Although by the end of my research, I had enough material to begin a novel set in imperial Russia, I didn’t quite feel emotionally ready to write a historical fantasy. That would come with my next manuscript, The City Beautiful. So, Bone Weaver began as a way to experiment and tentatively toe around the brutality of the real-life persecution and violence explored in The City Beautiful. It felt safer that way, less personal.

While this is a secondary world fantasy, many of the world-building aspects of this story were inspired by my research into Eastern European folklore and history. All of the monsters come from Slavic (but not solely Russian or Eastern Slavic) folklore, along with concepts like the Unclean Force and spoiling. Bone Weaver’s lexicon and location names are, for the most part, drawn from Russian; however, there are other lingual inspirations as well. Strannitsky, for instance, has a vaguely Germanic base with roots in several languages, Yezmirny is an echo to Ottoman Turkey, and some of the town names like Teykhst and Shteynov are also intentional chimeras.

At its core, this is a story about feeling like an outsider. It is a story about identity, and what it means to be deprived of parts of your identity, and what it takes to reclaim autonomy.

GLOSSARY

bannik: A bathhouse spirit said to be capable of foreseeing the future. The very brave—or very foolish—can request the bannik to tell their fortune by standing with their back to the steam bath’s open door. A light stroke of its fingertips brings good tidings, while a clawing foretells something far worse.

plural banniki.

banya: A steam bath. In rural villages, these often consist of simple steam rooms constructed on private land. In larger towns and cities, they can also be found at communal bathhouses.

The Black Steppe: A vast and uninhabited grassland separating Kosa from Yezmirny, sharing its northern borders with the Kosa mainland and the southwestern tip of the Granary. Its geography is largely flat and treeless, although staired plateaus and basalt columns can be found along its southern and eastern rims, dotted with the collapsed ruins of ancient Strannik settlements. Entire swathes of the steppe are buried beneath molten ebony sand and chunks of porous stone, the relics of a catastrophic event known as the Great Burning (Str: tzer Grohdler Korbrendt). Once the Stranniki’s ancestral homeland, it is now considered to be cursed land spoiled by the Unclean Force.

blight ward: The designated term for former battlefields that are still seeded with unexploded ordnance or toxic chemicals. Blight wards are common across the Edge and along Groznaya’s borders. These areas are dangerous, both due to the man-made contamination of the land, and the presence of the Unclean Force caused by the widespread death and suffering. Strange malformations of natural fauna and flora have been reported in blight wards dating to the Fifth Groznaya-Kosa War. Some speculate the mutations are caused by the leftover canisters of toxic gas Grozniy forces derived from vodyanoy gallbladders.