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I Was In Hell
Jesse Teller Author Interview
Chaste focuses on an evil god and his followers in a remote town that has been overcome with a sickness. Five strangers arrive and all their destinies take a turn. What was your inspiration for the setup of the story and how did that help you create the ending?
My inspiration was vague. I’d had a few negative experiences with churches in the past, when I was a religious man. I had the idea of a small town that had experienced the same thing, the perverting of God’s word, of His ideals and methods. The title of the book came with the inspiration of a town struggling to be pure, but unable to find it. A lot of my books are studies of an issue that I’m dealing with in my life. This was my attempt at making peace with God and church, along with a few other dark issues. And Chaste did give me peace. I think it worked out. This book gave me hope, and I hope when other people read it, they can find a path back to God, or at least a path back to purity.
There are plenty of characters in Chaste that I felt were intriguing and well-developed. Who was your favorite character to write for?
I would have to say Sob. I repressed a lot of the abuse and darkness from my childhood. When it started coming back to me, it was debilitating and random. It would come back in the middle of a conversation, with a trigger word I didn’t expect. An entire scene from my past would flash before my eyes. When things like that are happening in your everyday life, you feel mad, as if you’re trembling out of control. So I wrote Sob, a woman haunted by shreds of a past she doesn’t want to remember, a powerful woman, a proficient killer, unapologetic in action and methods, but fragile in mind, always a breath away from the horror of her past. Sob healed me. I will always love her for that.
I felt that Chaste delivers the drama so well that it flirts with the grimdark genre. Was it your intention to give the story such a dark tone?
Chaste was originally supposed to be a short story. I was 63 pages in, and barely scratching the surface of the story, when I realized I was writing something bigger. Chaste was an accidental novel. I had no idea what I was doing when I wrote the rough draft of this book. But I had just been through a lot of mind-numbing therapy, and most of me was a raw and open wound. I was not trying to write a dark book. It just kind of happened. When I wrote the rough draft, grimdark wasn’t an idea yet. This was 12 years ago. There was no such term as grimdark. I didn’t even know to call it dark fantasy. It was just a story I was writing. I entered Chaste broken, and when I left it, I was healed a bit. When you’re going through that kind of catharsis, there’s no internal editor. You literally can’t hold back. There were times when I would write a scene, stand up, back away from my computer, fight back a scream and weep openly. Things were being hammered out that there were no rational words for. I was walking a razor’s edge between reality and fantasy, able to speak about my past without talking about my past. Chaste is dark because when I wrote it, I was in Hell, and the character Cheryl dragged me out.
What is the next book that you are working on and when will it be published?
My next book is called Mestlven. It, as well, is A Tale from Perilisc. Mestlven tells the story of Sob, after she has put a face on her past, and she can go home. She has been victimized, her world shattered, and now, after Chaste, she knows it. So Sob goes back home to wreak her revenge and fight for her sanity. I went a little mad when I wrote this book. When Sob punished her abusers, she punished mine as well. So look for Mestlven. The soft release date is April 15, 2017.
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When her devout parents died, Cheryl turned her back on her god. Years of denial and self-loathing have defeated her. Her life consists of taking orders and succumbing to abuse. A group of strangers stops in Chaste for the night, but an unnamed threat is preying on the town. Tragic deaths have become more and more frequent. Cheryl wants to protect these travelers, expose the evil force, and save her fellow citizens, but she must find a way to believe in hope.
If it Bleeds, it Leads
Stealing the Sun begins in a traditional way, but then takes a turn that defies traditional fantasy story telling. What was your approach to writing this story?
The story developed organically. I started with reflections of traditional fantasy tropes (the elven maid falls in love with the mortal hero; the evil dark lord) and went from there. In some cases I deliberately twisted things (the ‘evil dark lord’ character is female and primarily interested, not in dominating the world, but in escaping from it), but in other cases my feelings about the story, my sense that there was another side to be shown, took over. Once the scene was set and a given character did something, others would react, often unwisely, and in that way they all managed to get themselves in a lot of trouble by the end of the book.
I felt that Stealing the Sun delivers the drama so well that it flirts with the grimdark genre. Was it your intention to give the story a darker tone?
If it bleeds, it leads…
In your other book, Tribulation’s War, the magic in that story was minimal and delivered believably (if magic can ever be believable) as it was in this story as well. How did you handle the magic in this story and how did it evolve as you were writing?
Most of the magic in the world of Stealing the Sun isn’t really magic but science (sort of). I wanted to look at elves, at the way that elves are traditionally portrayed (immortal, unsleeping, able to see in the dark and take sustenance from the sun, able to shapechange) and make those qualities make at least quasi-scientific sense. To be ever-young, it seems to me that a creature would need to be able to shapechange, to get rid of old, damaged cells and regenerate them. When Altir visualizes the “moving spirals and the beads of light” before he shape changes, he’s actually consciously manipulating his own DNA, although he doesn’t know that’s what he’s doing. There will be much more on shapestrength in the later books. The rune-magic of the greycloaks, on the other hand, is something I have never figured out scientifically. Basically it’s just magic, or at least psychic ability, with a good dose of nasty herb-lore mixed in.
Stealing the Sun has some interesting people that have their character flaws, but they’re still likable. How do you go about creating characters for your stories?
Characters come to me organically, without much planning involved. They seem to already exist by the time I get to them. I create a world and situations that contain conflict, and out of the conflict comes the sort of characters who fit with that world. Sometimes the characters who seemed like supporting cast end up having the strongest voice – Altir originated as a secondary character in a short story. In the next book, The Dark of the Sun, someone who didn’t get his own point of view in the first book insisted on telling his side of the story. I like characters who have different facets, who have flaws and strengths, who have a past – I’m not particularly interested in innocent coming of age characters, or one-dimensional villains, either to read about or to write.
When is the next book in the Sun Saga series due out?
The Dark of the Sun and A Red Morn Rises, the second and third books, are available now. There may be a fourth book to come.
Author Links: Website | Facebook | GoodReads
Disinherited from the throne he believes should belong to his clan, rejected by the woman he loves, estranged from his father and uncertain of his place in a war-torn world, Altir Ilanarion searches for his path. Meanwhile, his kinsmen scheme and plot to overthrow their rival and regain the throne — but all the while, the Liar’s servants lie in wait.
Stealing the Sun
Stealing the Sun by Kyri Freeman is the first book in the Sun Saga.
Altir Ilanarion is a young man from a proud family. Once, his grandsire was High King, but his eldest uncle ceded the throne to another and disinherited his heirs. Invaders now scourge their lands, killing everything in their wake, tearing down forests and laying waste to their holdings. Altir ventures into to the neighboring land of the Greycloaks, hoping to make allies against the invaders, and in the process, falls in love with the Greycloak King’s daughter.
Kovannin Ilanarion, beloved of Altir’s uncle Tiano, is the most talented craftsman and diplomat of the Western people. His greatest wish is to see his lover retake the throne of the High King for his clan. He plans to forge alliances against the High King, using both his silver tongue and his skill in crafting weapons of war.
Stealing the Sun began in a familiar way. At first, it seemed to be the story of a young man defying his father in order to save the lives of his people and win the woman he loves. But the author, Kyri Freeman, took unexpected turns with the story that defy the traditional sagas of high fantasy. The book flirts with the grimdark genre without being utterly dark and devoid of hope. The author doesn’t shy away from portraying the characters honestly. Altir and Kovannin are sympathetic protagonists, but their ingrained prejudices and ambitions often blind them to folly. That tension, along with thrilling battles and action, kept me flipping pages.
The world building here is very clever. The author does a masterful job of describing both the physical and political landscape through the characters’ eyes. It’s also obvious that the People are not human. Though their physical description is human-like, there’s an almost too-subtle clue that they are quite different. There are other beings in this world as well; the Woodfolk, and Wighten, who could be either allies or enemies, and the Blankfaces and Draugar who are bent on crushing everything in their path.
One thing I liked about the book is that magic is known, but it is mysterious and rare. The People use weapons to fight; there are no mages flinging spells into battle. The Greycloaks use runes, but they are incomprehensible to the Western people, who have no inkling of their use or meaning. The magic in this book is subtle, appearing in dreams, or manifesting during times of great need. In short, the magic is magic, and it’s handled in a way that makes it special.
There were a few things that didn’t quite work. One concept that wasn’t fully developed was the significance of “the Nine.” This is an important plot point, with both nine gods and nine worlds mentioned without any explanation. Though the People mention cruel gods, rebirth and death, that particular bit of world building is a mystery. There’s also a particular feature of the Greycloak’s keep that seems ominous and important, but wasn’t elaborated on at all. I am hoping that it’s touched on in the rest of the trilogy.
Overall, Stealing the Sun is an action-packed story, with flawed and interesting characters. It has all the intrigue, politics, romance and betrayal that fantasy readers expect, along with twists in the narrative that are entirely unexpected. I look forward to the rest of the series.
Pages: 444 | ISBN: 1499638132
