Welcome to Fantasy Friday, everyone! Please join me today in welcoming Rayne Hall, who's here to tell us a little about her world and this exciting adventure.
Storm Dancer
Genre: Dark Epic
Fantasy
Publisher:
Scimitar Press
ISBN:
9781465716651 Smashwords
ISBN:
1230000010279 Kobo
ASIN: B005MJFV58
Demon-possessed siege commander, Dahoud,
atones for his atrocities by hiding his identity and protecting women from
war's violence - but can he shield the woman he loves from the evil inside him?
Principled weather magician, Merida
Thrust together, Dahoud and Merida
'Storm Dancer' is a dark epic fantasy. Caution: this
book contains some violence and disturbing situations. Not recommended for
under-16s. British spellings.
Book Trailer http://youtu.be/tI5oxeOziQM
Note:
Storm Dancer has dark elements which some readers may find disturbing. Not
recommended for readers under 16, not suitable for YA blogs.
Contains British English. Some words, spellings,
grammar and punctuation will be different than American English.
THE INSPIRATION FOR
STORM DANCER
“Where do you find your ideas?” people often ask me.
The truth is, I don't find
ideas. Ideas find me.
Like ghosts, they seek me out,
haunt me, and don't let go until the story is written.
My mind is like a
revolving drum filled with hundreds of jigsaw pieces, each representing a story
idea.
Sometimes two or more pieces click together, and that's when a story
takes shape.
The idea for the dark-epic
fantasy novel Storm Dancer first came to me in Mongolia. I was on a
short-term assignment there, to help launch the country's first-ever women's
magazine. I was staying in a ger (yurt) on the edge of the Gobi desert when an
idea clawed into my brain and wouldn't let go.
I saw two people
hating each other yet needing to become allies to survive. Although they have
previously betrayed and harmed each other, they must now learn to trust.
Next came an image of
those two people trapped by devastating storm. By now, my imagination was
kindled and burning in bright flames.
Although I worked on
other projects over the years, Storm Dancer kept haunting me, and I
returned to it again and again.
One of the
characters, Merida, is an expert magician who can change the weather with her
dance. Her government sends her on a mission to bring rain to a distant, drought-parched country - the
equivalent of a modern development aid worker. My own experiences as
development aid worker inspired some of the scenes. For example, I was sent to
edit language teaching materials in northeast China. I had been
promised a heated, furnished flat with running water. When I arrived, the flat
was a ruin, a blizzard was whipping through the broken windows, there was no
furniture, no water, no heating at all. I survived the freezing night by piling
all my clothes on top of me. When I confronted my employer the next morning, he
told me he was too busy to honour promises made in a contract.
So when Merida arrives, she finds that the
promised private apartment doesn't exist and she has to sleep in a crowded,
dirty dormitory instead. When she complains, the ruler tells her he doesn't
have time to keep promises.
I also used my experiences of teaching and
performing bellydance for the scenes where Merida bellydances in a tavern.
The theme “We're not responsible for what fate deals
us, but we're responsible for how we deal with it” inspired much of the plot.
Dahoud is a troubled
hero, possessed by a demon, a djinn that drives him to subdue women with force. The djinns in Storm Dancer are
devious spirits. They target young, vulnerable males with the promise to fulfil
their deepest desires. Once the human consents to the pact, they twist those
needs and drive their host to commit more and more evil deeds. The djinns feed
on the evil. The more the human complies, the stronger they grow. When the
human tries to resist, they torment him with temptations, desires, and
unbearable pain.
Dahoud was a lonely adolescent when the djinn lured him with the promise
that he would get female attention. He joined the army and became a feared
siege commander. Siege warfare in the Bronze Age offered ways for a man to
force female attention - and the djinn in Dahoud thrived on these deeds. When
Dahoud matured, he came to understand how wrong it was. As an honourable man,
he tried to cease, but it was too late. The djinn had already grown powerful
and impossible to defeat.
The only way to gain a measure of control over the djinn is to weaken it
by depriving it of fodder. Dahoud had to get away from the lures connected with
siege warfare. He sacrificed his career, his identity, everything. He faked his
own death and built a new life as a lowly labourer. For three years, he has
succeeded in resisting the djinn's painful demands. He has won some control
over his dark need and is able to live without harming women.
But the ruler tracks Dahoud down and forces him to once again lead a
siege and subdue the people. If Dahoud succumbs to his dark need even once, the
djinn will grow to its former strength and unleash unspeakable evil. When the
women he protects repay his devotion with betrayal, his control over the djinn
breaks.
To what extent is Dahoud responsible for what the demon makes him do? Is
the djinn really an external creature, or is it the dark part of Dahoud's own
psyche? By writing about how Dahoud
copes with the djinn, I explored how people deal with their demons. The djinn
can be a metaphor for criminal urges, alcholism, drug addiction and sinful
desires.
Further inspiration
came from the places where I've lived and travelled in Central Asia, North
Africa and the Middle East, and ancient cultures, especially the Egyptians,
Greeks, Romans, Hittites and Persians. There are also elements from ancient
mythology, and even a story from an apocryphal Bible story of Judith, the
heroine who decapitated the enemy general with his own sword. However, these
stories are so much changed that few readers will recognise them when they read
Storm Dancer.
About Rayne Hall
Rayne Hall has
published more than forty books under different pen names with different
publishers in different genres, mostly fantasy, horror and non-fiction. Recent
books include Storm Dancer (dark epic fantasy novel), Six Scary Tales Vol 1, 2
and 3 (mild horror stories), Six Historical Tales (short stories), Six Quirky
Tales (humorous fantasy stories), Writing Fight Scenes, The World-Loss Diet and
Writing Scary Scenes (instructions for authors).
She holds a
college degree in publishing management and a masters degree in creative
writing. Currently, she edits the Ten Tales series of multi-author short story
anthologies: Bites: Ten Tales of Vampires, Haunted: Ten Tales of Ghosts,
Scared: Ten Tales of Horror, Cutlass: Ten Tales of Pirates, Beltane: Ten Tales
of Witchcraft, Spells: Ten Tales of Magic, Undead: Ten Tales of Zombies and
more.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/RayneHall
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/rayne.hall
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| A Bewitching Book Tours Guest |
~Claire
www.claireashgrove.com
www.toristclaire.com
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