Shahkara – Page 4

Slaying demons and other mundane chores

admin Shahkara, Taloner Trilogy, The Ghost She Killed, Urban Fantasy November 2, 2011November 20, 2011 10 Comments

“That can’t be your idea of Max!” Reece’s eyes glint in the lamplight. “I imagined him as Seeley Booth!”

My long-time mental image of my Shahkara sidekick (read: your average rich-but-tormented boy next-door) splintered into pieces and was sucked into the Bermuda Triangle. How can you compete with the Greek-god magnificence of a young David Boreanaz? I mean, Bones‘ Special Agent Seeley Booth is more than a tad too old to play my Max, but now I’m remembering him as Angel…

It’s the wind-down to our monthly What If meeting. We’ve laughed and gossiped over pizza, even critiqued a few stories. The moon’s perched high in the dark sky and it’s time for them to head home. Still, they remain chatting on my doorstep, reluctant to return to normalcy after another delicious night of spec fic. Our discussion of all things dark and fascinating bubbles over like a witch’s cauldron – and my ego feeds on the delight of Reece suggesting that my lead character is as hot as David Boreanaz.

“You mean, Boreanaz 15 years ago?” I clarify. When he was the brooding Angel, tortured vamp with a soul? Seeley Booth is still too sexy for his own good but – finally inching towards middle age and sporting a haircut that, well, really, doesn’t do a Greek God justice – he doesn’t exactly encapsulate my Max, two weeks’ shy of eighteen in the opening pages of Shahkara.

“Yeah.” Reece nods his head. “When he was younger.” It’s not surprising that Reece, our resident weapons/army/martial arts geek latched on to the image of DB. After all, he’s an avid fan of Bones and Castle and believes Nathan Fillion rocks (my hubby agrees). I rather like the idea of Max looking as hot as David Boreanaz (if he were eighteen again). When one thinks about it, there are pinches of geek inside Seeley Booth, even though he disparages “the squints” on Bones.

Reece’s comment led us to thinking about the people in our books and who they look like in relation to actors, other story characters and people from our own lives. When I create heroes and villains, it’s their personalities and the power of their stories that come alive in my head, not their physical descriptions. I don’t think any of my characters are any one person in particular, but reflect aspects of myself and my family and friends – as well as traits from every loosely-imagined villain and monster that I hid under the sheets from as a child.

Pretty much all my heroes have a little bit of the geek in them, probably inspired by My Muse (and very geeky husband), Shane. Geeks make gorgeous heroes and are highly undervalued and under-rated. After all, who doesn’t love Big Bang‘s Johnny Galecki as he lounges in bed, bare chested and no spectacles? Much to William Shatner’s surprise, Leonard Nimoy became a heart-throb to female fans everywhere after he journeyed through frontiers where no man had gone before, and are we really as compelled by MacGyver when Michael Shanks is on the same Stargate screen?

My hero Max doesn’t realise his compelling story. Taunted by his father and plagued by his mother’s and brother’s deaths, Max is as lost as Angel when his story begins. His dreams are dead and he no longer wishes to exist – until one incredible woman changes his life.

Shahkara may not be a vampire slayer, but she is a Taloner slayer.

An exiled princess on the verge of womanhood, Shahkara is smart and sassy. She wields a sword as well as any warrior and she can rip out a demon’s heart faster than you can order take-away. And despite her dark brunette looks and no cheer leaders in sight, Shahkara reflects many of Buffy’s greater qualities. They both share similar dreams, longings, fears and courage.They are both compelled to save lives and save the world – through slaying yet another demon or dark god.

Shahkara and Buffy both want that normal life they were promised at birth but there will always be another quest or apocalypse. Shahkara is now on the quest to end all quests. She needs to destroy the heart-thirsty Taloners once and for all – and it will take all her strength, all her smarts and all her training to achieve it.

Fortunately, if a hunky, smart earth boy on the side can help her achieve that goal (without him ending up a corpse), then it will be a very good way to end the day. David Boreanaz, eat your heart out.

Portal travel’s a stone’s throw away

admin Books, Links, Other Worlds, Shahkara, The Ghost She Killed October 21, 2011October 21, 2011 2 Comments

Running late, I ignore the clothes strewn across my bed and dig through the kitchen junk mail in a desperate bid to find my keys. The Quartz clock ticks You’re late and I yearn to snap my fingers and conjure up a fairy god-mother who can transport me to my preferred destination. Within seconds.

Nup. No fairy god-mothers lurking in my garden or wardrobe. Instead, I’m hoping that quantum physics will one day create real-life wormholes (or portal travel), thanks to cutting edge research in superconductors and magnetic fields. Check out this quantum levitation experiment, presented by the Tel-Aviv University’s School of Physics and Astronomy’s Super Conductivity Group at the Association of Science-Technology Centers Annual Conference at Baltimore on the weekend:

Amazing, huh?

What is a wormhole? In physics, it is a hypothetical shortcut through spacetime – a connecting point between two far-flung regions of space (or time), a by-product of Einstein’s general relativity field equation. Madeleine L’Engle illustrated the idea in her YA novel A Wrinkle in Time (devoured while I was in junior high) where a tesseract (wormhole) was able to bend the space-time continuum to create a portal from one area of space to another. Although the two locations could be some distance apart, you could make them touch if you “wrinkled up” the space between them, enabling you to travel from one point to the other in seconds.

Okay, so it’s a huge leap from using magnets and superconductors to levitate a train, and using them along with silly amounts of energy to wrinkle up space-time, but hey, that’s what fictional super-scientists are for, right?

Wormholes are already a reality in my Shahkara trilogy, where Megalio scientists have invented Caladene, a fictional superconductor to outclass all previous superconductors. Half-human, half-Taloner, Shahkara is unable to return to her secret parallel world (Gorias) after losing the spell that conjures up the Twilight Mists. Instead, she must rely on the scientists to portal her home – until they reveal they need an address. Now, Shahkara is forced to check back into Hotel Earth until she finds the ancient coordinates to her homeworld.

I have always loved reading and writing about portals. There’s something about the wormhole concept that enables it to be recycled over and over again, each time with a new slant, each time bringing it renewed popularity – from earlier films and TV series such as Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Star Trek and Sliders through to Stargate, Torchwood and the Fringe.

For now, neither wormholes nor fairy god-mothers will save me from my deadlines. I’m forced to chain my keys to my bag to ensure a fast getaway. One day – maybe – our scientists will realise this technology and then all of us can experience the magic of a wrinkle in time. It’s an idea worth savouring or at least exploring through our own writing… and I suppose it’s time to get back to it now!

PS: Here’s the inside on how quantum levitation works:

Pinch me: LJ Smith likes Shahkara

admin Authors, Books, Creativity, LJ Smith, Shahkara, Urban Fantasy, Writing Tips/Events October 20, 2011October 20, 2011 12 Comments

Have you ever had a secret you were dying to tell but didn’t know whether you could or should?

My secret for 2011 was the most delicious of my life: I entered Shahkara (my manuscript) into a competition where it was read and liked by LJ Smith. I mean, THE LJ Smith, author of the Vampire Diaries (TVD), the Secret Circle and the Night World Series. LJ was the creative force behind the modern urban fantasy vamp, way back at the dawning of the 1990s, when mobiles were nearly as big as your toaster – long before Whedon’s Buffy slayer dazzled our TVs or Meyer’s Twilight tried to rock the Earth off its axis. LJ Smith is one of my favourite authors. She creates characters that resonate within us. Her heroines are smart and sassy, her heroes sexy-as and her plots contain more twists, turns and emotional punch than a cocktail party at Las Vegas.

Life can be tough when you’re a struggling, unpublished author. You juggle full-time work with late night and early morning scribbles. You fuel yourself on coffee and chocolate, then feel guilty when yet another weekend social event forces you to choose between those you love and that story that burns inside you, begging to be let out. If a big publisher has requested your manuscript, you’d think it would settle you but as the months drag on, you wonder if they’ll ever find time to read and assess it.

Imagine my delight when Lisa (LJ Smith) emailed me personally and said she’d been sucked in by Shahkara! The fan girl inside me was delirious with delight. I felt honoured that she’d even taken the time to read my entire manuscript, but then she wrote this: “Shahkara, the book, is unique, and Shahkara, the character, is one of the most engaging strong female role models I’ve seen in a long time. This girl can handle herself! The plot is full of ingenious twists, turns and surprises, and I look forward to reading the next book in the series.” Yabba-Dabba Do! Lisa also offered valuable feedback on how to enhance my manuscript. It was back to the keyboard and I felt truly blessed.

So whenever you doubt yourself as a writer, or feel disillusioned by the passion you’ve given so much to, often without visible rewards, all you need to do is enter a competition or touch base with a fellow writer or friend. The act of entering a comp will buoy your spirits. It’s harder to lose enthusiasm when you have a few lures out on the water, waiting for that tasty bite to come in. Otherwise, put aside a night to spend with your faithful laptop and immerse yourself in your story. When you feed your passion, your confidence grows, and brings you closer to sharing your stories with readers across the world.