Myth, the Universe, and Everything

I met Dylan Birtolo in Authors' Avenue at GenCon of 2006, where I was looking for novels by new authors to send off to a buddy of mine stationed in Iraq. We had a great conversation, and on the way home from the convention, I read Dylan's first novel, The Shadow Chaser. I was so engaged in the story, and in Dylan's world of shape shifters, I finished it on the plane. Since then, I've kept up with his blog (he's here as eyezofwolf), where I learned that he's also a sword-for-hire (he's a member of the Seattle Knights combat troupe), and I've had the chance to work with Dylan on a story for the Ransom anthology, which he edited. Along with his novels, his short stories are showing up in several anthologies and e-zines, from The Edge of Propinquity to the upcoming Boondocks Fantasy (DAW) and Human Tales (Dark Quest Books).

Without further ado: Dylan!

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I often get asked where I got the inspiration for my novels. Yes, I grew up on tales of werewolves, and yes I have played a lot of D&D and am familiar with other lycanthropes. I also enjoyed the White Wolf storyteller series and have played Werewolf with other races thrown in (Bastet, Gurahl, etc). And while all of these played a part, these aren’t the core inspiration - they are merely influences on the main theme. The main theme comes from what I have learned about some Native American spiritual beliefs.

Let me back up a step and talk about storytelling for a moment. I specifically mention storytelling because I think this is true whether you are writing the story, showing it, or even running a game campaign. With storytelling, one of the golden rules that I have learned and heard many times is that you should know much more about your world than you ever show to your audience. You should know things about your characters, about the world, about the situation that is currently happening, and you should know what other characters not currently in focus are thinking and doing. Putting in all of these details will ruin the story. It will lose some of the mystery and some of the magic. It also has a very high chance of boring most of your audience to tears if they do manage to slog through it.

This is a rule that I have tried to follow, with differing levels of success, in all of my stories. I also try to make sure everything has a reason and even the fantastical situations follow rules. Rules are a good thing in stories. They make fantasy more believable. It makes it so that your audience is more willing to suspend their disbelief and engage in the story. If I am continuously breaking rules for no reason, it makes the story less engaging and my audience (readers, players, etc) is going to leave.

If you read through my novels carefully, you will see trends. Each of the characters (with one or two exceptions that I will get to later) can only change into one specific animal. You also notice that each of the shifters has an animal that they get along with, even if the animal is a wild, undomesticated creature. This pattern comes from one idea that I had – what if there were people who were blessed by an Animal Spirit?

One theme I have seen in multiple Native American traditions is Animal Spirits. There is the Great Spirit who presides over everything, and then there is an Animal Spirit for each animal. This spirit is the difference between Wolf and wolf. The animals in the world are the physical embodiment of everything that the Animal Spirit represents. The traits and mannerisms that an Animal Spirit has are demonstrated through their associated animal’s behavior. My thought was to create a world where people were blessed by an individual Animal Spirit. As part of this blessing, they could take the form of the animal and could get along with any animals that were representatives of their spiritual benefactors. In short, the shifters became champions of the Animal Spirits – part animal and part human.

This led me to the idea what would happen if an individual was not blessed by an Animal Spirit, but was blessed by the Great Spirit. It seemed to reason that whoever was blessed by the Great Spirit would be an overseer of all of the animals, and as such could take the form of any and get along with all of them. And thus, my main character was born.

None of this material is explicitly spelled out in my novels. But it is all there, in subtle ways if you know what to look for. The important thing is that it gave me a set of rules to follow. And following these rules made my stories more believable and more engaging. At least, I hope it did!

Thanks, Alana for letting me ramble. I hope it was entertaining, educational, or maybe even both!

One of the things I've noticed since I got back from Greece and Turkey is that I'm feeling a detachment from my former favorite Greek deity. The first time I went, I fell in love with Ephesus (I still am a bit), and so it was natural to take Artemis at Ephesus as a patron, in some ways. I've adopted variations on her name, and on the name Kybele (the Anatolian goddess with whom Artemis merged in Ephesus), in screen names since 2001, trying to recapture the feeling of being in a city that was, once, clearly hers. Ephesus is also, notably, a city that belongs to St. John the Apostle, and though Paul preached there, it was John who lived in Ephesus, with the exception of the years he was in exile, and was eventually buried there. Many of my warm feelings about John the Apostle began at that time as well, though I had always felt some kinship with the disciple Jesus loved.

But this time, I feel as though something has shifted, and I think this is in part due to Mycenae, and in part due to Naxos. ( Read more... )

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In other news, Flames Rising has been nominated as best fan product for this year's Ennies! Since I write for them, I'm incredibly tickled, and am wishing Matt and the staff the best of luck!

There were links aplenty today: frost_light had an excellent post on writers and money, shanna_s told her readers how to help convince her publishers they should publish her fifth book in her series, and livelongnmarry has been a flurry of posts as the beginning of an auction for which the proceeds will go to supporting the continued legality of same-sex marriage in California. But other than mentioning them in passing (as tezmilleroz advised against in her tips on blogging), I don't have much in the way of commentary.

So instead, I'll offer another sneak peak into "Don't Let Go," which is going to be in an anthology available at GenCon. (Go find eyezofwolf/Dylan Birtolo if you're headed off to that convention. The anthology is going to feature some pretty neat stories!)

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So, when I said Triumphant Return, that was with the expectation that I'd actually be back online, posting on my blog, and things would get back to normal. As you may have noticed... not so much. I have, both fortunately and unfortunately, had plenty keeping me busy (one of which was playing several D&D games from the Xen'drik expeditions campaign before they expire--so it's not all hard work over here). Between sailing lessons, beach trips, the new job, and my ongoing assignments, it's been one busy July.

One little bit of news I haven't posted here: I will, unfortunately, not be making it to GenCon. Regaining Home has been delayed and won't be releasing there, either, but you can find both of the first two books, as well as several RPG supplements I've been involved with, at the WhiteSilver booth in the dealer's hall.

The other bit of news gets its own special post, which will be up in, oh, two minutes. :)