Fantasy Friday

It's really sad that the focus of my writing, urban fantasy, is the most neglected of my new scheduled posts, so I will remedy that. Though it is Saturday, I intend to do a Fantasy Friday post today. And for that guest post I would like to discuss a topic a lot of people have mentioned about my writing. Today I'd like to talk about my supernatural creatures.

I do not like reading the same old books. I want new, original and creative. I don't want someone to chew Twilight, Vampire Diaries, and Interview with a Vampire and spit out some regurgitated version of a vampire book. I'm not asking an author to reinvent the wheel, but don't go cliche, and don't give me the same books I'm sick of. A little creativity never hurt anyone. And I'm not saying I won't read vampires, because that's not the case either. I just like to read something new.

But I digress. When I began Natural Selection, one of the things that inspired me was Rachel Vincent's Soul Screamers. And what I liked most about her book was that I didn't know a lot about many of the creatures that dotted her pages. It was new and refreshing and I wanted to do that. So I sat down and thought about what creatures I could use to populate my pages. I quickly stumbled upon the demons and it wasn't too long before an epiphany about nature spirits hit me. What if all the ancient gods weren't really gods but supernatural beings. From there I looked at the ancient gods and started noticing a theme. Ancient cultures used their polytheistic gods to explain the workings of the natural world, so many of the gods and goddesses fell into the realm of nature spirits. But the ultimate nature god had to be Mother Nature, or Gaia. An idea was born.

As I pondered further on the idea (and understand the entire process happened in five minutes) I noticed that the gods with the more violent and dangerous powers tended to be men, while the nurturers and controllers of bounty were women. Men hurled lightning, called on the fury of the sea and controlled the fiery interior of the earth. The women ruled over the harvest and made plants flourish. Another idea. 

What if women gaia controlled plants and nurtured animals, while the men harnessed the more destructive forces of nature such as manipulating the weather, hurling lightning, and exploding the  earth. And what if the story centered around a pair of them? 

It was what you might call a light bulb moment. I rushed to my computer and furiously typed until the wee hours of the morning, but by the time the toothpicks were no longer sufficient to hold my eyelids open, Natural  Selection was well on it's way. It would take a couple months of struggling with internal demons and a few more epiphanies, but the bulk of Amelia's tale was born in that moment. 

You wanna know more about Amelia and gaia in general? Sorry, you're gonna have to read the book for that. ;)