Book Feature and Guest Post: Dark Innocence by Rahima Warren

Evoking a FANTASY World

When reading a fantasy set in a different (non-historical) world or time, I find it jarring if the characters’ names are old familiar ones from our everyday reality. Why would people in a strange time/place have names like Steven or Julia? Also, why would they use the same words to refer to time or distance that we do? Convenient for the writer perhaps, but too familiar for me as a reader.

TIME AND DISTANCE:
In my fantasy trilogy, The Star-Seer’s Prophecy, I tried to evoke a different world in subtle ways. For example, I avoid using our familiar measures of time. Instead of “minute,” I use “moment.” Instead of “week,” I use “quarter-moon.” Many cultures measure time by that clock in the sky, the Moon. For distance, I just referred to how many days a trip took.
And I had fun making up names and words to help evoke a different world. I used two methods for creating these new words: listening/intuition, and research.

LISTENING:
For most of my characters’ name, I start by ‘listening’ for a name, using my intuition. Sometimes, that’s it. I get it on the first try, like Zhovanya as the name of the Goddess in my trilogy. For others, I play around with the sound of the name until it fits the character. And for some, the name evolves as I get to know the character better. For example, originally Kyr’s name was Arik (which I believe relates to an old Nordic word for eagle). Somehow, I didn’t like the hard ‘k’ as the last sound of his name, so I changed it to Kyr (“keer” like “peer”), which to me sounds like the high, lonely cry of a hawk or eagle, and suits his character.
Over time, I noticed that there was a pattern in the way I was naming men vs. women, and changed a few names to fit that pattern, though there are some exceptions. You might check out the Cast of Characters (in Book Extras) on my website, and see if you can detect the pattern. I also ‘listened’ for the magical commands used by the Warrior-Mage, Rajani; for the names of magical potions; and for the sacred chants. (See the Glossary in Book Extras.)

RESEARCH:
In the case of the evil sorcerer-king called the Soul-Drinker, I found his name through researching the roots of words in the Dictionary of Word Origins by John Ayto. The Soul-Drinker’s name is Dauthaz, which comes from the Old English and Germanic roots of the word ‘death.’
This is also how I created the name of the land where the story takes place, and the terms used at the Sanctuary. The land is named Khailaz, which is a prehistoric Germanic word, ancestor of our word, ‘whole.’ Adding the suffix –itha to khailaz produced khailitha, the root of our words, ‘health’ and ‘heal.’
From this, I made up the words kailitha (divine healing energy); Kailithana (a priestess-healer); Kailithara (healing work of the Kailithana); Kailithos (one who is undergoing the Kailithara); and Kailithama (sacred chamber in which the Kailithana works with the Kailithos).
I don’t recall exactly how I tracked down the roots from which I constructed Aithané (Listener, Confessor), Phanaithos (Speaker, Divulger), or Phanaithara (Divulgence, Confession). I believe they come from Greek roots meaning to listen, and to speak.
A few other words, I just made up. For example, I derived zhan (life force energy) from Zhovanya.
Now, admittedly, I am not Tolkien, creating whole languages, and races of fantastic creatures. My focus is more on the inner world and healing ordeal of my hero, Kyr, than on detailed world-making. However, I did do my best to evoke a different place/time by creating new words and names, and avoiding overly familiar names and terms.

WHAT ABOUT YOU?
As a reader, which do you prefer: familiar names and terms; or new and different ones?
As a writer, what is your approach to evoking a different world?

Tour Notes

This week you can grab the first book in the Star-Seer’s Prophecy Trilogy for just 99 cents. That’s right Dark Innocence is marked way, way down, giving you the chance to explore this thought-provoking fantasy series for yourself. Get your copy at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or iBooks today!

You can continue the saga with the newly released sequel Fierce Blessings.

Oh, and don’t forget to enter our giveaway for your chance to win an autographed copy of Fierce Blessings or a Star-Seer’s Prophecy t-shirt. We have a total of 4 prizes for 4 lucky winners, hooray! Enter the giveaway right here: www.novelpublicity.com/dark-innocence

About Dark Innocence: In an ancient world of blood sorcery and healing magic, the Soul-Drinker, a vicious necromancer-king, is draining the life from the souls of the people and of the earth itself. Worse yet, he has banished the land's rightful Goddess, and disrupted the Sacred Balance, sending the mortal and divine realms whirling toward destruction.
The only hope for salvation is a youth named Kyr, born and raised as one of the Soul-Drinker's blindly obedient slaves. Kyr knows only the pain, evil and cruelty of the Soul-Drinker's hell--and nothing of the Star-Seer's Prophecy that declares him to be the long-sought Liberator.
Rescued by strangers, Kyr embarks on a bewildering journey into a bizarre new life, where kindness and love are real. If he is to fulfill his destiny, he must battle his inner demons and fight to find his buried capacities for compassion and courage. Will he be able to surrender the inner ice that has been his soul's only protection in time to save the world from disaster?

Again, you can grab your copy for just 99 cents at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or iBooks as part of this special event!

I am reading new words

I had the pleasure to indulge in reading some more of The Cat Who books the past few days. The fact that I should rather have been writing is a long story, which I won't bore you with.

As I was reading The Cat Who Went up the Creek, I came realise once again how rich the vocabulary of the author is. Words that I had to look up purely because they are not used some much anymore. Or perhaps not by people I know or come into contact with on a daily basis.

While I could look them up online, I went to my trusty Oxford Dictionary and Thesaurus first. I have to mention here that the book is on my desk within immediate reach, along with one or two other language references. To my surprise it did not have the first word on my list. Plan B. I went in search of my 1982 edition of the Oxford Concise Dictionary in our library at home. And not only was the first word in there, all the others were too. I do like to expand my vocabulary (English is my second language) but my next thought would be where I could use my new words.

In my fantasy series, The Nations of Peace, my characters have a more formal style of speech making it an opportunity to share at least some of my new words. In my daily life, I am sad to say it would make people think that I am stuck up or pretentious to use words that they have never heard of. Nor would they be able to find their meaning due to unfamiliarity with their spelling. There are exceptions of course, but still it saddens me that so few people of my personal acquaintance read books, printed or electronic. How are we ever going to evolve as a species if our level of literacy are limited to the incomprehensible characters on mobile phone messages? I have even seen that being done by authors on Facebook. That in itself is a deadly sin in my book.

My new words (thank you, Lilian Jackson Braun) are ailurophobe, badinage, rhinitis, nonagenarian, sylvan, sepulchral, Falernum, iambic and propitious.

If you come across a word in a book that you are not familiar with, do you look it up, or do you ignore it?

Guest Post: Writing’s not for Cissies by Richard Beynon

Writing is tough. In fact, I don’t know of any activity that is more difficult than writing. I know this is not so for every writer. There are some gifted individuals, as disparate as Joyce Carol Oates on the one hand, and Nora Roberts on the other, who write seemingly without effort, turning out vast numbers of books and, even more impressively, vast numbers of pages a day.

Nora Roberts is famous for publishing, on a quite routine basis, some ten novels a year. She is loved by her readers, and despised by the critics. Joyce Carol Oates, loved by both critics and readers, in her prime wrote forty five pages a day.

These are the outliers. Speaking for myself, and for many writers, both published and unpublished, I know that the process of developing story that is both rich and inevitable is just about as exhausting as anything can be.

And yet, we persist, because the personal rewards are so great – and the lure of professional, not to say, financial, success, as distant as it may sometimes seem, so enticing.

I’d like to dwell on one particular personal reward for a moment.

A curious phenomenon has been playing itself out in the US for some years now, which a couple of observers have started drawing attention to. On the one hand, talk therapy has been in decline for a decade or two. Woody Allen might, famously, have consulted a therapist five times a week for decades – but people like him are in a shrinking minority.

At the same time, writing schools, both academic and non-academic, writing retreats, short writing courses and online writing programmes have flourished as never before.

Everyone and her mother is writing a memoir, or thinking of writing a novel, or secretly has written not just a novel, but a trilogy!

Surely there’s a connection somewhere here? Less talk therapy, more writing. It’s merely a correlation at present, but I’m waiting for the research that shows a causal connection.

Because writing fiction is therapy, even if what we write is the airiest possible piece of romantic froth. To write it demands that we plumb our own experience, and our own feelings and, yes, even our own traumas. Romance in life is never trivial, although romance in fiction is so easily – and so wrongly – dismissed as meaningless nonsense.

Of course, that’s why writing’s difficult: because we have to drill deep to the emotions that drive the fiction. And that process of finding within ourselves the wellsprings of both joy and despair will always leave us wrung out.

Which doesn’t answer the conundrum posed by people like Roberts and Oates – but it does explain, to my satisfaction, why a morning’s brainstorm leaves me beached and panting for the rest of the day.

About the Author

Richard Beynon is an award-winning film and television scriptwriter with a long and accomplished career in the industry. He, together with novelist Jo-Anne Richards, run Allaboutwriting which teaches creative writing face to face in Johannesburg and Cape Town, as well as online – and mentors writers through the process of writing fiction, non-fiction and screenplays. Richard is currently cruising the canals of England, on his narrowboat Patience. Read about it here.

Tips, Tricks and Tales: Infographics for Authors

You can learn more about infographics for authors from TrainingAuthors.com

Book Review (& Tour): Antique Magic by Eileen Harris

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Linzé: I reviewed the first book in the series. Keep an eye out for reviews on the next ones.

It is a fact that I have mentioned on several occasions: I am a huge fan of the amateur sleuth mystery genre, and I have found another author to add to my to-read list.

I volunteered to review the Alicia Trent series written by Eileen Harris, and what a find that turned out to be. The first book, Antique Magic, introduces the series and the main character, Alicia, aka Ali to the reader. I fell in love with Ali, and her partner Barry, almost from the get go. Together they own an antique's store and while I am no collector, the passion the characters show for their vocation could almost convince anyone to start up the hobby.

Antiques come with histories, good or bad, and invariably some mystery will be attached to those histories making for a good background to the series. I like Ali's persistence and enthusiasm to get to the bottom of the mystery she is investigating. Barry is a good supporting character to provide the sidekick role in the series.

The reader are drawn into the details as Ali digs deeper into the mystery and murder that results as the story unfolds. There is a little romance happening, which adds to the realness of the main character, while other characters are depicted in a likeable and realistic way, each with their own uniqueness.

The magic component to the story was unusual, but not overwhelmingly in your face. Ali gets a clue or two from the magical items, but the mystery does not depend on this alone. A definite point in the author's favour.

Like all good mysteries the truth is well concealed, but could be detected by the reader who pays very close attention to the story, and not only to the clues. Even if you are not a sleuth, the story is very enjoyable and the aha! moment not so much of a surprise that it cannot be believed.

Antique Magic earns a well deserved four stars for the first book in a series.

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