Megs Calleja is a writer, actor, and children’s drama teacher based in Vancouver, Canada. Her first performed script, titled ‘October 1947’, a gumshoe comedy play written in high school, encouraged a further pursuit into storytelling. She is a member of the Professional Writers Association of Canada (now the Canadian Freelance Guild), studied Shakespeare at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, and has a professional screenwriting career many would die for. I had the pleasure to catch up with her to discuss her new novel ‘Acorns & Roots’.
Hi Megs, a pleasure to speak to you about your latest novel, Acorns & Roots. The book has received warm reviews so congratulations! Firstly, what encouraged you to write your first novel?
Hi, and thank you so much! To be perfectly honest, when I started writing Acorns & Roots, I didn’t have the idea of publishing a novel in mind. It was a creative outlet for me. After I unexpectedly found the unfinished manuscript in 2017, I began reading it. Sometimes finding things that were written years ago leads to embarrassing laughter, but I was surprised at how vividly this story jumped back into my imagination. Perhaps it was the perfect storm of timing. Whatever it was, I thought, “I’m going to finish this, and I’m going to do something with it.”
Please explain the synopsis and what readers should expect?
Acorns & Roots is a dry-witted, dark fantasy that transports readers into a struggling Enchanted Forest in the midst of an epic battle between light and dark magic. Forest pixie Fillii is searching for a way to take down the sadistic king in power and avoid disenchantment, and she quickly collides with unemployed human Amer, who is hiking through what he believes to be a completely normal forest, on a mission to harvest pricey roots and pay his overdue rent. With the same destination, they are reluctantly thrown together, although Fillii doesn’t trust humans, and Amer doesn’t believe in magic. Readers can expect a quest that travels throughout many magical regions within the Enchanted Forest, some fantastical creatures, humor, dark spells, secrets, battles, and an adventure that is ultimately about belonging, friendship, and defeating the darkness.
The book is narrated from two opposing perspectives of the protagonist and their nemesis? Some would say this is somewhat unorthodox. You’re new to writing novels so what encouraged you to approach the book from this angle and how difficult was it?
I knew from the moment I began writing that Acorns & Roots had to be told from both Fillii and Amer’s first-person points of view. They represent worlds that exist simultaneously but with completely different realities. Actually, some readers will notice that when the worlds fully collide, the novel is written in a third-person narrative. I made the decision to also include King Malo’s point of view so that the reader can see the story from his eyes. I’ve always loved the idea that a villain isn’t the villain when it’s their own story.
It is definitely a challenge to write from multiple points of view (having life trees for each character helped a lot), but some of my favorite books are written this way. To me, living with different characters brings the reader into the world in such a wonderful way. I think of a wooden fence with tiny knot holes. If you wink through one knot, you’ll see the magic that is happening through that particular tunnel of light. And that tunnel of light can be incredibly meaningful! Even still, if you shift and wink through a different knot, the same world that you’ve been seeing on the other side is lit up (and shadowed) in a whole new way.
The biggest challenge for me was actually making sure their adventure route lined up with the map; a consequence of things being added and altered over ten years. I remember sitting in a café in Vancouver with the manuscript in one hand, a chicken-scratch idea of a map in the other, meticulously going through every possible reference to direction and geography, and cross-listing for hours. After so many screams into the Pacific Ocean of, “whose idea was this?!” I told myself any discrepancies could be chalked up to magic.
On reflection, is there anything you’d change about your first novel?
Oooh, I feel like that’s a dangerous path to tread so soon. I would make the map bigger.
The book can easily transform into a screenplay for TV or Cinema. Is this something you’d explore or envisaged, and naturally, as an actor, would this be something you’d be involved in?
Thank you for saying it could transition to the screen; I take that as a huge compliment! At the moment, I’m incredibly eager for people to get lost in the novel. While it is a YA fantasy, it was also written for nostalgic hearts. The beauty of a novel lies in its ability to become your own world when you’re reading it. My goal, for now, is to share this world with readers and have it exist in a thousand different ways through every reader’s imagination. That being said, I do work in the film and television industry, and anything is possible! It would be beyond enchanting to see this story come to life cinematically.
So what are you currently working on?
Promoting the book has been a huge focus for me, and it’s been such an enlightening experience. I’m always writing, and I’m not ready to say what project is on the laptop right now, but I will say this: just because you reach the last page of Acorns & Roots, it doesn’t mean the story is over. 🙂
Where can our readers find out more about you?
If you want to purchase Acorns & Roots from an online retailer, you can do that wherever books are sold! For a complete store list, or to order a signed copy, you can visit www.megscalleja.com . I’m also on Instagram (@scotchmaltmegs) and Twitter (@megscalleja).
Thank you so much for having me, Occhi Magazine!
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