Today our resident pachyderms make way for the delightful inhabitants of Roppotucha Greenberg‘s Creatures Give Advice (available in paperback and ebook formats). Though elephants never fret, they do worry and wonder. And Creatures Give Advice packs enough wisdom and whimsy to satisfy even the most elephantine imagination.
Advice Bureau
Things didn’t always go to plan.
Last Tuesday, for instance…
Finding the book of life confusing and in questionable shape, the creatures of the Thicket form an advice bureau. And everyone comes to visit: half-foxes, fish, crows, space-god hedgehogs, Twitter denizens, and hopeful humans.
Creatures Give Advice doodles deep, sending the author’s pen-and-ink creations to the north pole, beneath rivers, and into the City in search of answers to questions large and small. Throughout, Greenberg treats the reader to surprising insights, marshy secrets, and a Seussian mob of fantastical creatures that capture and please the eye.
Community Effort
While Greenberg began doodling as a child of six, much of Creatures Give Advice took shape in recent months.
“The creatures are whimsical beings that change depending on my mood,” says Greenberg. “I noticed quite recently that they change in really surprising ways when I think of another person when I doodle. I decided: I’ll introduce the creatures to the wide world and let them change shapes and morph as I think of people I’ve never met and their cool, kind, and witty questions.”
Greenberg solicited questions from the online writing community. Her responses included original doodles and text answers that now give Creatures Give Advice its distinct format.
Among these question-and-answer exchanges, Greenberg has also interspersed micro-stories and atmospheric passages, such as “Longing” and “December.” Many draw from her responses to daily and weekly writing prompts (for instance, the #vss365 and #satsplat hashtags). Altogether, Creatures Give Advice demonstrates the author’s commitment to engaging with and contributing to the online writing community.
Winter Lore
Hear Me
At my behest, frozen rain shall creep into your collars. Anger will spill out of the sky, clog the traffic, and scuttle into the bushes where rats are fighting over the refuse. Clouds of bacteria will invade your guts. But I’ll give you a slow summer, with butterflies.
Despite collecting crowd-sourced dilemmas and micro-stories, Creatures Give Advice reads like a unified, planned work. Wintry images and a fairy-tale tone lend old magic to Greenberg’s text passages. And her rollicking creatures turn the pages into an illuminated, medieval bestiary.
These effects create a sort of ambient narrative that unfolds gradually like new blooms in spring. Creatures Give Advice reminds the reader how to find life and sun amid the cold of winter, to remember the joy of youth despite the aches and worries of adulthood.
More Creatures
For those like us who enjoy Greenberg’s creatures, good things lurk on the horizon. In addition to the potential for sping-, summer-, and autumn-themed sequels, Greenberg has plans to expand the creatures’ folklore.
“There is also a much longer project that has been simmering a while,” explains Greenberg. “It would be a novella, I hope, and it would explain the story with the Marsh Giants and give a better overview of the relationship between the Thicket and the City.”
For now, immerse yourself in Creatures Give Advice, follow Roppotucha Greenberg for daily magic, and join in the launch party. There’s room in this herd for all.
Roppotucha Greenberg lives mostly on Twitter (@Roppotucha) where she writes tiny stories as part of various writing games (including vss365, satsplat, scifaikusaturday, and others). She also writes flash fiction.
Creatures live mostly in the Thicket, but also in the City, the Sunken Marshes, and other places. Creatures Give Advice (2019) is just out. Creatures enjoy interaction with other people (in fact there is a theory that they rely on this interaction for survival), so there will be more options for getting advice and commissioning special projects.