Bring it Back(list) - Soul of Kandrith

 CONFESSION TIME: I have no idea how to market this book. No. Clue. Whatsoever.

First of all it's the second in a duology and the very blurb has spoilers for book one, Gate to Kandrith. So if you hate spoilers and haven't heard of book one, then go here.

Secondly, there's the cover which I both love and hate. It's a great cover, stunning and bold. I love the way it's framed and the red tones. It telegraphs that this is a fantasy novel quite well. But it looks as if the book is about a sword-swinging barbarian. In fact my hero is a healer. There is only one scene in which he picks up a sword--and after seeing the cover I tweaked the scene slightly so that I could tell myself the man was in fact Lance.

Third, there's the content. The book starts off with Sara having lost her soul and trying to regain it. the ending is happy, but it goes to some very dark places in which she is enslaved and, yes, raped. It feels unfair to encourage people to buy the book without including a Trigger Warning.

And yet I am proud of this book. I worked very hard on it: the pacing and action scenes, the world-building, the characters. It was hard to write compellingly through the viewpoint of  someone with no soul and therefore very little emotional connection to her surroundings, but I pulled it off.

VILLAIN STOMPING ON MY OUTLINE

Ironically, the rape scenes were not in my original outline. They are one of those (for me rare) cases where the characters came alive and the scene went sideways on me. I wrote the scene how it unfolded and told myself I'd fix it in the second draft, but when it came down to it I couldn't. Because I had something to say about slavery and sacrifice and rape. Too often in our world the victims of rape are shamed and told that they 'provoked' the attack or did something 'stupid' to find themselves in such a situation. But Sara, having no emotions, is not ashamed. She sees right through the villain when he tries blames her for the horrible things he does to her. And  that is why the dark scenes stay.

So if you're in the mood for some light entertainment, look elsewhere. But if you're willing to venture a step or two into the dark consider giving Soul of Kandrith a chance.

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Healer Week -- Cure Heavy Wounds

Ah, healers. Anybody who’s ever played a Dungeons & Dragons or other roleplaying game can tell you how essential it is to have a healer in the adventure party along with a thief, some fighters, and a mage. D & D healers could usually fight a little, too, but their primary usefulness came from casting all those Cure Light Wounds and Cure Heavy Wounds spells on their fallen comrades. They were necessary, but I never felt the urge to play one. Perhaps because the healing spells always sounded so boring. Perhaps, because in codifying the rules for easy play and reducing life-threatening injuries to ‘hit points’, they sucked all the life-and-death drama away from healing.

D & D made healing too easy. A healer/cleric character simply called upon their deity and was instantly granted the ability to magically heal a certain number of times a day depending on the character’s level.

And yet, conversely, fantasy novels that relied only on medieval types of healing such a herbal medicine often frustrated me. They were too hard, too limited. I grew tired of willowbark tea. I craved the endless possibilities and sense of wonder that magic could bring.

So I combined the two: magical healing with a price.

 In my novels, Gate to Kandrith and Soul of Kandrith, Lance is a healer. Like a D & D cleric, his power derives from Loma, the Goddess of Mercy. His healing can do wondrous things, but his path is anything but easy. He pays a heavy price for the ability. The exact nature of the price he pays is a spoiler, but I will say the original title of book one was Sacrifice. :)

Having a healer character opened up a whole world of plot possibilities. Characters made different choices than they would have otherwise. 

 

When Lance regained his composure, he rejoined the others. They were arguing about how to free Sara—the key had been lost—and getting nowhere.

Sara listened, saying nothing. Wenda, Marcus and Esam talked over and around Sara as if she were a lump of rock. Unable to stand it, Lance interrupted Marcus’s speculation on where they might find blacksmith tools. “Sara, what do you think we should do?”

The others fell silent.

“You could leave me here,” Sara said, as if it were obvious.

Wenda flushed—the thought had obviously occurred to her.

“Never,” Lance swore vehemently.

“Then use a sword.” Sara’s expression was completely unperturbed, as if what she was suggesting was easy. Lance wished he could take it as a sign of faith in him, rather than indifference.

“Who has the sharpest blade? Marcus?” Lance asked.

Marcus handed Lance his sword.

Lance tested the edge. An axe would have been better for shearing bone, but this would have to do.

He raised the sword, then moved it down in a swift cut, severing Sara’s forearm just above the manacle.

Blood spurted everywhere, including—curse it!—into the stone mouth. Fortunately, the Dark God didn’t wake. It had lost two priests in quick succession and must be hurting. Sara watched the whole procedure calmly, neither flinching nor screaming.

“God of Death,” Marcus swore. The hardened legionnaire looked sickened as Lance handed him back his sword.

Grimly, Lance pulled Sara’s severed hand out of the shackle, then rejoined it to her wrist. “Goddess,” he prayed. Loma answered his prayer. The two pieces of flesh melted together into an arm once more.

What are some of your favourite healing scenes from fantasy novels?  

And don't forget, there's still time to enter the rafflecopter draw for a bundle of fantasy ebooks featuring healers!

Fantasy Week - Enriching the Scene

When I read fantasy I want to be immersed in a new world, one that may resemble our own slightly, but that the existence of magic has made fundamentally different. One of the things I look for in fantasy is the depth and richness of the world and I strive for the same in my own writing. Writers call this world-building, and it is more than a history. It is clothing, food, architecture, language, culture and customs, often for several different peoples or races. It is geography and biology, flora and fauna, climate and a dozen other things.

Some writers spend months inventing hundreds of years worth of history for their worlds before they set pen to paper. I don't (okay, can't) work this way. World-building is something that I layer into my story, adding details and building up through successive drafts.

Here is an example of an early draft of a scene from chapter one of Gate to Kandrith:

EARLY DRAFT:

The uncobbled side street she was running down was almost pitch-black with only the moonlight gleam of puddles to guide her.  Her slippered foot slid and the skirts of her gown trailed in muck, becoming sodden and chilly.  They clung to her legs, slowing her progress. 

She started to edge backwards, farther away from Claude and his servants.  A sanguon ran up holding a lamp, panting.  "Here, milord."

"Don't wave it in my face," Claude said irritably.  "Go look for her."

How many others were there in the dark, searching for her?  Sara struggled to remember how many had ridden with the coach.  The driver, Claude's bodyservant and one or two guards.

The lamp was easy enough to avoid.  Sara backed steadily away from the splash of yellow light and listened hard.  Another curse from Claude as he stepped in something unpleasant and over there a small splash, someone moving through a puddle.

I liked the scene, but felt the setting was too generic. It could have been any muddy alley in any fantasy city or even a historical novel. I wanted to show that my world was different and new and interesting. More subtly, I wanted to show that my main character grew up in a different culture and has been shaped by her beliefs.

NEW VERSION

Sara ran, guided only by the moonlight gleam of puddles.  The skirts of her gown trailed in muck.  The sodden material clung to her legs. 

"Sara!"

Sara tried to speed up, but her foot slipped in the mud.  She found herself slowing, her drugged body unwilling to run any farther.  The jazoria inside her whispered to stop, wait, let herself be caught.  Let Claude take her.  Anything to make the horrible, clawing need go away.

No.  She would not give in.

Sara looked around, trying to get her bearings in the dark.  Which way lay safety?  She moved farther away from Claude and stumbled upon a raised path. 

"Lady, it isn't safe, not here."  Claude's slave, Gelban, spoke this time.  "Do you know whose temple you're at?"

Temple?  Most temples were scrubbed free of mud by diligent dedicants.  Only one--

"I don't want to say His name, Lady," Gelban said.

Vez, God of Malice.  She'd entered His temple.  Sara's heart jumped as her memory supplied an image of temple courtyard full of black mud with Vez's statuary facial features rising up out of them.  She must be walking on the obscenely long, lolling tongue, about to pass through Vez's mouth into the courtyard.  Although Vez's assassin-priests had been outlawed over one hundred years ago and his worshippers driven into hiding, no one had dared pull down the God of Malice's temple.

"You don't know who might be out here in the dark," Gelban said.  "Please, come back to the carriage."

Sara tried to think.  Was Gelban right?  The dark seemed suddenly malevolent.  All types of scum were rumoured to come out at night to search the mud for the gold coins thrown by those buying a curse.  She could end up with her throat slit or sold into slavery.  In comparison, the early wedding night Claude wanted was nothing.

"Where is the little twotch?  We've lost her."  Claude swore with surprising viciousness. 

Her determination to escape Claude hardened. Ducking her head to avoid the sharp statuary teeth, Sara entered the mouth and the Temple of Vez.

Inside, her foot came down in ankle-deep muck.  The mud in the courtyard was said to be studded with sharpened stakes.  Vez only wanted worshippers who hated enough to be careless of losing a little blood.  And if they died later... the God of Malice played no favourites.

Not only is the second version considerably more creepy, but changing the setting from an anonymous alley to the Temple of Vez gave me a chance to salt little chunks of world-building into the action like diced potato in a stew. If you try to shove a whole potato’s worth of information or backstory down your reader’s throat in one lump, they may choke on it.

Similarly, the world-building needs to be integrated into the scene: my character has a reason to be thinking about something that everyone in her world grew up knowing. Nor is the information included here a mere footnote: Vez is the force behind my villain and important to the story. Going off on a tangent about history or architecture is as off-putting as adding sugar to your stew.

What are your favourite fantasy worlds?

How the Villain Stomped on My Outline

I outline.  In the world of writers, I am a plotter, not a pantser, an architect, not a gardener.  For the most part I follow my outline, though the story usually stretches and grows as I go along and new, juicy ideas are added.  I’d never really run into the well-known phenomena of a character refusing to do as I wanted—until Soul of Kandrith.

After having written book one, Gate to Kandrith, I knew my two main characters quite well.  Lance may have grumbled a bit, but neither he nor Sara gave me any serious trouble.  All was going along swimmingly until my villain, Nir, the high priest of the God of War, strode onto the scene.  He snorted with contempt at my neat little outline.  “That wouldn’t stop me,” he said, and he stomped it flat.  His actions wrenched the storyline into a much darker place than I had originally intended to go.

When I sat down to do the second draft, I made a note to myself: “Make this less dark.”  And I tried, I did, but Nir dug in his heels and refused to cooperate.  I eventually conceded that he was right, that it would be out of character for him to act the way my outline dictated.  And the darkness and peril made the storyline more compelling.  Furthermore, I came to realize that lightening the darkness too much would take away from my themes of slavery and sacrifice.  So I let it be. 

So when you reach that section, just remember it wasn’t my fault.  It was Nir’s.  Blame him.  Hate him.  And cheer when he gets taken down at the end.

 The conclusion of the Kandrith duology

Lance is a healer and wielder of slave magic, a power that demands sacrifice. He gave up his health to gain the ability to heal others, but he's powerless to cure his beloved Sara, who sacrificed her soul to save Lance and all of Kandrith. Returning her soul would negate her gift, at the cost of his life and the freedom of his homeland.

Now Sara is but a shell of the noble, spirited woman she once was. All that Lance saw and loved in her is gone, but he refuses to give up on her. Charged by his sister, the ruler of Kandrith, with a mission to encourage a budding rebellion within the aggrandizing Republic of Temboria, he leaves with Sara in tow. But not before Wenda's soulsight detects a spark within her.

Amidst the escalating dangers in hostile territory, Lance will have to risk both his beloved and his homeland in a final gambit to save them both…

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