Author Introduction: Alma Alexander
Mar. 9th, 2008 07:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jpskewedthroneHere’s another entry in the Author Introduction series. Say hello to Alma Alexander, author of a few books, the most recent part of the “Worldweavers” YA series. This post, called “Choices” is actually one part of three, the other parts appearing in other blogs. The links to the other parts are provided at the end of her introduction. So without further ado, heeeeeeeere’s Alma!
"CHOICES
When you are young, all your choices are made for you.
You eat the things that are provided for you, go to schools your parents picked, move when they move. You're pampered. Looked after. Protected. Sheltered.
You are not free.
Freedom begins with choice. When you start growing older and the road starts forking more and more, you realise that it’s ALL about choices. That’s what growing up means.
And it starts early – it starts when you still ARE a child, when you hit your teens. The choice to rebel or to live up to expectations; the choice of picking “what you want to do” and focusing your schooling on a career, more and more closely every year. And then, after, the choice of the job you apply for, of the partner you pick to share your life.
Those are just the basic yes-or-no choices, the ones that take you down one fork of a road or another. But there are harder choices, where the road forks without signposts, where you're forced to choose between more nebulous things, between the right thing and the easy thing, between the truth and the lie, between succumbing to something "just once" because it will bring you an advantage or sticking to inconvenient principles and watching someone else walk away with the prize.
In my books, it's ALL about the choice.
Invevitably, given the coming-of-age theme of the Worldweavers books, choice is what
Thea Winthrop's story is all about.
Be warned - perhaps it's a mite spoilerific ahead, although I will try to preserve as much of the mystery as I can.
Gift of the Unmage [Amazon
; Mysterious Galaxy]
In Book 1, "Gift of the Unmage", Thea is introduced as the Double Seventh, the seventh child of two seventh children, the most magical of all magical beings, and great and wonderful things are expected of her. The moment of her birth is greeted with flashes of
cameras, and TV specials. She is followed around as a toddler by eager reporters waiting for her to perform some extraordinary feat of magical power.
And then there are the Alphiri, the Elves with the souls of Ferengi who believe everything is for sale. They tried to buy Thea from her parents when she was still in her crib, and then stalked her through childhood, always ready to pounce if her potential magical abilities ever manifested.
Thea does not know why she can't do magic. All she knows is that there is a glass wall between her and the thing that she is supposed to be able to do, a wall that allows her to see with bitter clarity exactly what her duty is but leaves her unable to actually perform it. – that that her father, whom she idolises, has a shadow in his eyes when he looks at her… and it HURTS. It hurts badly to be the one who can't,the one who is inadequate when so much was expected, the one who fails.
In a last effort, before Thea is sent to what she and her peers know as the “Last Ditch School for the Incurably Incompetent”, the school where children of magical parents who are themselves – for whatever reason – unable to do magic are sent to be trained for a mundane and enchantment-less life. But before they take that final, irrevocable step Thea’s father tries one more thing.
He sends his daughter back in time. Back to an Anasazi shaman, the last of a vanished tribe, whose magic is perhaps older and wilder than any that Thea has encountered before.
And it is there, in this strange and frightening world into which Thea is taken and thrust and left alone in, that she begins to have the first inkling of the true reality of her life.
Her Anasazi mentor tells her, "When there is a battle to be fought, it is you who can choose the battlefield."
She discovers that she, herself, has chosen to block her abilities of magic in her own world, because if she hadn't hidden her talents, even from herself, she would have been in unspeakable danger all of her life from the Alphiri.
And there is something more.
If she had manifested her abilities earlier, she would have been unable to save her world from the greatest danger it has ever faced, a monster called the Nothing that feeds on magic.
When Thea returns to her own world, the Nothing has swept across it and decimated the strongest and the best of her people – and only she, the blank slate, the one on which no magic has yet been written, can stand between the hungry darkness and all the magic in her world.
In the end, it is all about the choices that Thea has made. The choices she has made by instinct alone – and instinct has served her well – and the choices she has made in full knowledge of circumstances, building on what she knows and can use. The first hard choices on that road without signposts which lead to what is Easy and what is Right. Thea, in the end, CHOOSES to go to the “Last Ditch School for the Incurably Incompetent.”. She chooses to fight the Nothing with her unmagic, and chooses the traditional whalehunt as her tool for the Nothing’s destruction. The whale in the hunt chooses to be taken, and this is crucial in the defeat of the Nothing – because the Nothing does not choose, it has all the choices forced on it.
The lessons are clear – you HAVE to choose. Without choosing, you perish.
But if this was difficult, things get much worse in the second book, and fast.
Spellspam [Amazon; Mysterious Galaxy]
In “Spellspam”, Thea is faced with something that is incredible, unbelievable – the one thing impervious to magic in her world, so safe that it can be used for storage of magic spells because it is immune to accidental ill-effects, is a computer. In the first book it becomes apparent that Thea’s own magic had something to do with the cyberworld – and that in itself was astonishing enough. But now unwanted email – spam – is popping up everywhere and causing havoc, because this is “spellspam”, spam infused with real magical spells, which make the things it says actually happen, with malicious intent.
If it promises you “clear” skin, for example, it turns your skin transparent.
There is someone else out there, obviously, who can use computer magic. And Thea is the only one who can find this other cybermage and deal with the spellspam epidemic.
What she doesn't count on is that when she meets him, she actually LIKES him.
Which doesn’t change for a moment the fact that it is she who has to deal with the fact of his existence, and his astonishing abilities.
She makes the hard choices, and then has to live with the guilt of it, even knowing that she could not have done other than she did.
She makes the choice, and is changed by it. This is what choices do – every road we take leaves its imprint on us, and every choice we make is there to take us that one more step, to take us further, to make us grow.
In the third book, Thea’s choices lead her down a road which is both dangerous and glorious – and by the end of the third book in the trilogy, “Cybermage”, she is challenged to make the hardest choice of all, a choice that could permanently seal her own identity and put an end to something that had barely begun, a magic she had barely begun to taste and get the first heady rush from. She might have to give up EVERYTHING for the things that she believes in.
A similar choice awaits at least one of her Last Ditch School friends – a choice that involves fundamental questions of identity and values.
Left or right fork. Cake or ice cream. The green car or the red one. Artist or worker ant. Live or die.
Choices are all around us. In the stories that we read. In the lives that we lead.
Sometimes all that is possible is to choose to gather up the pieces of a broken heart and go on, to climb another mountain, to get back on the horse – to take another step, to take another breath. To simply go on.
That’s what the stories I tell are all about. The courage to choose. The courage to choose right.
About my books (with purchase links):
http://fantasyliterature.net/AlexanderAlma.html
This is an essay in three parts. Read them all:
http://www.wyrdsmiths.blogspot.com/ :Courage
http://jpsorrow.livejournal.com/ :Choices
http://tltrent.livejournal.com/ :Change”
Secrets of Jin-shei [Amazon; Mysterious Galaxy]
Hidden Queen [Amazon; Mysterious Galaxy]
Changer of Days [Amazon; Mysterious Galaxy]
"CHOICES
When you are young, all your choices are made for you.
You eat the things that are provided for you, go to schools your parents picked, move when they move. You're pampered. Looked after. Protected. Sheltered.
You are not free.
Freedom begins with choice. When you start growing older and the road starts forking more and more, you realise that it’s ALL about choices. That’s what growing up means.
And it starts early – it starts when you still ARE a child, when you hit your teens. The choice to rebel or to live up to expectations; the choice of picking “what you want to do” and focusing your schooling on a career, more and more closely every year. And then, after, the choice of the job you apply for, of the partner you pick to share your life.
Those are just the basic yes-or-no choices, the ones that take you down one fork of a road or another. But there are harder choices, where the road forks without signposts, where you're forced to choose between more nebulous things, between the right thing and the easy thing, between the truth and the lie, between succumbing to something "just once" because it will bring you an advantage or sticking to inconvenient principles and watching someone else walk away with the prize.
In my books, it's ALL about the choice.
Invevitably, given the coming-of-age theme of the Worldweavers books, choice is what
Thea Winthrop's story is all about.
Be warned - perhaps it's a mite spoilerific ahead, although I will try to preserve as much of the mystery as I can.
Gift of the Unmage [Amazon
; Mysterious Galaxy]In Book 1, "Gift of the Unmage", Thea is introduced as the Double Seventh, the seventh child of two seventh children, the most magical of all magical beings, and great and wonderful things are expected of her. The moment of her birth is greeted with flashes of
cameras, and TV specials. She is followed around as a toddler by eager reporters waiting for her to perform some extraordinary feat of magical power.
And then there are the Alphiri, the Elves with the souls of Ferengi who believe everything is for sale. They tried to buy Thea from her parents when she was still in her crib, and then stalked her through childhood, always ready to pounce if her potential magical abilities ever manifested.
Thea does not know why she can't do magic. All she knows is that there is a glass wall between her and the thing that she is supposed to be able to do, a wall that allows her to see with bitter clarity exactly what her duty is but leaves her unable to actually perform it. – that that her father, whom she idolises, has a shadow in his eyes when he looks at her… and it HURTS. It hurts badly to be the one who can't,the one who is inadequate when so much was expected, the one who fails.
In a last effort, before Thea is sent to what she and her peers know as the “Last Ditch School for the Incurably Incompetent”, the school where children of magical parents who are themselves – for whatever reason – unable to do magic are sent to be trained for a mundane and enchantment-less life. But before they take that final, irrevocable step Thea’s father tries one more thing.
He sends his daughter back in time. Back to an Anasazi shaman, the last of a vanished tribe, whose magic is perhaps older and wilder than any that Thea has encountered before.
And it is there, in this strange and frightening world into which Thea is taken and thrust and left alone in, that she begins to have the first inkling of the true reality of her life.
Her Anasazi mentor tells her, "When there is a battle to be fought, it is you who can choose the battlefield."
She discovers that she, herself, has chosen to block her abilities of magic in her own world, because if she hadn't hidden her talents, even from herself, she would have been in unspeakable danger all of her life from the Alphiri.
And there is something more.
If she had manifested her abilities earlier, she would have been unable to save her world from the greatest danger it has ever faced, a monster called the Nothing that feeds on magic.
When Thea returns to her own world, the Nothing has swept across it and decimated the strongest and the best of her people – and only she, the blank slate, the one on which no magic has yet been written, can stand between the hungry darkness and all the magic in her world.
In the end, it is all about the choices that Thea has made. The choices she has made by instinct alone – and instinct has served her well – and the choices she has made in full knowledge of circumstances, building on what she knows and can use. The first hard choices on that road without signposts which lead to what is Easy and what is Right. Thea, in the end, CHOOSES to go to the “Last Ditch School for the Incurably Incompetent.”. She chooses to fight the Nothing with her unmagic, and chooses the traditional whalehunt as her tool for the Nothing’s destruction. The whale in the hunt chooses to be taken, and this is crucial in the defeat of the Nothing – because the Nothing does not choose, it has all the choices forced on it.
The lessons are clear – you HAVE to choose. Without choosing, you perish.
But if this was difficult, things get much worse in the second book, and fast.
Spellspam [Amazon
; Mysterious Galaxy]In “Spellspam”, Thea is faced with something that is incredible, unbelievable – the one thing impervious to magic in her world, so safe that it can be used for storage of magic spells because it is immune to accidental ill-effects, is a computer. In the first book it becomes apparent that Thea’s own magic had something to do with the cyberworld – and that in itself was astonishing enough. But now unwanted email – spam – is popping up everywhere and causing havoc, because this is “spellspam”, spam infused with real magical spells, which make the things it says actually happen, with malicious intent.
If it promises you “clear” skin, for example, it turns your skin transparent.
There is someone else out there, obviously, who can use computer magic. And Thea is the only one who can find this other cybermage and deal with the spellspam epidemic.
What she doesn't count on is that when she meets him, she actually LIKES him.
Which doesn’t change for a moment the fact that it is she who has to deal with the fact of his existence, and his astonishing abilities.
She makes the hard choices, and then has to live with the guilt of it, even knowing that she could not have done other than she did.
She makes the choice, and is changed by it. This is what choices do – every road we take leaves its imprint on us, and every choice we make is there to take us that one more step, to take us further, to make us grow.
In the third book, Thea’s choices lead her down a road which is both dangerous and glorious – and by the end of the third book in the trilogy, “Cybermage”, she is challenged to make the hardest choice of all, a choice that could permanently seal her own identity and put an end to something that had barely begun, a magic she had barely begun to taste and get the first heady rush from. She might have to give up EVERYTHING for the things that she believes in.
A similar choice awaits at least one of her Last Ditch School friends – a choice that involves fundamental questions of identity and values.
Left or right fork. Cake or ice cream. The green car or the red one. Artist or worker ant. Live or die.
Choices are all around us. In the stories that we read. In the lives that we lead.
Sometimes all that is possible is to choose to gather up the pieces of a broken heart and go on, to climb another mountain, to get back on the horse – to take another step, to take another breath. To simply go on.
That’s what the stories I tell are all about. The courage to choose. The courage to choose right.
About my books (with purchase links):
http://fantasyliterature.net/AlexanderAlma.html
This is an essay in three parts. Read them all:
http://www.wyrdsmiths.blogspot.com/ :Courage
http://jpsorrow.livejournal.com/ :Choices
http://tltrent.livejournal.com/ :Change”
Secrets of Jin-shei [Amazon
; Mysterious Galaxy]Hidden Queen [Amazon
; Mysterious Galaxy]Changer of Days [Amazon
; Mysterious Galaxy]
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no subject
Date: 2008-03-10 06:42 pm (UTC)Since Alma described her entry as "a mite spoilerific" maybe you would like to be introduced to the LJ Cut. Not a piece of beef, but a way to hide things behind your main entry, in case people don't want to look. (You click into the hidden part.) http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=75 ()
no subject
Date: 2008-03-12 12:46 am (UTC)