Where Myth Meets Story: The Japanese Inspiration Behind Soul-Threader

History and mythology have always been powerful sources of inspiration for my writing. I will admit to a somewhat unhealthy obsession with Greek mythology — The Odyssey and The Iliad remain among my favourite books — and over the years I have devoured almost every Greek retelling I could find.

But loving Greek mythology also made me increasingly aware of something else: many fantasy stories draw from the same well. Western history and myth have shaped countless beloved works, and even Game of Thrones famously draws inspiration from the Wars of the Roses. As a reader and writer, I began to feel the urge to look beyond the familiar landscapes of Western myth and explore stories rooted in different cultural traditions.

That curiosity led me, somewhat unexpectedly, elsewhere.

Discovering a Wider Mythological World

My exploration began with The Mythology Book, published by DK. What started as casual reading quickly became a doorway into a much broader mythological landscape. Being Canadian, I had some exposure to North American myths and only a very loose understanding of Chinese and Japanese traditions. The book revealed just how vast and varied global mythologies truly are, each culture offering its own ways of understanding identity, fate, and the unseen world.

From there, I found myself increasingly drawn to Japanese mythology.

In recent years, Japan has captured global attention anew through travel, cuisine, art, and popular culture. But my fascination began much earlier. As a teenager, I carried a small Japanese phrasebook everywhere, attempting hesitant sentences during visits to Japanese restaurants in Paris with my parents. A close friend who had lived in Japan felt impossibly cool to me, and I was captivated by a culture that seemed to embrace imagination openly — exporting manga, animation, and aesthetics that celebrated creativity rather than hiding it.

Yet mythology itself remained largely unexplored territory for me until a new story began to take shape.

The Birth of Soul-Threader

Unlike In-Between, a story I have been shaping for decades, Soul-Threader arrived suddenly.

In the summer of 2024, pregnant with my first son, a simple idea emerged — one I won’t fully reveal yet for fear of spoilers — but it carried an emotional core strong enough to demand a new world. The project, planned as a duology, quickly grew beyond its initial concept.

I finished the manuscript of Book One of the Threadbound Duology in late February 2026.

This book holds a deeply personal place in my life. I wrote much of it with my son in a baby carrier during naps and quiet moments throughout his first year. I completed In-Between shortly before he was born, and finished Soul-Threader while carrying another child, on the cusp of welcoming him into the world. In many ways, these stories mark chapters of my own life as much as they do fictional worlds: the birth of books alongside the arrival of my children. Soul-Threader is dedicated to them.

Letting Mythology Shape the Story

I began with only the skeleton of the narrative. Japanese mythology helped provide the flesh.

As I explored its traditions and stories, elements began naturally weaving themselves into the world:

• Spirits, or kami, and the blurred boundary between the human and the divine.
• Rituals and sensory traditions, including the crafting of personal perfumes and the symbolic importance of scent.
• Blessings and spiritual balance, which influenced the magic system itself.
• And at the heart of it all, the idea of connection, embodied in the legend of the red thread that binds two souls together across time and distance.

Rather than adapting myths directly, I allowed their themes and philosophies to guide the story's emotional architecture. Japanese mythology often embraces ambiguity: spirits are neither wholly benevolent nor cruel, and transformation is constant. That perspective profoundly shaped the tone of Soul-Threader.

A Different Kind of Fantasy

Soul-Threader is a dark romantic fantasy blending elements of horror with themes of identity, love, and healing. At its centre is a flawed heroine navigating a world where destiny is not comforting but dangerous, and where the familiar soulmate trope is turned on its head.

Like In-Between, the story explores liminal spaces: the moments between certainty and change, belonging and isolation, life as it is and life as it might become. But its atmosphere is sharper, more intimate, and more unsettling.

I cannot wait to introduce you to this world and its characters, each imperfect, wounded, and searching in their own way.

What Comes Next

Over the coming months, I’ll begin sharing glimpses of Soul-Threader, starting with introductions to its main characters and the inspirations behind them.

Until then, it’s time for me to return once more to the world of In-Between.

Thank you, as always, for following this journey with me.