Hello, fellow disciples! We would like to present the interview with the grand winner for our Lunar New Year contest, The Immortals' Conquest.

You can read lavenderstar's story, Enduring Like the Plum in Winter, here. Inspired by Prompt #1: The Immortal Hero.

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What are some things that influenced your contest submission?

I've always enjoyed going to botanic gardens, and when I was able to travel to Australia before the pandemic, one of the things I did in Sydney was visit the Chinese Garden there. One of the features in that garden is the Clear View Pavilion, which has panels depicting the Three Friends of Winter – plum, pine, and bamboo. I had never heard of them before and decided to weave that into my story as some lessons for Ruomei to learn as she cultivated to become an Immortal.

Tell us about the main character of your winning entry. What inspired their creation?

When I watch a Chinese movie or drama they tend to lean towards fantasy, so I drew a bit on the my knowledge of the characters from those stories – Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms, Love and Destiny, Ashes of Love, etc. With a few exceptions, the main female leads start out as pretty naively optimistic and then mature as they go through hardships so I modeled Ruomei the same way, learning and growing from each "friend of winter" in the story - Lisong (pine), Zhulin (bamboo), and herself (plum).

What were some challenges you experienced while writing your entry?

Word limit! As I developed the characters and storyline I got the urge to keep expanding on their backgrounds and on the plot, but there's only so much I can fit in 20k words or less so it challenged me to be really discerning. It also forced me to hold off on publishing chapters and wait until I knew I could fit certain scenes into the story, or else I'd have to go back and take them out before they were published. Thankfully that didn't happen though.

What is your favorite myth or legend? Why? Please tell us from what culture it's from.

I'm not sure if this counts because it's based on a 16th century English children's game, but Heckedy Peg – an old witch with one leg who transforms 7 children named after days of the week into food and then brings them into her forest to eat. The children's mom then has to go rescue them and identify them by matching each food with the item they wanted her to get them at the marketplace. Though it has a morbid premise, it was turned into a really beautifully-illustrated children's book and was one of my favorites as a kid – much to the chagrin of my mother, who got glared at by the preschool teachers when I chose that book for her to read to the class!

What is your favorite mythical creature? Why? Please tell us from what culture it's from.

Probably the nine-tailed fox from Chinese/Korean/Japanese mythology. There are differences in the myth depending on the country but I enjoy their tendency to stir up mischief and keep things interesting – at least in modern stories (Kamisama Kiss, Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms, Painted Skin, and Tale of the Nine-Tailed, for example). I even ended up writing about a gumiho in one of my stories here on Wattpad, so I guess you could say I have a bit of a soft spot for them.

What was one thing you learned from Asian mythology and folklore from this contest?

I'd say I learned more about what kind of elements are found in a xianxia story, like the different realms and a little bit more about cultivation. And I definitely learned more about what pine, bamboo, and plum represent in East Asian culture.

If you had the opportunity to do this contest again, what would you do differently?

Hmm. Well, I might go back and try to even out the story, in the sense of taking away some parts that I expanded on more at the beginning to leave more room for details at the end instead. It's a tricky balance because it's important to set the story up well enough, but I also wanted to make sure to end it well and I do think it was a little rushed at the end because of the word limit. This might not make much sense but it's kind of like a tube of toothpaste where there are bigger parts in some areas and I would want to smooth it out so the words are more evenly distributed to tell the different parts of the story.

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Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us, lavenderstar! We wish you the best of luck in your writing endeavors.

Until the next chapter, fellow disciples!