Tam Lin, True Tom, Thomas the Rhymer, Theiry's Sons, and "The Last King"

Rhonda Parrish, editor of the highly anticipated Fae anthology, interviews contributor Liz Colter.

What was the inspiration for your Fae story?

The primary inspiration for "The Last King" was my fondness for the ancient "Ballad of Tam Lin," though I had a lot of fun throwing a variety of other characters from fairy into this story as well.

Was this your first foray into writing fairy stories?

Not at all. My unpublished novel, "Thiery's Sons," is about the uneasy coexistence of elves and mortals. To summarize the novel: Eighteen years ago an Elven woman's seduction left Tristan with a half-blood son and a ceaseless yearning for her. Her return reveals the rest of her plan, one which traps Tristan and his realm between two deadly armies

If yes, is this a subject you think you’ll be likely to write about again?

Definitely! I'm currently shopping a short story with True Tom as the main character where Tam Lin makes an appearance again. I find it interesting that some scholars believe Thomas the Rhymer and Tam Lin were the same character in the earliest versions of the stories.

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Can you tell us a bit about the specific type of fairy creature in your story? Is that your favourite type of fae?

So far, all my stories about the fae have my favorite kind, the kind found in the oldest stories, where they are arrogant, dangerous, and hedonistic to a fault. I also like to think that, even though I would describe them that way, they're so utterly different from mortals that human morality doesn't apply to them. I've tried to illustrate that dichotomy in all my fae stories.

Outside of your own writing, who is your favourite fairy character? (ie: Tinkerbell, Puck, etc.)

I don't know that I have a favorite character, but I was very influenced years ago by the book "Faerie Tale" by Raymond Feist, as well as Brian Froud's artwork and Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream," as well as many other tales and images that inspired a fascination with all things fae.

Read Liz's story, "The Last King," in FAE. 

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Liz Colter lives in a rural area of the Rocky Mountains and spends her free time with her husband, dogs, horses and writing. Over the years she has followed her heart through a variety of careers, including working as a paramedic, an Outward Bound instructor, an athletic trainer, a draft-horse farmer and a dispatcher for concrete trucks. Her true passion, though, is her writing. She has been reading speculative fiction for a lifetime and creating her own speculative worlds for more than a decade. Her short stories have appeared Emerald Sky, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, and Enchanted Conversation, among others, and she is a winner of this year’s Writers of the Future competition. In longer works, she has two completed fantasy novels and is working on a third. Her website can be found at http://lizcolter.weebly.com.

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