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Black Jewels: Introduction
Jun. 24th, 2015 04:25 pm So I opened up the omnibus edition of the Black Jewels trilogy, and what do you know, there's the article I remembered reading before.
Text follows. If it's in bold, it's Anne Bishop; if it's not, it's me.
What can I say about a story that has been a part of my life for more than a decade? What can I say about characters who became people I cared about--and still do? Perhaps the best thing is to answer the question I'm most often asked: "How did you come up with this story and these characters?"
The answer is both complex and simple. I asked, what if?
What if a culture was based on the dark side of fantasy? What kind of morality would it have? What kind of code of honor? What protocols would develop to protect the weaker from the stronger? What if it was a culture that was elegant in its darkness and had tenderness as well as temper, passion as well as violence? What if the males were aggressive, intelligent, passionate, sensual--warriors with a veneer of the civilized? What if the female was the dominant gender and the males served, so that the Nurturer controlled the Warrior? What if some of the social and sexual mores that had applied to females in our world were applied to the males in this world? How would they act? How would they live? Who would they be?
From these wonderings, among others, a three-layered place called the Realms and a people called the Blood slowly emerged. For a while, I was content with making up scenarios and playing them out in my head to see how the characters that were taking shape reacted to different situations. I had fun developing the different races--the unicorns and the rest of the kindred, the Dea al Mon, the Eyriens and others. I had fun with the characters--Daemon, with his cold elegance and his passion for Jaenelle; Lucivar, with his earthy approach to life and those glorious wings, Ladvarian, who was the first of the kindred to appear; and Jaenelle, with her immense power and emotional scars.
Then, one day, came another what if?: If the survival of the Blood's culture depends on dancing on the knife edge of trust, what happens if it goes wrong?
I didn't have an answer, so I continued to play with the puzzle pieces of this world--until the High Lord showed up one day, a man with power that was feared, a past that held regrets, and the hard-won wisdom that comes from experience. Suddenly all the pieces clicked into place. I had a father and two estranged sons whose lives were tangled with two greedy, ambitious High Priestesses. I had a world gone wrong and a culture spiraling toward destruction. And I had a dream that, when made flesh, changed the lives of those three men and, by doing so, changed everything.
I had a story about love and betrayal, magic and mystery, honor and passion...and the price that is paid for a dream. I had the story you now hold in your hands.
Enter the world of the Blood.
Welcome to The Black Jewels Trilogy.
Hm. I remembered--it's kind of hard to forget--the magical gender essentialism that the Blood cultures turn on, but I didn't remember the more prosaic gender essentialism in her too-bedrock-to-acknowledge association of female with "the Nurturer," even as she talks about playing around with gender tropes. It's not inaccurate to say that Jaenelle changed everything--well, it is and it isn't, which I'll go into later--and it's inarguably accurate to say that she changed the lives of the three other characters Bishop names, but insofar as she did change everything, did she do so by changing the lives of those characters? I don't think so, but, again, I'll go into that later. When I've gotten far enough to expect a reader of this blog who hasn't read the books to recognize the names.
That was the introduction. Next time, I'll lay out the magical and cultural ground rules for the series. Oh, I'm calling it a "series" rather than a "trilogy" because, from the vantage point from which I'm writing this, there are seven novels, and two books of short stories. The omnibus edition I'm working with here comprises the initial trilogy, but I'm not planning on stopping when I come to the end of it.
Text follows. If it's in bold, it's Anne Bishop; if it's not, it's me.
What can I say about a story that has been a part of my life for more than a decade? What can I say about characters who became people I cared about--and still do? Perhaps the best thing is to answer the question I'm most often asked: "How did you come up with this story and these characters?"
The answer is both complex and simple. I asked, what if?
What if a culture was based on the dark side of fantasy? What kind of morality would it have? What kind of code of honor? What protocols would develop to protect the weaker from the stronger? What if it was a culture that was elegant in its darkness and had tenderness as well as temper, passion as well as violence? What if the males were aggressive, intelligent, passionate, sensual--warriors with a veneer of the civilized? What if the female was the dominant gender and the males served, so that the Nurturer controlled the Warrior? What if some of the social and sexual mores that had applied to females in our world were applied to the males in this world? How would they act? How would they live? Who would they be?
From these wonderings, among others, a three-layered place called the Realms and a people called the Blood slowly emerged. For a while, I was content with making up scenarios and playing them out in my head to see how the characters that were taking shape reacted to different situations. I had fun developing the different races--the unicorns and the rest of the kindred, the Dea al Mon, the Eyriens and others. I had fun with the characters--Daemon, with his cold elegance and his passion for Jaenelle; Lucivar, with his earthy approach to life and those glorious wings, Ladvarian, who was the first of the kindred to appear; and Jaenelle, with her immense power and emotional scars.
Then, one day, came another what if?: If the survival of the Blood's culture depends on dancing on the knife edge of trust, what happens if it goes wrong?
I didn't have an answer, so I continued to play with the puzzle pieces of this world--until the High Lord showed up one day, a man with power that was feared, a past that held regrets, and the hard-won wisdom that comes from experience. Suddenly all the pieces clicked into place. I had a father and two estranged sons whose lives were tangled with two greedy, ambitious High Priestesses. I had a world gone wrong and a culture spiraling toward destruction. And I had a dream that, when made flesh, changed the lives of those three men and, by doing so, changed everything.
I had a story about love and betrayal, magic and mystery, honor and passion...and the price that is paid for a dream. I had the story you now hold in your hands.
Enter the world of the Blood.
Welcome to The Black Jewels Trilogy.
Hm. I remembered--it's kind of hard to forget--the magical gender essentialism that the Blood cultures turn on, but I didn't remember the more prosaic gender essentialism in her too-bedrock-to-acknowledge association of female with "the Nurturer," even as she talks about playing around with gender tropes. It's not inaccurate to say that Jaenelle changed everything--well, it is and it isn't, which I'll go into later--and it's inarguably accurate to say that she changed the lives of the three other characters Bishop names, but insofar as she did change everything, did she do so by changing the lives of those characters? I don't think so, but, again, I'll go into that later. When I've gotten far enough to expect a reader of this blog who hasn't read the books to recognize the names.
That was the introduction. Next time, I'll lay out the magical and cultural ground rules for the series. Oh, I'm calling it a "series" rather than a "trilogy" because, from the vantage point from which I'm writing this, there are seven novels, and two books of short stories. The omnibus edition I'm working with here comprises the initial trilogy, but I'm not planning on stopping when I come to the end of it.
