Mother Christmas: Vol: 1: The Muse

by Valya Dudycz Lupescu, Victória Terra (Illustrator)

Overview

An exquisitely unique retelling of the origin of jolly, old St. Nick.

Volume 1: The Muse

It’s the one story of magic and wonder everyone thinks they know—yet the most epic part of the tale remains shrouded in mystery. What actually happened 1,800 years ago to transform a starry-eyed young priest named Nicholas into a winter wizard destined to circle the world on a sleigh of hope? Now, the secret is revealed: She happened. This is the story of Amara, one of the legendary Muses of the House of Polyhymnia. Sent by the Muses to a small town in ancient Lycia, Amara sees something special in Nicholas’s kindness and generosity. As she prepares to defend humankind against the Kobaloi, creatures who feed on fear and chaos, she senses this young man may be the partner she needs to stand against their growing power. But binding her fate and her magic to Saint Nicholas will mean breaking the laws of the Muses—and risking their eternal wrath.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781732638884
Publisher:	Rosarium Publishing
Publication date:	11/01/2022
Series:	Mother Christmas
Pages:	104
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Valya Dudycz Lupescu has been making magic with food and words for more than 20 years, incorporating folklore from her Ukrainian heritage with practices that honor the Earth. She’s a writer, instructional designer, and mother of three teenagers. Valya is the author of The Silence of Trees and the founding editor of Conclave: A Journal of Character. Along with Stephen H. Segal, she is the coauthor of Forking Good: An Unofficial Cookbook for Fans of the Good Place (Quirk Books) and Geek Parenting: What Joffrey, Jor-El, Maleficent, and the McFlys Teach Us about Raising a Family (Quirk Books). They are also the co-founders of the Wyrd Words storytelling laboratory. Valya earned her MFA in Writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and her poetry and prose have been published in anthologies and magazines that include The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, Kenyon Review, Culture, Gargoyle Magazine, Gone Lawn, Strange Horizons, Mythic Delirium.

Vic Terra, AKA Kennedhi, is a Brazilian artist, visual designer, aspiring writer, and illustrator of the Mother Christmas graphic novel. Terra loves drawing vampires, dragons, monsters, and creatures in general. She's also skilled at video editing, animating, 3D modeling, and throwing axes.

Editorial Reviews

11/28/2022

Lupescu and Terra’s ambitious but uneven fantasy series launch reimagines the origin story of Santa Claus, based on the Mediterranean legend of St. Nicholas. Amara, a muse with a habit of getting too involved in mortal lives, is assigned to provide inspiration to Flavia, a priestess of the goddess Leto in fourth-century Lycia. Flavia’s brother Nicholas, meanwhile, becomes a priest in the new and increasingly powerful cult of Christianity. With a violent religious clash brewing, Amara assumes human form to help the siblings navigate their increasingly divided world. Together they investigate the shadowy threat of the kobaloi, creatures that feed on human fear. Much of this first volume is devoted to worldbuilding, developing both historical Lycia and a mythical world of gods, angels, muses, and monsters. Amara’s relationship to Nicholas may slate her for a wifely role in Christmas fables, but that’s left for future volumes to play out. Terra’s page layouts are ornate, with saturated colors and well-researched period details—architecture, clothing, food, rituals—that draw the eye. The simple, blocky-faced and sometimes stiffly posed characters are less satisfying, and the script gets overly text-heavy at points, with info drops of backstory. Still, those searching for an unconventional holiday gift for fantasy fans should take a look. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

"Colorful and attractive design and drawing, good character work, interesting take on myths and legends. Very entertaining!"—Colleen Doran, New York Times bestselling cartoonist (Sandman, Wonder Woman, Neil Gaiman's Chivalry, Snow Glasss Apples)

“The new mythos Valya Lupescu and Vic Terra have created in Mother Christmas is as rich as it is colorful! I was lost in the gorgeous art and story and I was sorely disappointed when I found out I only had the first arc to read! I can’t wait to find out what happens next!”—Jill Thompson, Eisner award winning artist and creator of The Scary Godmother

“A wondrous story about friendship and the magic we all hold deep inside.”  —Cynthia von Buhler, author/artist of The Illuminati Ball

"A colourful, imaginative, and heartfelt beginning, empathetically wordspun by Lupescu and vividly illustrated by Terra."—Brooke Bolander

From the Publisher