Editor's Letter

WHAT COMES AFTER?

by Louise Koren

Fantasy is full of world ending dangers. Of wars and high stakes and lives on the line. But what comes after? What happens after the adventure? After the war is over? After you’ve escaped? After you leave all you knew behind? After you’ve survived? Or even, after death?

In this issue, dear reader, let’s explore those spaces that live in the After.

Sometimes your world will become something different—or something within yourself will be different—and you’ll have to continue on to see what might come next. This doesn’t have to be bad, but it is often difficult. Change is, of course, always difficult.

But what is living if not changing, over and over and over again? Who you are now is not who you were a decade ago, a year ago, or even a week ago. Each story we read changes us. In Volume 4 of Tales & Feathers, bloom into something new alongside characters discovering what it means to live life after change. Follow them in building and rebuilding a life. Evolve with them. Find out what comes after.

Listen to the peculiar birds, cryptic seas, lovable doorways, and singing skulls. Find your place after war, whether as a weary housekeeper, a mouse, or just someone looking to put down roots. Even after devastation, this issue shows us there is community, family, love, and fellowship to be found. There are still flowers, there is still soup, and there is still good.

Sit down and tell ghost stories around a campfire with us. There is afterlife here, there is afterdeath. Explore stories of ghosts and not-ghosts, people who come back, and people who you can glimpse again, but only for a moment. 

Me and you and the world is always going to be different than it was before, but that’s the wonderful power of people, to change again and again, and to continue on through everything changing around them. Maybe it’s a new job, a new partner, a new city (or a new planet), or something so simple as summer turning to fall, as it must always do.

So perhaps the answer to what comes next is simple… Something different. Something new. Something wonderful.

Telling stories in between and outside of what we most often get to see in fantasy is what first drew me to the idea of Tales & Feathers. Now, in our fourth year, dear reader, let’s explore those ideas together. And ask: what comes after?

Let’s sit down and find out together, shall we?

Louise Koren

Managing Editor, Tales & Feathers

This editor's letter, alongside twelve stories, is available in Tales & Feathers Volume 4. Pieces will be uploaded throughout the year. If you want to dig in now, the full digital issue is available for purchase.