Ashfield author Jorma Kansanen is partial to magic. For the past decade, he’s developed a young adult fantasy series based in western Massachusetts that centers on fraternal twins with supernatural powers. While the siblings navigate the perils of adolescence, they must answer to a higher calling.
On Tuesday, Aug. 25, fans can pre-order the fourth installment of Kansanen’s “A Pendale Tale” series, “Heart of the Goddess,” through his website and on Amazon. The full release is on Tuesday, Sept. 22 — the day of the Fall equinox and the birthday of the series’ titular twins, Viola and Sebastian. They’re 14 this year, but they were born at the turn of the century, so the series takes place in the early 2010s, making for a fun return to now-dated slang. As Viola would say, “It’s so amazeballs.”
Kansanen, who grew up near Worcester in the 1970s, wrote screenplays and books on a typewriter at the kitchen table as a kid. After he shifted his focus to songs and poetry as a teenager, his mother passed away in 1986, the same year he graduated from high school. “The real world intruded into my dream world,” he said, explaining that, for a time, he had to shelve writing for full-time work.
At 26, he put himself through the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he wrote for its newspaper, the Massachusetts Daily Collegian, as well as the Daily Hampshire Gazette. As a junior and foreign exchange student at the University of Manchester in England, he was captivated by a literature professor who taught a class on Shakespeare entirely in character — complete with a distinct accent and Victorian dress.
“How can you not get incredibly inspired when you’re in that kind of creative environment?” Kansanen said. “It took my writing into the stratosphere.”
After college, the author worked in media relations at UMass for its women’s soccer team, where the players introduced him to J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter” series. “It’s a magical world that exists alongside our world,” he explained, intrigued. Kansanen was also drawn to Stephen King’s novels, particularly “It” and “The Stand,” which are set in fictionalized versions of real-world environments. The seeds of “A Pendale Tale,” where parallel worlds exist in the western Massachusetts-based town of “Pendale,” were officially taking root.
Then life interrupted. After being diagnosed with Lyme disease, Kansanen took time to recalibrate. He eventually returned to his idea for a young adult fantasy series in 2016, when a Kickstarter campaign helped him release Part 1, “Wild as the Wind” out into the world.
Once he established that twins Viola and Sebastian lived with their father in Pendale, he knew that Viola would have her first encounter with a spirit animal in her backyard — drawing from a short story he wrote in high school based on a similar experience.
The twins represent different facets of Kansanen himself, as does their dad, who is a longform journalist. Viola is a soccer star, a trait based on the author’s extensive experience with the sport, which began at UMass and continues today in his role as the media director for the Western United Pioneers, a soccer club in Ludlow. Sebastian is more bookish, far more likely to be found behind a semi-modern typewriter like a 2014 MacBook Pro.
Part 1 of the series focuses on the twins’ journey to a parallel world where shamans and shapeshifters lead them into battle with Mother Nature, who is wreaking havoc on the planet. In Part 2, “Call of the Raven,” a collection of short stories explores ancillary characters like Persephone Perry, a powerful psychic and mentor to Viola. Part 3, “Deep as the Sea,” centers on Sebastian, who enters a parallel world populated by dragons and samurai during a school trip to Japan, helping him develop his own spiritual identity.
In Part 4, “The Heart of the Goddess,” Viola takes center stage again, enhancing her powers not as a shaman, but as a “sha-woman.”
Kansanen’s prose blends mythology and authenticity, creating a distinct lineage for the twins that informs an entire world. He’s also a journalist at heart, so to align his characters with the early 2010s, he studied relevant slang and exact weather patterns. While he originally envisioned writing four parts, he now has his sights set on seven, with ideas brewing for a prequel and additional short stories.
Last March, while the author was finishing Part 4, he and his partner visited a psychic in Marin County, California, which Kansanen described as “kind of funky, kind of crunchy, kind of like here.” While the psychic helped his partner explore her upcoming retirement, Kansanen wanted to know where things were going with his writing. The psychic told the author that there was “a sentient being” standing next to him — a woman who was not a family member. After he described his book series to her, he realized it was Viola.
“This whole creative process is taking on a life of its own,” he said, in awe of his merged worlds. “There’s this magic that’s been existing alongside us for a long time.”
The author will be at the Ashfield Fall Festival on Oct. 10 and 11, where he’ll sell copies of his books. Learn more at jkansanen.com.
Melissa Karen Sances can be reached at melissaksances@gmail.com.