Where the hell?
My dad is not a fantasy fan. Ask him about Harry Potter and you would receive a shrug and a shake of the head? Game of Thrones? No clue. Lord of the Rings? He didn’t even make it through five minutes of the first movie. He just has no interest, which is certainly his perogative. His choice? Nonfiction, ideally podcasts or NPR; but more recently, he has gotten into reading nonfiction more and more, especially WWII oriented books. So, when I heard he was reading my first book, I was surprised and flattered.
I expected Dad would maybe make it through the first chapter before closing The Forgotten; so when he told me he was in chapter six, I was impressed. To me and anyone who would listen, Dad made no secret of the fact that he didn’t like fantasy and had actually never read anything from the genre before in his life; and he did mention how hard it was for him to get into the book and understand the genre. But he persevered. Why? Sweetly because his daughter wrote a book and he was going to read it.
Shortly, I started getting phone calls from my dad that always started with, “Kris, I’m at … I was just wondering how in the hell you came up with that?” And he was sincere. He was impressed with the depth of my characters and the range of personalities as well as the monsters like the Strygoi, changelings, and malidaemons. He couldn’t fathom what had inspired the Limnades and the Malrauk or the plot twists (as he put it). Those conversations are something I will always treasure in my memory. I was talking to my dad about something I had written and an added bonus? He was a true fan of my work. He loved it and wanted to know when the second book was coming out.
When he got The Lost, Dad sat down and read it through cover to cover. Again, he called me to ask where in the hell I had come up with things. So cool. I’ve been asked that same question incidentally by my students as well as at book signings, book talks, and most recently, a literacy event for local teachers where I was the presenter. Here is my simple answer: I have been a voracious reader—thank you, Mom—my entire life, and everything that shows up in my books are inspired by something—more than likely many things—I have read. Take for instance, the wereling. In my books, they are a race with a humanoid form and a beast form. I call them wereling because I learned somewhere that “were” is Old English (I think?) for man/human and “ling” comes from the term “changeling” which can be interpreted as a shapeshifter. I also read somewhere that according to folklore in Romania/Transylvania, if you were arrested and charged with witchcraft or possibly being a vampire, you could beat the charge by claiming to be a shapeshifter who is tasked with protecting your village from witches and vampires. I always thought that was awesome; so you find a version in my book, except the wereling are charged with protecting the people of Light from the dominions of Dark; and they do it so effectively that Merilik has them exterminiated—or tries to, at least. Also, they are the Light’s version of a changeling. You know that science principle “for everything there is an equal reaction”? (Something like that. I never was good at science.) So, in my novels, for each creature of the Light, there is a version/counterpart in the realm of Merilik, the Dark Lord.
So, the answer to my dad’s question where the hell I come up with things in my books, it’s simple: I have read, I do read, and I will continue to read.