though she has little emotional attachment to the chickens.
Stefanie’s genre of choice, Young Adult Fantasy, provides an apt platform for her vivid imagination and subtle wit. Her imaginative and sometimes peculiar plot lines often belie a deeper message causing one to consider their own attitudes and beliefs.
PERSPECTIVE
I take the ordinary parts of life for granted. Sunrise, sunset and all the natural functions of the world that carry on no matter who becomes a world power or who wins political debates. Food and water. A clear blue autumn sky. Other people. Not being dead.
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Theologians call these things God’s “common grace.” All you did was be born—you didn’t pay the rain tax, or go to the right church, or sacrifice a goat, or fill out the proper paperwork—and yet you get rain on your lawn at the same time as your neighbor.
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Undeserved gifts should not be taken for granted, no matter how small they seem. Strip your life of the ordinary and see how bleak it becomes. Sometimes I find it helpful to get the normal and the fantastical mixed up.
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If you think fantasy only deals with magic and wizards and elves, you have sadly limited both the fantastic and the ordinary. Who cares about a magic trinket when—guys, you won’t believe this—water falls out of the sky. What if it didn’t? What if we were responsible for keeping the earth watered by crying on it?
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I have another reason for calling this the ordinary, though.
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If you go back a few hundred years an “ordinary” was like an inn—they provided food, drink and lodging and were often the town’s social hub—where you connected to friends and the world around you. So that’s what I will try to provide here: a friendly voice and a good square bite of appreciation for the ordinary, fantastical things.
