Dear readers, tonight with us are Cesario, Lefeng (known to the others as the Trial-Parent), Marcus, and The Great Goddess out of Jess Mahler’s queer web-serial A Gryphon’s Tale. They are here for a party, crossing the various stories they appear in.
Tell us a little about where you grew up. What was it like there?
Cesario: The city of Messaline. I grew up with my father and brother. I think it was in Italy?
Parent of the Trial-Family: City-folks. How do you manage with never knowing where you are?
Cesario: Says the nomad.
Marcus: Gotta go with Trial-Parent on this. I know Shakespeare was light on detail, but if you don’t even know what country you grew up in, that’s not the best.
Cesario: And you know so much about your background?
Marcus: I sprung up full-grown, like Athena out of Zeus’ head.
Trial-Parent: (snorts)
Marcus: But I was born in the US. A small-town kid with a love of comic books and a willingness to use my fists.
The Great Goddess: Some of us never were ‘kids.’
So you are all from different stories?
Trial-Parent: Yes. We’re part of a serial thing called A Gryphon’s Tale. It’s four to six serialized stories a year. Some stories are shorter and are told over a few months. Others are longer and broken into seasons.
Cesario: Wasn’t your story the first? And still going?
Trial-Parent: We were going to be a novel, but the author needed to try something different. It’s worked out pretty well.
Marcus: Not for all of us.
All: Epsilon.
The Great Goddess: It is a risk the author takes – posting stories as they are written. Some will never be finished.
Cesario: Epsilon was finished. Just… abruptly and not as intended.
Epsilon? Trial-Parent? I’m confused
Trial-Parent: The culture of my story is such that names are private. One is known by nicknames by friends and distant family, and others use family names. My spice-to-be call me guarding-one and once-walker. I had been Near-Adult of LongStride, but LongStride is no more, destroyed in the great wave. My new family is not accepted by the city, so we are ‘Trial-Parent’ until we gain a true name.
The Great Goddess: A wise people, who know the power of names.
Marcus: Eh, I’m good with the power I get from a gun and a good team at my back.
Cesario: Epsilon is the shortened title for another story, Mighty Hero Force Epsilon. It didn’t work as the author expected, and they ended it early. A happy ending, but abrupt. I am grateful my own story was written in full before the author began working on it.
And who is the gryphon?
Trial-Parent: The author.
Cesario: It’s a bit of a conceit they enjoy. The image of a traditional storyteller with listeners gathered around enjoying the tales. Except the storyteller is a gryphon. They have long subscribed to the idea that monsters in stories represent those pushed to the edges of society. Different, rejected, disenfranchised. Frightening for those who hold power.
Marcus: Yup, and they lean into it. If society labels them a monster, they will be a monster – and tell stories reminding folks that the real monsters aren’t the ones driven into the shadows.
Are you all monsters, then?
Marcus: More or less. I was a normal human, now I’m… something else. Part human, part vampire.
Cesario: I would not say I am a monster, but it is true that many consider me such for ‘living against my sex’ and rejecting the place nature set for me.
Lefeng: I’m the same, I guess. To the city-folks I live next to, I’m a barbarian with what you’d call ‘unnatural’ ideas who is trying to over turn how society is meant to be.
Or as I put it, just trying to live my life with my family.
The Great Goddess: To most humans, I am a nightmare. A dark specter of death they hope never to encounter. I suppose this makes me a monster.
So you’re all monsters in some sense, but it doesn’t sound like any of you are in horror stories. What are your stories about?
Trial-Parent: As Cesario said, I’m a ‘nomad’ from a bronze-age fantasy. The author fucked all of us over and the story is about how we find each other and build a new family together.
For me, I guess the story is about second chances. I wanted to give up, you see. But I couldn’t because my chosen-child and then the once-fisher needed me. By the time we had found the others and were in a secure place, I was ready to believe in a future. Our gruff-grandparent picked up the story after me.
The Great Goddess: You are protector, not hunter. With nothing to protect you were lost.
Trial-Parent: That’s what my wise spouse-to-be says too. What’s your story? I haven’t seen you before.
The Great Goddess: My story is a new one, a high fantasy tale. I have been trapped in darkness for generations and soon my Iberto will find me. Together we will destroy those who have sought to usurp the goddes. Knowing the other goddes, they will not like my methods.
Cesario: My own is a mix of self-discovery and romantic comedy. The ship my brother and I were on crashed, and I disguised myself as a man to be safe in a foreign land. I fell in love with my employer around the same time I realized being a man wasn’t a disguise – it is who I am.
Things got more complicated from there.
Marcus: I’ll say! I lucked out. Straightforward why choose vampire romance, more or less. My team used to run security, hostage rescues, that kind of thing. We got kidnapped by a vampire, accidentally married her, and now we’re stuck in a vampire Hatfield-McCoy feud. Worth it.
Cesario: Straightforward.
Marcus: At least none of us are walking around making ominous prophetic vows, “The dead shall walk the earth”!
Cesario: You have to admit, it fits the genre. What is Shakespeare without weird prophecies and foreshadowing?
That’s quite a range – fantasy, Shakespeare, romance, and Epsilon — the name sounds sort of like Power Rangers?
Marcus: Yeah, more the Japanese stories that inspired Power Rangers – sentai it’s called.
With all that going on, is there anything your stories have in common?
Trial Parent: Family we choose
Cesario: Growth
Marcus: Fucking with tropes
The Great Goddess: All of those, and unconventional love stories.
Marcus: Hey, romance here.
Trial Parent: By an aromantic author who only learned what romance is through writing your story.
Cesario: Plus, I don’t think you can count polyamory as conventional yet. Even in your world.
It sounds like relationships are pretty important, can you tell us a bit about them?
The Great Goddess: My Iberto and I must get to know each other. He will be a powerful Called, more than he knows. I am beginning to think… ah, but it is too soon to say. Like all my Called, Iberto will come to me while being hunted. He will become my hunter and my great prey. The hunt is our dance and our joy.
Marcus: That’s… I thought we were out there.
Cesario: We all are.
Cesario: I had been incredibly sheltered as a child, and didn’t know that love between men was even possible. So it never occurred to me that Orsino might be bisexual or interested in me. Plus, he kept sending me as his messenger to court Countess Olivia on his behalf. It was… very awkward for a time.
Trial-Parent: What did you call it – polyamory? – is entirely conventional in my world. I have three spice-to-be. The wise-one was cast out by eir birth-family for not being able to run, but ey is strong of heart and wise in city ways and I would not willingly be without em. The Spinner is new to us, ey just began courting actually, but I count em as a spouse-to-be because it is clear ey wants to be with us and I… would like em to be as well. The Spinners are strange, a bit like Marcus’ Karen.
Marcus: Neurodivergent. Though she’s not my Karen. We’re all Nastasia’s.
Trial-Parent: As you say. But the Spinner is a joy. Eir hands dance when ey is happy and eir name is like em – strange and beautiful and a faithful friend. The once-fisher… We have been together longest, ey and I. It was we who started this current. Ey is caring-one, but also scared-one. And I don’t know if ey will care enough to stay…
Marcus: Scared-one. Heh. That would have been me. I’m the oldest of my team, and in human terms a lot older than Nastasia. She’s a vampire, though, and doesn’t see it that way. Right now we’re… friends, I guess. Colleagues? Also officially married, as vampires see it. She married all of us the same night but didn’t tell us. She was a kid when she went into hiding and her clan’s enemies are still trying to kill her. Nastasia asked us to be bodyguards and security advisers first and said we’d figure out the rest later.
Then the team – Leyla is my second. We’ve been friends and partners for ages. Karen is… I wonder sometimes if this is what being asexual is like. I love Karen like no one else, but I have no interest in being with her. Seeing how good Nastasia is for Karen makes me feel a lot better about the whole ‘marriage’ thing. Victor’s also had the hots for Karen from way back, but it took Nastasia to make him say anything and Benj–
Cesario: Straightforward.
Marcus: Hey, I–
Trial Parent: We are running over. One last question, perhaps?
What does the future hold for each of you?
Trial-Parent: We need to finish building our family home and find a trade we can all follow.
Marcus: We’re safe for the moment. Taking a few days to regroup and then tracking down the clan that ambushed us and turning the tables on them.
Cesario: My story is finished and available as an ebook. Next for me? I’m getting married. And getting a new sister-in-law, which shall be very awkward.
The Great Goddess: Soon I will meet my Iberto, and our story will begin.
To understand Jess, you only need to know five things: Family. Writing. Recovery. Activism/education. Tikkun olam. These are the heart of Jess Mahler, the rest is details. (Occasional bad puns and obscure references at no extra charge.)
You can find Cesario, Lefeng , Marcus, and The Great Goddess on Jess’ website.
Browse our archives for past interviews, or follow the site by email (bottom-right) to know immediately when your new best-book-friend makes an appearance.
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