*The lights focus on two people sitting on a stage. The
audience cheers as a theme to Phantom of the Opera plays. There is a table
decorated with a crystal ball, a pair of vampire fangs, and a stake. *
Hi, Nathan. Welcome to Trip the Eclipse. First of all could you tell us a little about
your novels?
*Looks around for a moment, digging on the scene and
absently teasing one of his lip rings before smirking over at you* Dig the
scene! *sits forward* My novels... my novels... *clucks tongue* Well, I suppose
it all funnels from the Crimson Shadow series. I started the first book--though
it was never planned to become what it did--about 12 years ago, and while that
story was coming into being I began to create a world of supernatural
creatures; featuring various species of vampires, a new approach on
werewolves/shapeshifters (called "therions"), elves, and other such
monsters all set in the here-and-now Earth. A lot of these were modified from
pre-existing legends that I'd come across in my research, but I like to think
that all the different species--called "mythos"--are unique in some
way or another. Nearly nine years ago I started dating Megan J. Parker (a
fellow author and my future wife), and we began to combine our efforts in
creating and polishing the details of the mythos universe. Since then,
everything--novels, short stories, and even comic book, television, and movie
scripts we've written--have been set in this universe.
My first series, the Crimson Shadow series focuses on the
young tortured vampire, Xander Stryker, and his journey into the world of
mythos as a "bounty hunter" (for lack of a better word) while he
tries to juggle the chaos of his new life and a growing romance with his
childhood friend and powerful witch, Estella Esash.
*Pauses to listen to the music for a moment, smiling* My
other series--the "Death Metal" books--centers on an up-and-coming
heavy metal band whose lead-singer, Bekka, is possessed by a slew of
auras/"demons" that have escaped persecution from the mythos universe
equivalent of the afterlife. While these entities mean Bekka no harm--they're
just looking for a safe place to stay, you see--the "other side"
isn't happy about losing their own, and they begin sending their own over to Earth
in an attempt to retrieve them. Fortunately for Bekka, her new
"friends" make her very hard to catch and even harder to kill, and
her bandmates aren't exactly useless either. With a therion lead-guitarist, a
magic-using bassist, a vampire drummer, and an all-too-human-but-angry-as-hell
rhythm guitarist, Bekka's far from being on her own.
Congratulations of your future marriage. I always enjoy
hearing about two writers who collaborate on projects. so, tell me, have there
been any differences in opinion on how you want mythos to work or how you want
a story to go?
Many thanks for the congratulations ^_^
As for our collaborations and any conflicts of opinion
therein, there haven't really been any, actually. The mythology element of our
work is stemmed from mutual research, so if we're delving into the
traits/abilities of various vampires from different cultures we tend to combine
over choosing one element over the other.
For example, we were researching European vampire lore at
one time (a great deal of focus was in Romanian mythology, but we were dabbling
across the board) and we came across two different myths that we both felt
quite partial to. When all was said and done, we had a series of combined
traits that included a "powerhouse" vampire that killed for sheer
pleasure, was strong enough to hurl grown men to the tops of the tallest trees
to impale them on branches or break through the sides of buildings, being
capable of shape-shifting on a near-limitless basis, having two hearts that
BOTH needed to be destroyed to successfully kill it, and control of the weather
and eclipses/lunar cycles. Rather than arguing over which of these legends
sounded more appropriate, we began to look for where the traits overlapped and
built a foundation on the similarities--strength, brutality, narcissism,
etc--and chose what we felt would make this creature what we needed it to be.
Because our mythology is set in the "real" world, taking into account
the theories of physics and anatomy and whatnot that we're accustomed to, we
tweaked certain elements to not contradict the boundaries that we'd set and, lo
and behold, created one of the vampire sub-species: the varcol; a shapeshifting
breed of "perfect" life-feeder (able to spontaneously sprout wings or
modify either its whole body or certain sections--claws, feet, eyes, etc--to
achieve a desired effect--that is incredibly difficult to kill (even by mythos
standards) and has heightened speed, reflexes, and strength as well as 4-to-5
times the psychic/telekinetic impact of a standard auric (psychic) vampire.
In many ways all of our creatures have come about in some
way or another. In other cases, one of us might turn to the other and say
"You know what would be REALLY cool..." and then we move on to figure
out how to make an idea work.
When it comes to our stories, however, there are certainly
moments when our varying interests make us want to do our own thing, but, on
those occasions, that's exactly what we do. Though they're all set in the same
universe, Crimson Shadow and Death Metal are my own personal pieces, where the
Scarlet Night series as well as some future titles that are in the works are
totally Meg's. We DO have the upcoming "Shattered" trilogy, a YA
series set in the mythos world, that will be a joint effort, but not all
stories that exist in the mythos universe are a combined effort.
That's fascinating. I'm pretty interested in the mythology
of creatures in different cultures as well. Vampires are one of my favorites.
So how many sub species of vampires have you created? And how many have come
into play in your novels so far?
In a lot of ways the vampires in the mythos universe can be
viewed as "forked off" from a single source (sort of an evolutionary
split). The concept being that, originally, there was one species of
vampire--one that could feed on both blood and psychic energy--but, as
tribes/packs split and migrated to different areas that forced a strict set of
feeding habits (either densely populated civilizations that wouldn't allow for
public assault/feeding and forced those vampires to rely solely on feeding off
of psychic energy or nearly uninhabited areas that forced the vampires to rely
on speed and reflexes to find a blood source. Because these conditions
eliminated the need to use one or the other of their inherent abilities, future
generations eventually lost the abilities and traits that had become
unnecessary.
Those that didn't need their speed, reflexes, or fangs
became stronger at siphoning psychic energy and became auric vampires (a species
of vampire that has bonded with their aura and is able to use it as an
invisible limb that can both manipulate their environment and enter/feed from
the mind of prey). Those that didn't need their inherent magic/auric control
became less in tune with both while their strength, speed, and fangs became
better equipped to track, hunt, and feed off of blood and became known as
sangsuigas ('sang-" being the Latin root word for "blood"),
otherwise known within the mythos community as "sangs". So already we
have two distinct species of vampire, but, within the sangsuiga species,
there's three SUBspecies: pure bloods (those born as sangs; having
fully-developed & hollow fangs that contain the neurotoxins and, more
importantly, the mutagen that allows them to turn humans into vampires when
they're bitten), the second generations ("mades") who were turned BY
a pure-blood (their fangs are not hollow and the mutagen produced by their
bodies isn't potent enough to change their prey properly), and the third-generation
("freaks")--the result of a not-too-bright second generation that
DOESN'T destroy the body of their prey after feeding--which are insatiable,
incoherent and unintelligible beasts with all the speed and strength of a sang
and all the uncontrollable savagery that's recognized in mainstream zombie
fiction.
There are also cases of "perfect" vampires: those
who are, like the original sources, a hybrid of the two inherent types; able to
feed on both blood AND psychic energy and having all the abilities and traits
associated with them (Xander Stryker is one such example, but his origins
are... unconventional).
On the other side of the spectrum are the varcol, which are
basically the result of the original vampires evolving to favor ALL of their
strengths and intensifying those abilities ten-fold.
In the books so far I've really only touched down upon the
varying levels of sangs and aurics (varcols are, due to their immense strength
and power, not exactly interested in being part of the mythos community and tend
to do their own thing where/when they please ~ stay tuned to see how that turns
out lol).
So, as you can see, there are TECHNICALLY four direct
"species"--sang, auric, perfect, & varcol--but there's so many
cases of hybrids and sub-species (not to mention the capacity for inter-species
breeding with OTHER mythos types--vamp/therion, vamp/anapriek, vamp/nejin,
vamp/wachuke, etc--that there's no true set number of "types".
That sounds like a lot of vampires *laughs* So, are there
any famous vampire hunters in your world?
*chuckles and nods* I guess you can say that. There's
definitely hunters; both mythos warriors who uphold the laws of their people
and hunt rogues who threaten their global safety and, of course, humans who
have their various reasons for waging war on the mythos community. The level of
their "fame" is disputable, though *shrugs* I mean, any human
hunter(s) that try to gain any sort of recognition in their exploits would
ascend to the top of the mythos Council's public enemy list fast enough that
they wouldn't see their first interview (secrecy is one of the biggest
platforms on which their laws are established upon), and a mythos hunter is
either acting on behalf of The Council (and is about as famous as any police
officer or soldier is to us) OR they're acting out AGAINST Council law, in
which case they're INfamous and, like the human hunters, won't last too long.
Xander Stryker, because of his late father's efforts in
establishing structure and laws within their community, is something of a
"celebrity" in his own rights (imagine if a late and beloved
president's son suddenly appeared on the grid after 18 years), but he's not
exactly interested in fame. In this case, however, "fame" is a
double-sided axe, as there's a great number of mythos rogues across the globe
just as interested in slaughtering him as fawning over him.
Fame, it appears, is a jagged mistress in the mythos
universe *laughs*
Your world sounds creepy and dangerous. I look forward to
delving into it. Thanks for stopping by and talking to us.
Everyone, be sure to pick up Nathan's books.
*Says is a fake Romanian accent* I bid you all goodnight.
*The audience cheers and the lights fade away*
Be sure the check out Nathan’s work on Amazon
HERE and on SmashWords
HERE. Visit his webpage at
www.nathansquiers.com to learn more about Nathan. You can follow Nathan on Twitter @LitDark_Emperor.
