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Alma Alexander is another of the authors I first met when hanging out in the Usenet group rec.arts.sf.composition. The first book of hers that I read was The Secrets of Jin-Shei, which is a stunning Chinese-inspired fantasy full of complex female characters and a richly imagined world. Her most recent release is Random, a story about shape-shifters with an interesting twist, which is my current gym reading. (Shape-shifters are near and dear to my heart at the moment, since I’m working on the final story to my skin-singer series.) Alma graciously agreed to drop by for a guest blog, which I’ll reciprocate as soon as I get a few things cleared off my plate. Alma blogs at almaalexander.org and you can follow her on Twitter as @AlmaAlexander .
* * *
Humans are fascinated by the possibility of transformation. By an ability to change our familiar shape—two legs, two arms, a walk-upright human ape with a flat face and a large skull and a particular set and style and shape and size of dentition—and turn into something different and dangerous. The Native American skinwalkers, for instance, who could turn into any animal they wanted—a physical manifestation of the great unknown, perilous and witchy. The vampires who traditionally swung a corner of that elegant cape and soared away into the night sky as bats. And, of course, there were always the were-wolves.
There were all these things, and more.
Other storytellers have already explored the Werewolf trope, taking it sideways by other Were creatures like Were-beagles and Were-ravens and Were-rats. But when I began building my own world for The Were Chronicles, I went considerably farther afield, delving into things I had never handled anywhere before. Sure, I had the other-species Were-kind populating my story, and they were fun enough to play with, I used them to build a scaffolding for a whole structured and stratified Were society in which everyone knew where their rung of the ladder was and where they belonged.
But the new ideas...were different. They came out of left field.
I envisioned, for example, an Old World and a New World to which my characters had immigrated. And in the New World, it was a whole different variant of Weres. One was the new-moon Were as opposed to the traditional full-moon Were—the kindred that Turned into their animal forms when the moon was gone rather than when it was in full-powered glow in the sky. I introduced these as something that was not exactly common, or even known about, in the Old World of my tale, the place where the traditional Were-kind existed. They were a New World thing, unknown and different, to be integrated into the trad world in strange and novel ways.
Another one came out of nowhere, for me. The Random Were. The kind that was not fixed in form, but was still ruled by the Were laws and changed according to the moon as the rest of their ilk did. That...was potentially game changing, and it had the ability to turn the Were trope, as generally practiced in fiction, inside out. It was one of the Randoms who broke the mold and did the unthinkable—changed from one human into another, when her Turn time came. And it was she who seeded the brain of another unique creature—a true shifter, one who could change at will into anything he chose—with ideas which might not otherwise have occurred to him.
These were outside manifestations, a reworking of the soft clay of an old idea into a new and perhaps unexpected shape. But more than this, I wanted to rebuild the trope from the inside out. It wasn't enough to resculpt the Were into a new form. I was more ambitious than that. I wanted to know what the clay was made of.
I developed a whole New World culture in which Weres were recognized as part of the world with not quite equal rights. In the Old World they were feared and remain hidden most of the time.
Beyond that, I took a step back into my own past, and a step deeper into the trope I was working with, and I set out to posit an actual scientific and believable genetic basis and background for the Were folk. They were who they were because of something on the level of their DNA—and I, armed with a somewhat dusty and rarely used MSc degree in Molecular Genetics, made it my business to find out what, and why. I ended up casting those iconic Werewolves, the Lycans of my world, as the scientists of my piece—although their agenda might have been...somewhat less than pure. I let the scientist Were loose on the investigating the deepest core of what the Were creature was, or could be made to become.
I wrote about a race of creatures who had always been considered to be monsters...and who were, in my story, not monsters at all, because I was writing FROM THE INSIDE OF THEIR CONSCIOUSNESS. I set out to write a story about what, from the point of view of the WERE, did it mean to be HUMAN. We, the ordinary workaday human race who had no talent to wear any other skin than the one we had been born into, WE were the monsters with whom the Were parents frightened their Were-babies to sleep at night.
I wore their skin. I am a human who Turns into a Were-creature. I am—if you like—a Were-were. I looked at the world through a pair of very different eyes than my own.
The challenge is...after reading the Were Chronicles...will you recognize it...?
* * *
Humans are fascinated by the possibility of transformation. By an ability to change our familiar shape—two legs, two arms, a walk-upright human ape with a flat face and a large skull and a particular set and style and shape and size of dentition—and turn into something different and dangerous. The Native American skinwalkers, for instance, who could turn into any animal they wanted—a physical manifestation of the great unknown, perilous and witchy. The vampires who traditionally swung a corner of that elegant cape and soared away into the night sky as bats. And, of course, there were always the were-wolves.
There were all these things, and more.
Other storytellers have already explored the Werewolf trope, taking it sideways by other Were creatures like Were-beagles and Were-ravens and Were-rats. But when I began building my own world for The Were Chronicles, I went considerably farther afield, delving into things I had never handled anywhere before. Sure, I had the other-species Were-kind populating my story, and they were fun enough to play with, I used them to build a scaffolding for a whole structured and stratified Were society in which everyone knew where their rung of the ladder was and where they belonged.
But the new ideas...were different. They came out of left field.
I envisioned, for example, an Old World and a New World to which my characters had immigrated. And in the New World, it was a whole different variant of Weres. One was the new-moon Were as opposed to the traditional full-moon Were—the kindred that Turned into their animal forms when the moon was gone rather than when it was in full-powered glow in the sky. I introduced these as something that was not exactly common, or even known about, in the Old World of my tale, the place where the traditional Were-kind existed. They were a New World thing, unknown and different, to be integrated into the trad world in strange and novel ways.
Another one came out of nowhere, for me. The Random Were. The kind that was not fixed in form, but was still ruled by the Were laws and changed according to the moon as the rest of their ilk did. That...was potentially game changing, and it had the ability to turn the Were trope, as generally practiced in fiction, inside out. It was one of the Randoms who broke the mold and did the unthinkable—changed from one human into another, when her Turn time came. And it was she who seeded the brain of another unique creature—a true shifter, one who could change at will into anything he chose—with ideas which might not otherwise have occurred to him.
These were outside manifestations, a reworking of the soft clay of an old idea into a new and perhaps unexpected shape. But more than this, I wanted to rebuild the trope from the inside out. It wasn't enough to resculpt the Were into a new form. I was more ambitious than that. I wanted to know what the clay was made of.
I developed a whole New World culture in which Weres were recognized as part of the world with not quite equal rights. In the Old World they were feared and remain hidden most of the time.
Beyond that, I took a step back into my own past, and a step deeper into the trope I was working with, and I set out to posit an actual scientific and believable genetic basis and background for the Were folk. They were who they were because of something on the level of their DNA—and I, armed with a somewhat dusty and rarely used MSc degree in Molecular Genetics, made it my business to find out what, and why. I ended up casting those iconic Werewolves, the Lycans of my world, as the scientists of my piece—although their agenda might have been...somewhat less than pure. I let the scientist Were loose on the investigating the deepest core of what the Were creature was, or could be made to become.
I wrote about a race of creatures who had always been considered to be monsters...and who were, in my story, not monsters at all, because I was writing FROM THE INSIDE OF THEIR CONSCIOUSNESS. I set out to write a story about what, from the point of view of the WERE, did it mean to be HUMAN. We, the ordinary workaday human race who had no talent to wear any other skin than the one we had been born into, WE were the monsters with whom the Were parents frightened their Were-babies to sleep at night.
I wore their skin. I am a human who Turns into a Were-creature. I am—if you like—a Were-were. I looked at the world through a pair of very different eyes than my own.
The challenge is...after reading the Were Chronicles...will you recognize it...?
