“These tales say that apples were golden only to refresh the forgotten moment when we found that they were green. They make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water… Every man has forgotten who he is. One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self more distant than any star. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God; but thou shalt not know thyself. We are all under the same mental calamity; we have all forgotten our names. We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that, for certain dead levels of our life, we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful instant, we remember that we forget.”
— Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton
As Nyx Levy’s understanding developed of what a story is, so did her ability to actually finish her manuscripts. A younger and much more cynical Nyx Levy saw a novel as a method to deliver an agenda as painlessly as possible—whether that was a lecture on the corruptibility of human nature, the futility of hope, or the merits of peanut butter cookies. And yes, at age twelve, she did write a five book series expounding on these themes. Hopefully, it will never see the light of day due to an unfortunately severe case of deus ex machina.
But everything changed when she read Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton. The cynic found hope, the lecturer found magic, and the author realized that stories are about so much more than themes and agendas. The soul of storytelling, she realized, was the shared journey through joy and pain, love and loss, and wonder in the mundane, in which readers and characters alike are bound together by one very human emotion—compassion.
Now she spins her stories, bringing characters and readers through the depths of human emotion, exploring the corners of the human heart, and marveling at the wonders and complexities of the human soul.
Nyx Levy 