Of Vengeful Mermaids, Venice and a Rising Sea: Interview with Angela Rega, author of "The Return of Melusine"

A morbidly beautiful tale of strong-willed mermaids, a journey towards finding oneself and a crumbling city

Angela Rega

On May 1st, the anthology Fae Visions of the Meditarranean, edited by Valeria Vitale and Djibril al-Ayad, was published by Futurefire.net Publishing. I am excited to share with you an interview I conducted with one of my fellow authors, Angela Rega. Angela's story "The Return of Melusine" is the exciting tale of a mermaid's struggle to acknowledge her true nature and make the right choices. The name choice for Angela's protagonist is a very interesting one: Melusine is actually a figure of European folklore. She is a feminine spirit of fresh water in a spring or river and is usually depicted as a serpent or fish from the waist down.  In this interview, we will delve more into the author's world and also understand where her inspiration springs from.

Angela Rega is a belly dancing school librarian with a passion for folklore, fairy tales and furry creatures. She was raised in a multi-lingual household where nobody finished a sentence in the same language and still struggles with syntax. She keeps a small website here: angierega.webs.com.

What inflamed your passion for writing ?

Angela: As a child I spent more time with my grandmother than anyone else and she was an avid storyteller. There was a story for every experience, every lesson and for entertainment. Everything was a narrative.

Later on, I discovered the written word. I had an amazing teacher in primary school who read us The Hobbit and The Egypt Game and I was hooked. Reading stories became an escape. Then writing them I realised I could create my own getaways or explorations. I can’t imagine not writing now.

What fascinates you about fantastic, mythic and folklore fiction?

Angela: Magic. Wonder. Discovery. Possibility. Metamorphosis. These are evident in the fantastic, the mythic and the folkloric. I think to be able to escape into these stories knowing I will experience one or all of these elements excites me.  If stories were a fluid body of water, the mythic and folkloric serve as a well from which I draw from.

 "Reading stories became an escape. Then writing them I realised I could create my own getaways or explorations. I can’t imagine not writing now."

Artwork by Justin Gedak  http://www.justingedak.com/

What inspired you to write your story?

Angela: My parents were migrants from Sicily and Southern Italy. I grew up with a reverence for the sea and the mythic that it contains. My grandmother told me stories of the Cyclops of Acitrezza and the mermaids of the Straits of Messina. These tales are old and can be traced back as early as Homer’s The Odyssey.

In my twenties I visited Venice and fell in love with this sinking water city. Completely. In. Love. I read about the Doges of Venice who, once a year would take a trip in a gilded barge to the open sea and there they would toss a wedding ring into the ocean to symbolise the marriage of the city to the sea. I thought…what if…what if….there were mermaids collecting the rings and now with the Doges long gone and Venice sinking they were waiting to claim the water city as their own?

On a deeper level, it is a story about identity and duality and in particular how these translate in relationships.  Mermaid stories often have this theme present. How much of ourselves do we give? How much is too much? Can you deny your true nature? This is why stories of sirens have always fascinated me. It is something I think we can all struggle with – there is a bit of mer creature in all of us.

"On a deeper level, it is a story about identity and duality and in particular how these translate in relationships.  Mermaid stories often have this theme present. How much of ourselves do we give?" 

Was there a specific song, album or artist that helped you with your writing process?

Angela: I love listening to music – particularly while I’m writing. I love writing to ambient music by artists such as Steve Roach and Brian Eno and I also like listening to cello and violin or the operatic sounds of Callas and Tebaldi – my two favourite opera singers.

If you could meet any author, alive or dead, which one would you choose and why ? 

Angela: Argh! Just one? I cannot limit myself to one…maybe two…no…let’s settle for three because I have enough room for four chairs around my small table in my Lilliputian apartment. If I could meet any author alive or dead they would be: Italo Calvino, Haruki Muraki and Jeanette Winterson.

 "If stories were a fluid body of water, the mythic and folkloric serve as a well from which I draw from."

Fae Visions of the Meditarranean is available in both print and electronic formats. Here are some useful links if you want to purchase the book or if you're simply interested in following updates from the Future Fire Press:
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