We chat with author Randi Pink about Under The Heron’s Light, which is a dual POV Young Adult fantasy and follows college student Atlas as she learns of her family’s deep supernatural roots in the Great Dismal Swamp, and Atlas’s grandmother as a teenage girl who comes into power in those very same swamp lands.
Hi, Randi! Welcome back! Tell us:
The first book you ever remember reading: The Very Hungry Caterpillar.
The one that made you want to become an author: I was a quiet child in a lively family, and I needed a way to express myself, so I picked up a pen and never put it back down. I’m an author today because it’s the only way I can untangle the knots and get my words and thoughts out into the word. As a child, I never really had a single book that drove me to write. I wrote out of necessity.
Your latest novel, Under the Heron’s Light, is out now! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Love transcends generations and time.
What can readers expect?
Readers should expect that every character, animal, and plant has a purpose. From the largest cypress to the tiniest hanging vine, everything loops back around and cycles through this novel. I did this because the Great Dismal Swamp, like all natural spaces, recycles itself in mystical ways. Since I was given the honor of bringing the Great Dismal Swamp to life through literature, I wanted to adopt a slice of that in the pages.
Where did the inspiration for Under the Heron’s Light come from?
I’m inspired by the magic of untouched nature and the hidden history that resides within it. I bathe in nature, and I wholeheartedly believe in its magic. I’ll say that natural things inspire me the most, but hidden history drives me forward. To write a full-length novel such as Under the Heron’s Light, I needed both inspiration and force.
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
I loved writing the Great Dismal Swamp herself. In the novel, the Great Dismal Swamp speaks in staccato rhythms. She sings songs—some lovely and others lonely. She expresses herself with poetry and frustration and anger.
The Great Dismal Swamp was once over one million acres of forested wetland spanning southeast Virginia and northeastern North Carolina. In the 1700’s, George Washington set orders to drain it for financial gain, and utilized formerly enslaved people to do the work. In the centuries afterward, logging and construction shrank that massive natural space to its current size, around 113,000-acres.
Near the very end of Under the Heron’s Light, Dismal says I was the largest. Stardust memories of my vastness but charlatans, Washington, used me for target practice. She goes on to call herself the iratest, the harshest, darkest of the marshes. The harvest of generations past.
It’s a nature-loving-writers dream to lend voice to the trampled-on, quiet outdoors.
What challenges did you face whilst writing Under the Heron’s Light?
I got lost a lot. Physically and emotionally lost in the woods and the words. I tend to do this while writing all my novels—get lost. I’m like a squirrel burying her nuts and forgetting where she’s put them. Then, I search frantically trying to survive in the lostness of it all. But Under the Heron’s Light was such an expansive novel that I got even more lost than before.
I’d write stream of consciousness poems and forget where I put them. I’d sit at my keyboard and type dialog that I couldn’t find a place for. I’d create character charts spanning centuries with historical facts and dates and diagrams and sit on the floor staring up at them until they blurred my vision.
Then, one Sunday, it started to make sense. I found my way through the lostness, and it fell into place. I’d cracked the code! And after that, the road was smooth. Up until then though, writing this novel was extremely challenging.
What’s next for you?
I’d love to write something ridiculous next.
I’ve written a string of historical fiction novels with lesser-known Black history events and/or heroism at their center. With Black history being taught less and less in the classroom, I wanted my writing to shine a must deserved bright light in the direction of unsung heroes such as Harriot Jacobs, Mary Elizabeth Parrish, and the petit marronage of the Great Dismal Swamp.
Next though, I’d love to explore the quirky side of my writing voice. My quirk runs deep, and I’d like to see how far that rabbit hole goes.
Lastly, what books have you enjoyed so far this year and are there any that you can’t wait to get your hands on?
I read Remarkably Bright Creatures last year and I absolutely loved it. I’m excited to read Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward. It came out last year, but I’m finally getting a calm weekend to read it.
