I'm pleased to have Christian A. Brown return to share with my readers. He's talking about why writing fantasy, more specifically highly speculative fiction, is fun for him. Be sure to check out his wonderful new release, Feast of Dreams.
by Christian A. Brown
Most fantasy writers get asked this
question a lot. Moving into the discussion with a stance that I am not a
fantasy writer, as much as a person who writes speculative—highly
speculative—fiction, let’s look at what it is about creating new, strange
worlds that appeals to me (and the people who love to read and live in those
worlds, too). So, why fantasy?
First off, in a Science Fiction and Fantasy
world anything can happen. I don’t mean Deus Ex
Machina kind of stuff; writers and readers should steer clear of
that, no matter the genre. I’m talking about your aliens, wizards, and dragons.
Maybe a chalice that can pervert the course of nature by raising the dead or
granting eternal youth. Incredible stuff, the stuff of which we—humans—dream.
As to why I—and others—lump Fantasy and
Science Fiction together, I propose that’s because the best fantasy is almost
identical to Science Fiction, in that you have created a believable world and a
mythos. Next, plop in some specific citizens of that realm/ starship/ whatever,
and you’ve just started your story, your narrative on life. A good story is a
good story, no matter the genre. Legions of folks are into Game of Thrones, for
example, and that’s not because it has dragons and ancient forces warring in
the shadows. Sure, some of us like those additions to the narrative. Still, I’d
safely bet that the “mainstream” appeal of that show comes from its human
element. GoT resonates with readers and fans because its people—as despicable
as some of them can be—are just as despicable, humorous and convincing as the
folks that we can find here on Earth. We can see our triumphs and failings by
watching these characters.
Besides the enjoyment of world-building, I
write fantasy because I am a child of imagination. I love magic, wonder and
mystery. I believe in the concepts of honor and heroism. In our age, I
feel that we’ve lost the ability to perceive these elements. For there are
heroes in the real world, women and men working together in a thousand
different societies toward the goal of bettering humanity. (Happy International
Women’s Day, by the way!) But we don’t talk about or recognize these people all
that much. Instead we deify the Kardashians. And with our laser focus on
superficial media, I feel that we’ve traded our reverence for what’s greater in
the universe: our sense of the divine. I fear mysterious and wicked things much
grander than ourselves. I fear Gods and monsters, even if my rational mind
denies the existence of these entities. I believe that wonder, hope and fear
are all part of the package of being human. Thus, I like to remind myself and
my readers, of darkness and light, of horror and hope.
Touching back to what I intimated with the
GoT world building bit, I’ve always believed that we see ourselves much clearer
through a different set of eyes and perspectives. From the outside looking in.
That’s why I tend to write a story from a lot of different heads, which isn’t
the popular trend in modern fiction, where everything reads first-person like a
diary entry. I understand that style, since it’s reflective of our current
social climate, and it can be quite engaging to a reader. However, it’s not
reflective of how the world actually functions, which is a tremendous battle of
voices, wishes and opinions. We are not individuals, we are a series of
individuals making up a society.
Taking everything into account: world
building, characterization, multiple viewpoints, epic themes, explorations on
love, death, war and all the meaty bits of human existence—there’s not one
reason alone that I choose to write speculative fiction that happens to have
supernatural elements. I would make a terrible anthropologist; too much
schooling involved and my attention span is…What…Who…Oh right. I’m half a
philosopher, an occasional activist, and only a therapist when I’ve had a glass
of wine and someone has asked for my candid opinion. Therefore, while I’m not
particularly good at any one of these things, I have managed to find a
vocation, and a genre—fiction/ fantasy/ weird—that I feel fits my credentials
and my desire to explore perceptions. I write to inspire. Personally, there is
nothing more inspiring than worlds like our own, worlds where we can look to the
faults and struggles of people—even though they’re imaginary—and learn from
their experience how to better ourselves.
*~*~*
Feast
of Dreams
Four
Feasts Till Darkness
Book
Two
Christian
A. Brown
Genre: Fantasy Romance
Book Description:
As King Brutus licks his wounds
and gathers new strength, two rival queens vow to destroy each other’s nations.
Lila of Eod, sliding into madness,
risks everything in the search for a powerful relic, while Queen Gloriatrix
threatens Eod with military might—including three monstrous technomagikal
warships.
Far from this clash of queens,
Morigan and the Wolf scour Alabion, hunting for the mad king’s hidden weakness.
Their quest brings them face to face with their own pasts, their dark
futures…and the Sisters Three themselves.
Unbeknownst to all, a third
thread in Geadhain’s tapestry begins to move in the wastes of Mor’Khul. There,
a father and son scavenge to survive as they travel south toward a new chapter
in Geadhain history.
Feast of Dreams Excerpt:
“My queen, it grows late.”
Queen Lila was
about to address the enormous man casting his silver-hued shadow over her as
Rowena. But no. Her sword was gone
and neck-deep in espionage with the master of the East Watch, and a hammer
named Erik was her guardian these days. What sad eyes the man had, more black
than blue—as morose as those of an owl perched over a graveyard. She could see
them glinting from beneath his darkened visor. Rarely did she spot the hard,
hidden handsomeness of the man—his black hair, broken but appealing face, and
stubble crisscrossed in scars. Come to think of it, aside from the moment his
naked, scorched self had abruptly manifested in a cindery puff within the
Chamber of Echoes some weeks ago, she hadn’t seen him without his helm. He was
hiding then from the absence of his king or another private torment. She had
been staring at him rather unabashedly for quite a spell. The sparkle of fiery
colors off the immaculate polish of his pristine armor hypnotized her. His
voice snapped her out of her trance. How quickly evening’s shroud had fallen.
“Time has escaped
us,” commented the queen.
Erik gently led
her from the bedside she attended. As they passed the hospice’s cots and floor
pallets, the hands and voices of the wounded reached for her. Erik watched the
queen’s remorseful looks and the aching way she touched the feet of certain
sufferers or the backs of weeping kin. These days she was cold and ruthless in
her judgments within the palace. She had become a steel queen to stand metal
for mettle against the Iron Queen rising in the East. In these particular
confines, however, where the faltering breath of the ailing made the air humid,
and it was thick with the stench of eucalyptus poultices and incense to mask
the rot magik would not heal, the queen’s mask cracked or was simply cast off.
Genuine pity replaced it. She had come here each day for the past fortnight since
the storm of frostfire had struck Eod. “The day of ruin,” the people called
it—when first the skies were bare and then suddenly forked with red lightning,
spitting shards of ice and arrows of flame to the earth. None of sound mind
could have prepared for that wailing apocalypse. Thousands were killed
instantly. They were boiled inside tarry craters the earthspeakers were still
working to fill or entombed in buildings that could not hold against the
storm’s wrath. The injuries were uncountable, and they were still being
reported. Those with only singed or frostbitten flesh dismissed the pettiness
of their wounds and carried on with tourniquets and grimaces. Others had to be
scraped from streets or, if mauled but living, extracted from rubble and taken
to a growing encampment of emergency sites erected near the palace. Here was
where the queen always found herself once the details of war, supply lines,
allies, enemies, and stratagems had worn her patience to a snappy disinterest.
Somehow in these miserable hospices, the queen seemed peaceful, albeit sad.
Time and again Erik made one-sided conversation
as he guarded his new charge—he never managed to say these words. You blame yourself for this or for my
kingfather’s fate. You see these sins as your own. You feel the weight and
needs of this entire nation upon yourself, and what a terrible weight that must
be to bear. You are not alone, though, my queen. As adrift as you might be, I
am here. I shall be the rock you need. I have made a promise to the great man
who speaks to us no more.
The night he had appeared so rudely at her
side, she held him and told him she could not sense the king anymore. The icy
flame of Magnus’s soul had gone as cold as a forgotten hearth.
“What does it mean? What does it all mean?”she’d
sobbed.
She was without her lover and partner in
eternity, and he was without his father. They were agonizingly alone. Only on
that night did she cry for the king and never since—as far as Erik had
witnessed. He and the queen did not speak of their grief again or further
pursue the reality that the Immortal King—missing and utterly quiet in his
queen’s mind since the battle with his mad brother in Zioch—was quite possibly
dead.
At the hospice exit, Queen Lila stopped so
suddenly that Erik almost elbowed his liege. With what Erik perceived as a
speck of wariness, she half glanced over her shoulder, and her gaze swelled
wide with fear. She was staring at something behind them. Erik looked as well
and reached a hand to his weapon. However, he saw nothing aside from the rows
of squirming sufferers moving on their bloody, sweat-soaked cots like man-size
maggots. What horrible times these were.
“Have you forgotten something?” he asked.
Queen Lila wished she could explain the hairs
that prickled on her neck or the chill of Mother Winter’s mouth that blew the
humidity from the chamber, but no one else seemed to feel it. Most of all, she
wanted to find a less hysterical explanation for the shadow—tall as a mountain,
black, and somehow bright—that hovered in the corner of her eye. She would not
turn around and look at it. She could not. She was afraid that if she opened
her mouth, she would involuntarily scream. What
do you want, shadow? Why do you haunt me? Why do you come to me in dreams?
“My queen?”
“No. I need nothing more,” she answered curtly
and moved ahead, trembling.
About
the Author
Bestselling author of the critically
acclaimed Feast of Fates, Christian A. Brown received a Kirkus star in 2014 for
the first novel in his genre-changing Four Feasts Till Darkness series. He has
appeared on Newstalk 1010, AM640, Daytime Rogers, and Get Bold Today with
LeGrande Green. He actively writes a blog about his mother’s journey with
cancer and on gender issues in the media. A lover of the weird and wonderful,
Brown considers himself an eccentric with a talent for cat-whispering.
Links:
https://www.facebook.com/ChristianAdrianBrownhttps://www.goodreads.com/author/show/8422242.Christian_A_Brown
