In my previous post, some of you may recall me making reference to my friend and fellow author Lesley Smith, who publishes her debut novel, 'The Changing of the Sun' on 7 October 2014. I'm thrilled to announce that Lesley has agreed to give away a paperback copy of her novel to one lucky reader of this blog, so if you'd like a copy, please send a message containing your email address to my Facebook page or my Twitter (a DM is fine in this instance) by the end of September. One entry will be drawn at random from those received and the winner will be notified shortly after.
On Worldbuilding
My
inner architect loves world building, it’s an ordered, logical process
which pays off if you do it well. If the foundations are strong, are
balanced, it pays off later on.
The
starting point for my whole trilogy was a solar storm. Here on Earth
we’ve had a few over the last couple of years and we know what they are
and the damage they can do. But how would an alien planet with a
technologically-inferior society survive? How would they even know what
was coming … what if someone remembered seeing the event during a future
time? What if someone the locals might think of as a deity decided to
walk in a mortal skin to lend a hand?
I
did my degree in theology and religious studies, with a year doing
Classics as well. I learned about other people’s faith even as I was
finding my own and, I think, had my gender been different or I was born
somewhere else, I would have become a child of the cloisters or a
priest. I went to Japan and was bowled away by the beauty of Shinto but
also by the balancing of religions within their society, there’s a
saying which says you’re Shinto when you’re born, Christian when you
marry and Buddhist at death. I’ve always liked that idea that you can be
whatever you want to be without needing to hedge your bets or support one
faith or another, each has its place within society and life.
My
roots of Kashinai culture came from Japan: I visited temples in Kyoto,
Shinto jinja in Sendai and Tokyo, a church in Takatsuki and the holy
city of Tenri, founding place of a New Religious Movement called
Tenrikyo.
My first sight of the real Japan actually was on the bus from Narita. It was a simple torii gate and the melting pot of religions left an indelible mark on my soul: I went further into Kamigamo Shrine than even the Emperor of Japan, I listened to the yamatonokotoba,
the ancient ritual words, walked in the womb of the earth under
Kiyomizudera and, after a spontaneous invitation by a kindly young
priest, watched a small child being named and presented to the tutelary kami.
Religion, faith and ritual, they will always find their way into my fiction.
So
why did I make my seers, and my main protagonist, blind? There are lots
of blind seers in Classical mythology, characters like Tiresias or
Odin, who lose their vision (either partially or completely) but gain
supernatural knowledge. It’s a trade off, in some ways, and while in
Japan I discovered native shamanesses called itako (巫子):
young women, usually blind, who could speak with spirits, who could act
as barriers between the world we live in and the ones beyond. They
learned scriptures by rote, they led aestic lives and had positions of
respect in their communities. Now, the vestiges are left by miko, who still do sacred dances, the last shadows of their original roles as powerful religious leaders.
When I started writing Changing,
I knew I wanted to make this idea of blind female seers, the Oracles of
Aia, an important part of the story. I knew the basics of the mythology
and, while it’s briefly mentioned in Changing and the prequel, once
upon an age before there were dozens of oracles, living amongst their
own communities and guiding them independently.
By
the time of the novel, however, the Aian Order has become strictly
institutionalised. Validity means being tested, meant living with others
in a tower away from those who they served, appearing only on the holy
days at new year when the sisterhood would walk a prescribed route
through the city. The last oracle to refuse to come to the capital, to
the city of the Disembodied Goddess, met an unpleasant fate because the
current High Oracle can’t face the idea that, one day, she must pass the
mantle on.
Changing
is about stepping up when you want to run away, about speaking when
everyone wants you to be silent. The role of an oracle is never an easy
path, there will always be people who either want to doubt or can’t face
the truth, but if enough people work together and have faith, then they
might just be able to save themselves from extinction. The Kashinai
made a leap of faith, most of them anyway, and it’s going to ripple down
through their history and the second and third books in the trilogy.
