Interview: “Echoes of a Forgotten Day” by Meyari McFarland

In Meyari McFarland’s “Echoes of a Forgotten Day,” Marie sets out alone on a storm-battered hike along the Oregon coast, determined to honor a promise made to friends. But Elakha Bay is more than just a remote, haunted stretch of shoreline—it’s a place where the past lingers, ghosts walk, and ancient tragedies refuse to stay buried.

Interview Questions

Did the story start with the ghost, the water, or something else entirely?

For me, the story started with an image of the Oregon coast that I dimly remember from a visit when I was about six years old. It was cold and foggy, but very beautiful. I remember looking down a steep hill that was just the right side of being a cliff (for my mother’s poor stressed out about her kids being on a cliff edge). The beach down below was only a couple of yards wide, covered with seaweed and constantly washed with waves.

It stuck with me over the years as a desolate, scary sort of place that was still incredibly beautiful. When I saw the theme for the anthology, that image was what came to mind so that’s where I started: down on a seaweed strewn beach with waves constantly coming in and an impassible cliff keeping Maria from escaping if anything went wrong.

Does water mean something special to you personally, or was it just the right element for this tale?

Water most certainly means something for me. I’m an aquaphobe. I’ve spent decades of my life dealing with my phobia, sometimes better, sometimes worse. I have no issues with showers (though I never splash water on my face if I can help it). Bathtubs are fine. Anything bigger and deeper?

Yeah, problems. There’s little that’s scarier for me than the ocean threatening to drag me under the water’s surface. Worked very, very well for this story.

What inspired the setting of Elakha Bay? Is it based on a real location?

Elakha Bay is 100% fictional, sadly. I’d love to visit it (by helicopter!) but it’s not real. I based it on my childhood visit to the Oregon coast and several visits I’ve made as an adult. The physical location itself comes from those experiences.

The history of Elakha Bay comes from a couple of old documentaries that I watched, oh, at least fifteen years ago. The first was one of those “let’s science out how the Bible could be literally true” documentaries, focused specifically on Sodom and Gomorrah. From what the scientists had figured out that that area of the Red Sea had a particular geological structure that would allow liquefaction and rapid movement of the soil layers if there was an earthquake.

That combined with a documentary about the Chicxulub Crater where an impact completely shattered the bedrock. I took the Pacific coast’s history of earthquakes, added in an impact crater to shape the Bay, and then threw on the idea of a landslide taking the whole town out to build the basis of the story.

Grief and memory play a central role in this story. What drew you to explore those themes through a haunting?

I’m dealing with a lot of grief currently. My mother recently died after a sudden illness. My father-in-law died six months after that after a long battle with heart disease. And, of course, there’s the whole legacy of Covid that hangs over the world.

For me, people live in my memory. I haven’t ever experienced a haunting. Instead, people I miss show up in my dreams to talk to me. Marie’s experience with Baily and Evangalista isn’t that far off of some of my dreams where my dad shows up to offer advice on current events or my mom suggests a better way to cook specific foods.

I don’t believe that their ghosts are actually visiting me in my dreams, but the visits are… comforting, I guess. There’s closure to be found, which is what I really wanted for Marie, Baily and Evangalista.

Bailey and Evangalista have a powerful posthumous presence. How did they evolve as characters?

When I started writing, I honestly believed that Bailey and Evangalista were still alive, just like Marie did. It wasn’t until Marie rounded the corner and entered Elakha Bay that I realized that no, they definitely weren’t alive. As soon as I figured that out, I had to go run back through the story and see if I’d put in hints of that during the writing.

I had. Quite a few. Even if my conscious mind didn’t know they were ghosts, my subconscious most certainly did. I think I only added about three sentences and a few random words to clarify when I edited.

“Echoes of a Forgotten Day” begins as an act of remembrance but turns into a confrontation with the past. What inspired this story?

As I said above, I’m dealing with a lot of grief lately. That’s the remembrance part. The confrontation part bloomed out of, well, the current political reality. So many lessons of the past have been ignored. So many people have been lost to history. I can’t help but think that they would be so incredibly angry if they knew that they and everything they’d experienced had been washed away by time.

So, when it came time to write about the actual dangerous ghosts in Elakha Bay, they were the angry dead. The ones who had lived and died and then been completely written out of everyone’s memories. It’s a thing for me, the forgotten dead. To be remembered is to continue on. To be forgotten is to be wiped out entirely.

Part of Marie’s confrontation in Elakha Bay was realizing that yes, her friends were dead and in danger of being forgotten, just like the angry ghosts that killed them.

What do you hope readers carry away from Marie’s final moments on the beach?

I really don’t know. The peace that comes from remembering your lost ones and settling their lives in your heart? That everyone deserves to be remembered and loved, no matter what might have happened. Definitely that actions have consequences, sometimes far beyond what we might expect when we start out. And, maybe, that sensation of the ocean being deep and dark and utterly alien.

What are you working on now—and what’s fun or exciting about it?

I have several projects I’m working on currently. Hazelnut is a series set in a world rather like ours in the 80’s but with magic. It’s middle grade / young adult and focuses on four teenage girls who find their magic and change the world for the better. It’s pretty dark with threats of rape and abuse, but the girls are lovely and I’m having entirely too much fun with the world building.

The second project, On Armored Wings, is absolutely enormous, probably more than a million words when I’m completely done with it. It’s set in a fantasy world nestled in the branches of the world tree. There are flying islands and intelligent dragonflies the size of small planes and time travel as the main character tries to save the world. That one will take a while to come out but it’s a joy plugging away at it, especially since it’s inspired several other stories that will come out before it does.

And the third big project I’m working on, The Johnston Girls, is a contemporary romance series set around a small private college. The Johnston girls come from a fiercely independent family and are Very Wealthy. Also very queer. They intersect with their future lovers who are… well. The first one is ADHD and painfully poor. The second is nonbinary and runs a hair dresser’s shop. Not sure yet who the third will be but I anticipate three to five books in the series.

I’ve many other things in progress, including plans for a Shopify store, but those are the ones that are exciting me at the moment.

About the Author

Meyari McFarland has been telling stories since she was a small child. Her stories range from SF and Fantasy adventures to Romances, but they always feature strong characters who do what they think is right no matter what gets in their way.

Her series range from Space Opera Romance in the Drath series, to Epic Fantasy in the Mages of Tindiere world. Other series include Matriarchies of Muirin, the Clockwork Rift Steampunk mysteries, and the Tales of Unification urban fantasy stories, plus many more.

Find out more about Meyari at mdr-publishing.com

Read the Story

“Echoes of a Forgotten Day” appears in Haunted Waters, available now from Blackbird Publishing.

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