They might not be raindrops on roses or whiskers on kittens, but that doesn’t mean that we love them any less. Welcome back to My Favorite Things, the weekly column where we grab someone in speculative circles to gab about the greatest in geek. This week, we sit down with Speculative Chic contributor Kendra Merritt, whose debut novel, By Wingéd Chair, will be released next week on November 26th!
What does Kendra love when she’s not retelling fairy tales to feature disabled characters? Spoiler alert: an immersive MMORPG, creating good endings, bringing characters to action-figure life, and a classic author who never fails to deliver. Intrigued? Read on to learn more!
I feel like I have been head down in writing and publishing deadlines for months now, so I am definitely not up-to-date on pretty much anything new. But here are some things on the approved distractions list.
Favorite MMORPG: This is not to say that I don’t still love Guild Wars 2, but I finally bit the bullet and bought Elder Scrolls Online. Oblivion was my very first open world RPG as an adult, and I fell in love with it. A few years later I loved Skyrim almost as much. So I’ve been a fan of the franchise for a while. But I balked at getting Elder Scrolls Online for a variety of reasons until a few months ago when the Summerset expansion came out. Part of it was that it sort of tanked the first couple months it was out. It was too expensive, too glitchy, yadda yadda. But now they’ve fixed a bunch of that (it’s not a subscription anymore, you just buy the game once and play, and I’ve experienced way fewer glitches than in Skyrim). It does feel very different from the rest of The Elder Scrolls games, but I love how immersive it is and the sheer epicness of the world and the stories you come across. Although if I’m being completely honest, I play it more as a solo game than as an MMO because talking to strangers scares me.
Favorite Solo RPG: Yes, I know, there are two video games on this list. Yes, I know I have deadlines to meet. Don’t judge me. No, really, I schedule time to game because it relaxes my brain for other story related things. I know it came out a while ago, but it’s taken me this long to get to the end of the main story in Fallout 4, and I still feel like there’s a ton I didn’t do, including all the DLCs. A myriad of quests and the fact that I can be a super do-gooder hero type person are a big draw for me, but I’ve also been digging a lot deeper into the settlements aspect of Fallout 4. For someone who is a little obsessed with Minecraft and other building games, I love the fact that I can tinker with all my settlements, assign jobs, and get super nitpicky about where decorations go. I will say, some of the plot twists and the end of the main story line did really bother me, but if you’re really careful about it, it is possible to get a pretty “good” ending. And now that I know that I feel like it frees me up to concentrate on exploring the world and all the side quests in my second playthrough.
Favorite D&D Related Thing: That’s a real category, right? I’m not really sure where to put this. I’ve always wanted to try Dungeons and Dragons, and I recently got a chance to play with some college friends, and then my sister and her husband started a campaign (because when it rains it pours). So I’ve been learning all sorts of fun things about table top gaming. Like how much math is involved and yes, you do actually have to own dice. But they have also introduced me to Hero Forge, a site where you can design custom miniatures and have them printed and shipped to you. For a really reasonable price, too. I love this site so much, I might have designed four different characters already… two of which I haven’t even gotten to play. My first is not here yet (sadness), but I’m waiting very impatiently for her to show up. Above you can see my halfling monk and my half-elf wizard. I like to think they would be friends in real life.
(New) Favorite Book: I haven’t had nearly as much time to read recently, which makes me sad and also makes me more picky about what I do spend time on. I just don’t have the luxury of finishing bad (or boring) books anymore. But it’s also made me appreciate shorter fiction a lot more. Y’all have heard me gush about Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan Saga before, which in no way falls in the “shorter fiction” category. But because I know and trust her writing and storytelling abilities, I tried out Penric’s Demon, a short story/novella set in the same world as The Curse of Chalion (another one of hers that I loved). I really enjoyed it. It wasn’t anything life changing or spectacular, but I loved the relationship between Penric and Desdemona and Penric’s perspective on the interaction between demons and magic. And most of all, I loved that it was short. Short and good and entertaining. All things I really need right now.
Books have been Kendra Merritt’s escape for as long as she can remember. She used to hide fantasy novels behind her government textbook in high school, and she wrote most of her first novel during a semester of college algebra.Older and wiser now (but just as nerdy) Kendra writes retellings of fairytales with main characters who have disabilities. If she isn’t writing, she’s reading, and if she isn’t reading, she’s playing video games. She is the author of By Wingéd Chair, a retelling of Robin Hood where Maid Marion kicks butt from a wheelchair.
Kendra lives in Denver with her very tall husband, their book loving progeny, and a lazy black monster masquerading as a service dog.
Author photo by Jared Hagan.
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I love the idea of re-imaging fairy tales to feature people with disabilities. My resolution this year was to read more diverse books and it’s definitely a struggle to find books with characters who have a disability.