If you’re a writer, you’re a reader—such is the way of things. When reading, we pick up the habits and tendencies of whomever we occupy our minds with. They inevitably influence us, whether consciously or not.
During my younger years, fantasy was my go-to—my only one. I wanted to escape the mundane, and enter into a world all its own. I loved Sanderson’s Mistborn series (I’m rereading era 2 now, in fact). His solid visions of powerful heroes with out-of-this world abilities, facing seemingly unconquerable enemies, coloured my imagination heroic. In turn, my earlier works (and when I say early, I mean I started writing when I was ten years old) featured a black and white heroism, where the good guy had to acquire a specific skill set to defeat a foe who was intrinsically linked to them. It was the ultimate formula for fun and engaging reading to me for a very long time.
During my university years, I became conscious of race and intersectional feminism, all while the Fees Must Fall movement in
South Africa was going on, where students demanded fairer fees for tertiary education. I’d never thought on how my race affected my life. I just accepted my skin colour as a pigment, but through study and listening to the stories of other people of colour, I actualised the fact that my skin was more than a covering for my muscle and bone. Thus, the book I wrote during my university years, which took me four years to complete, Alchemic Angels, was rooted in race politics. Black people had different powers to white people—psychic abilities versus arcane spellcasting prowess—and there were elements of past slavery in it as well. It was no longer the black and white hero versus villain, but had social structures within it as well, which the villains expertly used to their advantage. It was more nuanced, but still a very rough fantasy novel of 150,000 words.
For my age, and where I was at in life, it was damn good, though I still made all the amateur mistakes: too many characters; overly detailed fight scenes; lore that didn’t follow on naturally; big chunks of descriptions, and the like. I vowed to rewrite it someday as a trilogy, more easily digestible with a more concrete magic system, with racial elements present, but not dominating the story, and being so heavy-handed. During this period, I was still obsessed with fantasy, like Michael Grant’s Gone series, and the Nevernight series with its rich lore and long roster of characters.
Through pure chance, I read the book Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice. This launched me into a new era in my writing life. I learned about prose, rich and wet. Her stories had no dashing heroes (I in fact grew to hate Louis, Lestat, and Claudia—especially Lestat), but characters with emotional upheaval. There was no action in the physical sense, but vast action emotionally. I was moved by the writing, and invested time into the series due to the beauty and flow of the words and rich descriptions of the scenery and emotions of the characters, no matter how contrived they sometimes felt. I mean, sure Louis suffered, as did Claudia, but they were ultimately serial killers. From there, I was on the precipice of learning the true meaning of having a rich internal world for my characters, truly humanising them, whether human or not.
Then, I met (through her work, The Song of Achilles and Circe) Madeline Miller. She enchanted me with her lyrical prose. She sang to me, plucking harp strings, and heartstrings, with the love Achilles had for Patroclus, and how the pride of the former led to the lovers’ doom. Circe, the witch, went from shy nymph to powerful witch all on her own, facing the world alone, on her island of solitude. She went through the harshness and unfairness of it all, and came out on the other side stronger. The action in these books came from deep within, each word, each letter, was a move toward depth within the characters. I discovered that a novel could delve deeper into a character, all the way into the heart.
From thereon in, I moved onto Charlotte and Emily Bronte’s works: Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. I’d heard of the much maligned purple prose, but upon reading these novels, fell deeply in love with purple, heliotrope, magenta, lavender, and all other hues of prose. They showed me heroism in its most mundane form, with characters who weathered the storms of life with their hearts in the thick of the tempests.
It was at around about this time I read Carmilla by Sheridan le Fanu, and Dracula by Bram Stoker. I noticed a trend in vampire stories, of the narration being in the form of diary entries or interviews. It fascinated me, this new mode of storytelling. It was then that I had the idea for Third Time’s the Charm, a novel featuring vampires as the main villains, where the main character keeps a diary, and also finds other diaries that help him piece together the mysterious of Carpathian (yes, a reference to Dracula) Keep. The abysmal Keep was based on Wuthering Heights itself, in its dreary (and somewhat abusive) nature. I used elements of Dracula, Carmilla, and Wuthering Heights, all encircled in a fantasy world mirroring 1800s England in every way, except for the inclusion of witches, wizards, faeries, fae, and sundry mythological beings. From Third Time’s the Charm sprung the entire series, called The Kingdom of Ura. I continued in the line of the gothic, with its second instalment, Hounded, about a werewolf which originated from the most uncanny and tragic places.
My love of classics was thus born, and I dwelt into Oscar Wilde, who painted a beautiful tapestry with the Picture of Dorian Gray, upon which my third novel, In Everything but Beauty was born, with its deep dive into the year 1900, and what the turn of the millennium meant. It went deep into the beauty of prose, the mode of the time, and how vanity is arguably the ultimate evil, as it is evil for no other reason other than to reproduce itself.
The fourth instalment, Grimm, was pure gothic imagination, creepy town, dark spirits, daemons and all. This novel explored the ties of family in a very dark and sombre (one might also say, grim) manner.
The fifth novel, Monstrous featured my take on Dr Frankenstein and Dr Henry Jekyll, as two short stories among four, the other two following similar themes of monstrosities—the other two being an ungodly snow storm, and the monster of taxation to the point of death by overworking in a mine (plus a chimera).
The sixth novel, the Art of Death has Faust himself as the main villain, and explores the theme of corruption and power, much like the work it is based on. As the title implies, its primary motif is death, what one does to avoid it, to obtain immortality by all means necessary, and how one accepts the final sleep as being as natural and integral as living.
The final novel in the series, titled Heavy is the Head, is a culmination of all the loose threads of prior entries into the series, along with a threat that could unspool and reshape the entirety of the Kingdom of Ura, and how our heroes must act in body, mind, and spirit, to save their kingdom.
Parallel to the gothic Kingdom of Ura series’ influences, I read Virginia Woolf’s The Voyage Out and Jacob’s Room, along with my umpteenth reading of Jane Eyre. From this was birthed my historical romance novel The Tides that Bind, which features three protagonists: Jonathan, Lisa, and Casper—all hopelessly in love with each other. The story not only details their relationship with each other, but also with themselves, while Jonathan works aboard the ship The Swan, while Lisa works on the main land in various job positions, and Casper travels around the world and generally behaves irresponsibly. They each go on their own journeys of discovery not only of the self, but of others, as they meet people along their way that are the heroes of their own stories. The Tides that Bind was originally a fatuous thing, where my mind wandered to when The Kingdom of Ura was stuck, but I’ve grown to love it, and nurture it, along with its very extensive cast of characters from all around the world.
These books and authors shaped me to be the author that I am today, releasing the work that I do. I have no doubt that new material will change me even more, and that I’ll evolve and grow (I already have an idea for a horror novel).
Despite being impressed upon a page in idle ink, words are not static. They move in the same rhythm as what we do. I often wonder who my next influence might come from, whether to actively chase it or let it come to me naturally. Regardless of where they might be delivered from, I do know that they will push, prod, cajole and pave the way for my continued growth as a weaver of stories.
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