Everything Old Can Be New Again - or - Reanimating a Dead Trope
Methinks the lady doth protest too much about her nocturnal activities! Below is a wonderful blog from the lovely and talented Faith Hunter, whose new Jane Yellowrock series launches in July with SKINWALKER.
I also want to wish a happy release day to D.D. Barant for DYING BITES and Patti O'Shea for EDGE OF DAWN!
Everything Old Can Be New Again - or - Reanimating a Dead Trope.
By Faith Hunter
I’m not a necromancer, nor am I a zombie maker, nor do spend time in graveyards digging up the dead. I’m weird enough without adding any of that to my list of nightly activities! I’m a writer who wants to explore new twists on an old(ish) literary form, the urban fantasy. Most of the characters in urban fantasy are well known, some to the point of becoming tropes. In this sense, I’m using “tropes” as character types that have been so well used they are achieving their own mythos and becoming their own metaphors for an entire genre. In this case it’s vampire genre, witch genre, magic user in a modern, metropolitan genre. Urban fantasy. Natch!
The old saying that there is nothing new under the sun is true, but writers have to take the old, dead, worn out bones of existing ideas, and give them fresh skin and new forms by tossing in twists, manipulating the expected, and bending character types into the unexpected. Otherwise they won’t stand out in a genre already bloated beyond belief by the walking dead and undead tropes. Did that sound too much like varied descriptions of corpses? Hmmm. Maybe it’s just me.
To make my book SKINWALKER stand out in a crowd, I have taken the trope of the skinwalker-the non-human being who looks human, but who can change her form into any creature-and twisted it around to create a main character who has her roots in the ancient tribal myths of shape shifters, but is also innovative and singular. With these changes, Jane Yellowrock stands alone as a POV character in the genre.
Then I took the idea of vampires, gave them a unique history and their own creation myth, and viola, we have the nemeses who are both her employers and her targets. There is little that is black and white in Jane Yellowrock’s world; everything is gray and shifting and the battle of survival takes place in the midst of it all. And in SKINWALKER Jane is expected to bring down the most violent, secretive, whacked-out vamp New Orleans has ever seen.
So. How’d I do that? Make Jane stand out? Oh, it was suuuweeet!
The mythos of the skinwalker is present in almost every tribe in the world, but perhaps strongest in American Indian lore. Skinwalkers are usually dark and gory, evil creatures that kill and eat their victims. But according to the oral tradition of one Cherokee elder to whom I spoke while researching, the skinwalker was originally a good, positive, protective being who looked after the tribe, fought for it, and kept it safe. Then, something happened. The lore isn’t clear what occurred, but the skinwalker became evil, killing and eating children, young women, the beautiful. It took on a darkness that reminds me of European lore, the Grimm darkness, if you will! Then-skinwalkers disappeared.
From that history and mythos, comes Jane Yellowrock, an orphan who walked out of Appalachian Mountains, scared, scared, and with no memories at all of her past-no name, no language, no socialization skills, a feral child that, rumor says, was raised by wolves. Presumed to be about twelve years old, Jane is taken in by a children’s home where she is raised until she is eighteen, taught language, educated, and provided the skills to survive in the world. Now, ten years later, Jane hunts rogue vampires for a living, hiding her true skinwalker nature in a world where none exist, always hoping to find another being like her. But as far as she can tell, she is a singularity-one of a kind.
Learning by trial and error how to use her magic, Jane is able to keep herself alive in a dangerous world. She has discovered that if she has sufficient, viable, genetic material, she can turn into a nonhuman being. However, Jane has something inside her that isn’t mentioned in the old skinwalker lore, isn’t mentioned in any mythology in all the whole of human-and nonhuman-history. She has another soul inside with her, the soul of a Beast who is her friend, and perhaps, also her enemy. Beast has her own motives, memories, and her own agenda.
I hope you will read SKINWALKER and meet Jane Yellowrock and Beast.
Faith Hunter
www.faithhunter.net
Links to Facebook and MySpace on my website.
I also want to wish a happy release day to D.D. Barant for DYING BITES and Patti O'Shea for EDGE OF DAWN!
Everything Old Can Be New Again - or - Reanimating a Dead Trope.
By Faith Hunter
I’m not a necromancer, nor am I a zombie maker, nor do spend time in graveyards digging up the dead. I’m weird enough without adding any of that to my list of nightly activities! I’m a writer who wants to explore new twists on an old(ish) literary form, the urban fantasy. Most of the characters in urban fantasy are well known, some to the point of becoming tropes. In this sense, I’m using “tropes” as character types that have been so well used they are achieving their own mythos and becoming their own metaphors for an entire genre. In this case it’s vampire genre, witch genre, magic user in a modern, metropolitan genre. Urban fantasy. Natch!
The old saying that there is nothing new under the sun is true, but writers have to take the old, dead, worn out bones of existing ideas, and give them fresh skin and new forms by tossing in twists, manipulating the expected, and bending character types into the unexpected. Otherwise they won’t stand out in a genre already bloated beyond belief by the walking dead and undead tropes. Did that sound too much like varied descriptions of corpses? Hmmm. Maybe it’s just me.
To make my book SKINWALKER stand out in a crowd, I have taken the trope of the skinwalker-the non-human being who looks human, but who can change her form into any creature-and twisted it around to create a main character who has her roots in the ancient tribal myths of shape shifters, but is also innovative and singular. With these changes, Jane Yellowrock stands alone as a POV character in the genre.
Then I took the idea of vampires, gave them a unique history and their own creation myth, and viola, we have the nemeses who are both her employers and her targets. There is little that is black and white in Jane Yellowrock’s world; everything is gray and shifting and the battle of survival takes place in the midst of it all. And in SKINWALKER Jane is expected to bring down the most violent, secretive, whacked-out vamp New Orleans has ever seen.
So. How’d I do that? Make Jane stand out? Oh, it was suuuweeet!
The mythos of the skinwalker is present in almost every tribe in the world, but perhaps strongest in American Indian lore. Skinwalkers are usually dark and gory, evil creatures that kill and eat their victims. But according to the oral tradition of one Cherokee elder to whom I spoke while researching, the skinwalker was originally a good, positive, protective being who looked after the tribe, fought for it, and kept it safe. Then, something happened. The lore isn’t clear what occurred, but the skinwalker became evil, killing and eating children, young women, the beautiful. It took on a darkness that reminds me of European lore, the Grimm darkness, if you will! Then-skinwalkers disappeared.
From that history and mythos, comes Jane Yellowrock, an orphan who walked out of Appalachian Mountains, scared, scared, and with no memories at all of her past-no name, no language, no socialization skills, a feral child that, rumor says, was raised by wolves. Presumed to be about twelve years old, Jane is taken in by a children’s home where she is raised until she is eighteen, taught language, educated, and provided the skills to survive in the world. Now, ten years later, Jane hunts rogue vampires for a living, hiding her true skinwalker nature in a world where none exist, always hoping to find another being like her. But as far as she can tell, she is a singularity-one of a kind.
Learning by trial and error how to use her magic, Jane is able to keep herself alive in a dangerous world. She has discovered that if she has sufficient, viable, genetic material, she can turn into a nonhuman being. However, Jane has something inside her that isn’t mentioned in the old skinwalker lore, isn’t mentioned in any mythology in all the whole of human-and nonhuman-history. She has another soul inside with her, the soul of a Beast who is her friend, and perhaps, also her enemy. Beast has her own motives, memories, and her own agenda.
I hope you will read SKINWALKER and meet Jane Yellowrock and Beast.
Faith Hunter
www.faithhunter.net
Links to Facebook and MySpace on my website.