16495--Mythadventures in Writing

I've been involved in a long-term relationship with a muse.  We've had some entertaining years together, mostly spent bouncing writing ideas against my brain to see what can stick and take root to grow into something worth reading.  The WIP hogging the spotlight lately has been Child of Fire and Blood (an excerpt available to check out on the THEOBROMA page).  As in the CITY OF MAGICK series, the books in the THEOBROMA series will be rife with content influenced by myth and magic.  Despite the shared universe connections, the THEOBROMA series will combine the myth and magic heavily with science fiction.  What would possess me to do such a thing?  Oh, right...muse.

OK, on top of the other influences of my early years, I spent much of my childhood lost in books.  Really, I was reading everything I could get hold of, but it was mythologies (old stuff) and legends and comic books (modern mythology) that I really loved.  Science and history are cool, but I love having a good plot to go with my absorption of facts.  I love getting to know the "why" behind the "what" of things.  Knowing that the ancient Greeks studied medicine is one thing, but reading about Prometheus and the specific reference to his liver being eaten and regenerating daily is fascinating to me because it tells me that they knew that the liver, unlike the other organs, can regrow itself to full size if part of it is removed.  That makes me want to know what else they knew and how they knew it.  It makes me study their many stories and those of other cultures with a greater eye to details like that.

One of the obvious bits from the excerpt on the other page is that Coyote, the irrepressible trickster, has worked his way into another of my tales.  He is a chaotic agent of change.  He's pushy and self-centered, but he's hard to hate for it.  I don't know that his influence in the creation of one of my favorite cartoon characters (Wile E. Coyote, of course) doesn't play some part in my loving tolerance for him.  Other immortals will be joining the central characters, but most of them aren't likely to fare as well as Coyote. 

As with the Trickster, I carry a grudging respect for war.  War is expensive in many ways and we reflexively hate it, but there's a flip side to it that makes it a valuable agent of change.  It has proven to be inspirational, resulting in tremendous inventiveness and not just for destruction.  With centuries of peace, humans seem to find motivation toward little else.  With assertiveness and aggression, the Roman empire produced far more of note than Switzerland and Tahiti combined.  On top of all that, several bright minds have shown us that the waging of war is an art, potent when properly applied.  Some of the uses and the art of war (with much appreciated input from Sun Tzu) will play significant parts in the THEOBROMA series.

So let's see, we've got myth, magic, science, immortals and war woven together by drama and adventure.  Well, it's a start.  The muse and I are always finding new ways to twist this whole thing, so with any luck at least a few of you will stay as interested in the whole thing as I have.

Thanks for the visit.  We'll chat again soon.