The Witch's Turn to Talk with Sarah Henning

THE WITCH’STURN TO TALK

Interview by Gillian St. Clair Written by Rebekah Yahoves

For most of us, “The Little Mermaid” invokes images of a beautiful tail, a perfect body, and a crush that drove daddy’s little girl to shed her scales and wobble wide-eyed into the arms of her uptown prince. It is hard for us to imagine a villain more heinous than Ursula, who swallows the shivering remains of lovesick merfolks who traded their lives for the promise of a realized wish. Yet in Sea Witch, this summer’s must-read fantasy prequel by Sarah Henning, the villain’s story gets heartwrenching attention that will make you read (or watch) The Little Mermaid with fresh perspective.

Sarah Henning spoke about her experience creating The Little Mermaid’s fascinating prequel. A warm, humble Kansas native, Sarah laughs with the confidence of a woman who loves the playfulness and purpose of her work.

When asked if she was more into Disney or Grimm, she said, “I think I’m naturally a Disney girl. I’m pretty optimistic, but this story is very much set on the original horror fiction tale which is not Disney at all. If you read it, it’s a very different story than what Disney took out of it.”

Of course the anti-Disney version she is referring to is the 1837 story written by Hans Christian Andersen. Unlike Ursula in the Disney movie, the sea witch in Henning’s story is not quite as evil as you might expect.

“She’s not Ursula. She’s actually more of a neutral character. Sort of a character who’s there to ask the little mermaid, ‘Do you really want to do this? Do you really want to leave your family and your friends and everything for a boy that doesn’t know your name?’ She’s kind of cautionary.”

Henning wanted to explore the tragedy and danger that materializes when a powerful woman is required to suppress her natural talents and not live up to her capabilities. That is why she chose to base her story off of Andersen’s anti-hero before she was the little mermaid’s archenemy.

In Henning’s book, Evie, a misunderstood sixteen-year-old girl, lives in a seaside

village in an alternate Denmark. She is mourning the loss of her best friend Anna and carrying a dark secret that floods her with guilt when she develops a friendship with Prince Nik who is also lamenting Anna’s demise. However, it is Nik’s cousin Iker (pronounced ee-care) who secures the heart of young Evie.

When Nik is rescued by a beautiful stranger who bears an uncanny likeness to Anna, Evie begins to hope again as she discovers the opportunity to be the heroine of true love. When she uses the intensity of her power to help forge a happy ending, she realizes, too late, the reality of her compromise, and of her new friend’s identity.

Part of the reason Henning chose to write a retelling/prequel of The Little Mermaid is because of her interest in delving deeper into the motives of villains. “There’s that whole idea of a villain being a hero in their own story,” Henning said. “And I really think that the goal with this book was that you would be able to understand the sea witch.”

This concept is one that can be strange to think about, but also intriguing.

“Everyone thinks they are being a hero,” Henning said, “and they’re not just bad to be bad.”

While some of the backstory between Ursula and King Triton is “hinted at in the Disney film, it is never really explored.” Because of that, Henning said, “I kind of wanted to play with that and see where it went.”

Henning said that she was eager to chronicle the tale of an infamous villain who was really a hero in her own heart in the way that Wicked elaborates on the witches in The Wizard of Oz. While Henning hasn’t seen the Broadway smash Wicked, she disclosed that she has read Gregory Maguire’s books, which she thinks are “really great.”

When asked what question she wishes someone would ask her, she chose to discuss the way she incorporated a very interesting language into her book.

“All of the spells in the book are in Old Norse,” Henning said. “Old Norse is a dead language, but it’s related to current languages. I kind of wanted to use it to set apart the spells. It worked with the location because this is an alternate Denmark in the 1860s when Hans Christian Andersen would have been alive. I thought that using Old Norse would kind of lend itself well to the location but also add a bit of extra magic.”

But adding that magic was no easy task. “Using a sort of dead language is kind of difficult,” Henning said. “There’s a dictionary that I downloaded online from a scholar, a free dictionary, that I would use to try to create spells.”

Unfortunately, it was not that simple. Henning had to do more research even after turning in the book. “I would go back and forth talking to editors about what it should actually say and trying to figure it out – because none of us know, you know? It’s not like any of us are experts at Old Norse.” Luckily, Henning managed to find

some help from one of her own Twitter followers. Specifically, someone who is Swedish.

“I was desperately trying to figure out if I was using the right kind of boat because there were like, eight different words for boat,” Henning said. “So I messaged her and I was like, ‘I’m sorry if this is a weird question, I don’t know how close Swedish is to Old Norse, but if I send you some Old Norse words can you tell me if I’m doing this right?’ And she happily got back to me and I was like ‘Perfect, thank you, you’re going in in the back [of my book.]’”

Henning also enlisted the help of Adrienne Young, author of Sky in the Deep after meeting at a writing retreat. “As we were just getting to know each other we found out we both used the same Old Norse dictionary because she has Old Norse in her book,” Henning said. “I call her my ‘Old Norse Sister’ even though our books are completely different. It was kind of funny that we had both gravitated towards the same material.”

There is also a salute to Henning’s personal history in Sea Witch and it comes in the form of a character’s name. “I have journalism and Spanish degrees. I studied abroad in Spain, and actually my editor studied abroad in Spain too, and so one of the kind of weird things to come out of that is that one of the princes is named ‘Iker’ which is a Basque name,” Henning said. “My editor and I kind of geeked out about our time in Spain and so that’s my little nod to Spain. Because the Basque are

a whaling community

as well, so it wouldn’t be that outlandish that there’d be some royal blood from Spain in my kind of fake Denmark, because they were trading communities.”

Sea Witch explores the Danish countryside, the romantic longings of a teenager’s heart, and the highs and lows of friendship in the tender years of youth. Henning confessed that she poured some of herself into the story when writing Evie’s friendship with Nik; her friendships with boys as a young woman was often platonic.

Henning said that she identifies with teens’ needs to be heard, to see justice in the world, and their fear of being misunderstood. Henning intimated that this fear was ferociously conspicuous in people of all ages when she was a young journalist writing interviews.

“Being misunderstood was important because I spent my entire career communicating with people,” she said. “There was a lot of anxiety among different people I interviewed because they wanted to make sure they were being understood properly.”

“I say this as I’m being interviewed, but there is no fear like being put into an interview and saying that’s not exactly what you meant. We want people to understand us, and my goal was that you would understand the sea witch.”

Speaking of goals, Henning has wanted

to be an author since she was a child. Although she has had other careers before this one, she never gave up on her dream. When asked how she stayed focused on her goal of being a novelist, she talked about the power of childhood dreams.

“I think that the dreams that we have as kids don’t actually die,” Henning said. “It’s more that they go on the backburner and you can’t escape them. Ever since I was a little kid I wanted to write books.”

And Henning is not exaggerating. She recalled that, as a young girl, she used to staple pages of hand-sewn pictures together before she could speak in order to create “books.”

Unfortunately, as we get older, it can be difficult to not lose sight of our dreams. “We are told to go on one path, to go to college, do all of our extracurriculars, and not to make waves. But I have a threeyear-old, and she will go to bed at night and talk about how she can be anything she wants to be. She wants to be Dory the Fish when she grows up. There’s a point where, to be a successful adult, you forget that you are your own human being and if you speak out, people might listen to you if you have something to say. People don’t give teens enough credit. They’re really smart and interested in the world, and they see us for what we are as adults.”

Henning did not start off as an author. She built a career in journalism and worked for The Palm Beach Post, The Kansas City Star and The Associated Press as a writer/editor in sports before pursuing her dream.

Part of what kept her from pursuing a career as an author was the unpredictability. “It became apparent to me, probably around age twelve, that the life of a novelist is not a structured ‘you get paid every two weeks’ type of life.”

After a while, though, she could not stay away. “I could never escape the fact that I always wanted to write books,” Henning said. “So when I graduated and started my first job, my husband and I moved across the country, and I started writing books again. I hadn’t really done it since I was a teenager.”

We discussed how her hiatus from creative writing changed her style once she returned to it, and she reflected that it brought her back to the page with a deeper perspective. She said, “I think this a very different book than what I would have written ten years ago. One hundred percent. Totally different. And I do have a better understanding of how to write a book and how to structure a plot and characterization.”

“I think this book in particular is a look at friendship and some varying degrees of relationships, and it’s also a look at grief. And I don’t think I understood grief as much as I do today. I have a better understanding of how that feels and how to get that across on the page. And I think my understanding of what a fantasy is much better than it was ten years ago. I think as you grow, your perspective changes, and that changes what you produce as an artist no matter what you do”

Being a parent has also affected the way Sarah Henning writes.

“I was writing this book right after having my second child, and there is a lot in this book about what happens when you suppress the natural talents someone has, and I was thinking about my daughter a lot. I explored it much differently at this stage in life than I would have ten years ago, or even in high school, when I was initially trying to figure out how to write books.”

Two years after Henning began writing novels again, she found her first agent and began writing adult thrillers. After taking maternity leave, she reconsidered her genre.

“I was home with a little baby and I was like, I don’t want to write murder right now.” Although Sea Witch is not a crime story, there are hints of inspiration from the genre. “It was a different book when I started it, and it was funny because the thriller element that originally got me my [first] agent came through by the time we finished the book.”

And what a book it is! Sea Witch is being praised by critics for its carefully cultivated dialogue, characterization, and plot points. It is also getting attention for its depth and refinement. PopSugar named it one of this year’s “10 Exciting YA Book Releases,” and Publisher’s Weekly says that “readers...will be rewarded with richly woven threads of fairy tale allusions and a surprise ending.” The novel will be released on July 31, and you can preorder it right here.