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Raven Dane | CYRUS DARIAN AND THE WICKED WRAITH

Written By:

Ed Fortune
raven

Raven Dane is a UK-based author best known for her dark fantasy and steampunk novels. STARBURST spoke to her to find out more about her new book Cyrus Darian and The Wicked Wraith.

STARBURST: What can you tell us about your forthcoming novel, coming out via Telos Publishing?

Raven Dane: Cyrus Darian and The Wicked Wraith is the third in a series of misadventures about my bad boy anti-hero, Cyrus Darian. A very bad boy who would sell his own mother – whoever she was – then steal her back and sell her again to someone else. His past is murkier than an ancient peat bog and hides as many secrets and bodies. He finds a haven in an alternative Victorian London. A city cloaked in toxic fumes and with the constant threat from demonic beings let loose a century before by an inept sorcerer’s meddling with occult forces. Persian-born, perhaps, Darian is a hedonist, philanderer, compulsive liar, alchemist and necromancer. He is also wealthy, charming, charismatic and financially generous to those drawn to him and his shady escapades. In this book, Darian finds it wise to make himself scarce in England due to a ruthless government-led crackdown on all occultists. The gift of a beautiful, genuine dragon scale sends him and his sidekicks to the Dutch East Indies and the volatile, active volcanos of Java.

What inspired the story?

Dragons. I love them. I always wanted a Cyrus Darian story to include a dragon. In this case, it’s an eastern mythos creature from Java. It is huge, it makes Smaug look like a gecko.

How is it different from your previous work?

My short stories in many international anthologies and my Absinthe and Arsenic collection with Telos are all definitely horror. My past novels are dark fantasy and supernatural alternative history. This latest book is from my steampunk world. They are fast-moving adventures with vivid characters and a bit tongue in cheek but never a parody of the steampunk genre which I love so much. I bring occult danger and dark magic into a Victorian world that never was. Probably a much-used trope now but it wasn’t back in 2011. This was when the first book, Cyrus Darian and the Technomicron, won the Victorian Steampunk Society’s Novel of the Year award, which had a shortlist that included work by well-established steampunk authors, Jonathan Green and Gail Carriger.

What is the appeal of horror?

I wish I could pin it down. What makes horror so intriguing? Why do so many of us love to be frightened out of our wits? It began at an early age for me. My younger brother and I would sneak down the stairs and peek through a gap in a door frame as our parents watched scary programmes like Quatermass or films like Hitchcock’s Psycho. The fear of being caught out of bed, as well as the frightening black and white imagery on the TV screen, gave us an intoxicating frisson of excitement. Somewhere in our young minds, we knew the films were not real, and our parents would only pretend to be cross, so it was a safe form of thrill-seeking. Maybe that is what the appeal is, to be scared witless but with no bad consequences. That pumping adrenaline we get from being frightened helped keep our distant ancestors alive. That twitch of greenery could be the warning of a sabre tooth tiger about to pounce. Maybe we need the scares from books and films to keep that life-preserving instinct. Come the zombie apocalypse, we will be grateful for it. I love writing horror though only short stories, I do not have the skills to keep up the tension for a full-length novel. I’m sure in some past life I was a tribal shaman and storyteller, crouching by a fire in a cave and spinning yarns of the monsters and evil spirits lurking in the darkness.

Which character from any of your novels would you most like to meet in real life? And why?

Well, certainly not Cyrus Darian… I wouldn’t trust him for a second! Or my beautiful but deeply flawed Dark Kind vampire, Jazriel. His insecurity and addiction driven personality can be exasperating. As a reader said ‘I never know whether to hug Jaz or give him a kick up the backside.’ So I think it would be Brandan, the wandering Irish warrior/bard from Death’s Dark Wings. The novel is an alternative history version of events leading up to 1066, one complete with Celtic pagan magic, valiant Saxons and primitive but deadly steam-driven Norman weaponry. Brandan is fierce, brave and honourable and easy on the eye! He also sings and plays a haunted golden harp beautifully.

What approach do you take when writing fantastic elements?

My mother was Irish, my father Welsh, so I am most definitely a child of the Celtic Twilight. I am also a practising Pagan, pantheistic hedgewitch. There is an eerie darkness about the old stories of the Irish Sidhe and Welsh Tylwyth Teg that intrigue and inspires me. Fairy folk are not sparkly pretty things with magic wands and butterfly wings, and I use their legendary eerie strangeness and danger in my stories.

I try hard to create a sense of otherworldliness when using the supernatural in storylines. From my own experiences through life, I do believe that other dimensions exist alongside ours. That sometimes the veil between those dimensions can thin and glimpses of another can be seen. I don’t use magic as a get out of jail free card in my stories, there are always serious consequences to dabbling in strange forces and contact with preternatural beings. I sometimes use the term Old Earth Magic in my storylines, it’s dark and ancient and cares nothing for the wellbeing of humans that are brave or foolish enough to use it.

Ironically, the least supernatural books I have written are about vampires. My Dark Kind are not the Undead, and they are not human. They are a species higher up the food chain to humans, and their long lives are due to superior biology. They are most definitely mortal and have no supernatural powers. They also do not sparkle or fall in love with humans – that would be considered bestiality to them.

How do you approach your writing?

Some people meticulously plan their work, write copious notes beforehand, map out timelines and spend many hours in prior research. Or there are people like me who throw themselves into storytelling, flying by the seat of our pants. Either method is perfectly valid. If there are rules to writing, I have never read them. An idea, often just a single image comes into my head, one that won’t go away. I begin writing that scene, and the book begins to form organically around it. For instance, one image of a dark-clad horseman negotiating a tangled forest by moonlight sparked the whole of my Legacy of the Dark Kind trilogy. When I first discovered and fell in love with steampunk, I began experimenting with making jewellery and artefacts (really badly!) I thought up the name of a mysterious, magical shop selling these pieces and that triggered the creation of Cyrus Darian and his world. I write stories that are very much character-driven. So much so that it feels like channelling them from another dimension… a very real dimension where they can sometimes take over and challenge where the plot is leading. Jazriel was the worse for making me change his story. He became so real that even my husband said he should be paying us rent. He is still my Muse. A wayward one with the habit of deserting me at times.

As I write, I do research – a great deal of it. Even magical, fantastic stories must have a base in plausibility. I believe to do less is to short change your readers. A typical example involves horses, the centre of my non-writing life for many decades. I remember reading a high fantasy story that had a knight riding a nineteen-hand high warhorse. That would be well over six feet at the shoulders. A warhorse that tall would be a liability. Difficult to mount and dismount from and virtually impossible to climb up on in full armour without a winch. The warrior would be too high up to engage with an enemy fighting on foot. And that’s not counting the cost of feeding and housing such a gigantic equine. Every mounted warrior in real history has used small, strong and agile horses. The huge size of Shire horses came much later when they were only bred for agricultural work.

Is the fantasy community as accessible as it thinks it is?

I think so.  I hope so! At the start of my writing career, I only received wonderful friendship and support as a newbie from already established fantasy writers. There were a couple of exceptions but not worth changing my views over. I also value the friendship from the LARP and cosplay community, who I have met over the years at events. There can be a different vibe to the horror and SF communities… sadly there are often some high profile feuds and problems, but that is just people being people. I am certain the same things happen in trainspotting circles, hamster clubs, and giant vegetable growing.

Is it easier to get published these days?

A classic how long is a piece of string question! If you are a media ‘celeb’ with a good agent, then it is very easy… you don’t even have to write a word. That’s what ghostwriters are for. The world of self-publishing, especially with CreateSpace and Amazon Kindle, could not be easier for every Tom, Dick, and Harriet to get their work out there. Breaking into mainstream traditional publishing has always been difficult. Many of the larger publishers will only take author submissions through established literary agents and getting an agent is harder than winning the lottery. I certainly believe quality smaller presses offering traditional contracts can offer good experience for writers. It’s in their interests to continue to support and promote their authors over a longer period of time than the big five are able to do. They do not, however, have the same budgets for advertising and promotion. For all writers, however published, getting their work noticed amid an ever-growing tidal wave of new books is a nightmare… who can see any individual waving in the midst of a tsunami? This is the hardest problem facing all writers these days, one I wish I had an answer to.

What’s next?

I’m working on another novel set in my existing alternative Victorian London. This book centres on a run-down East End music hall theatre whose fortunes are revived by a troupe of demons and magical creatures pretending to be human to survive detection. I’m having a great deal of fun writing it and hope readers will feel the same way. I hope to rerelease my comedic take of high fantasy, The Unwise Woman of Fuggis Mire, originally with Endaxi Press. I have a fabulous new cover for this. I also have a post-apocalyptical novella due to be published later this year – too early to officially release details yet. Think Mad Max crossed with Game of Thrones – shiny chrome meets rusty chain maille in a dangerous, toxic landscape.

What authors are you reading? And why?

I am currently working my way through The Expanse novels by S. A. Corey. I fell out of love with SF many years ago but never with SF TV and films. I became hooked to the point of obsession with the TV series of The Expanse. I downloaded the first novel of the series and found it as brilliant and exciting as the TV version. Beautifully written Space Opera with fully fleshed-out characters to care about, believable science-based action and vivid imagination given full rein.

I have a quarantine thing going on with reading… I am paranoid over any influence creeping into my own work, so I do not read any steampunk or vampire novels. I made an exception with Sam Stone’s wonderful Vampire Gene series as they are so different to mine and highly addictive. My main go-to reading for pleasure are horror and SF novels. These include the terrifying books of Adam Nevill. His Last Days made me sleep with the lights on for weeks!  I do enjoy a big, meaty Stephen King horror novel and I also love the work of Joe Hill.  I have an increasingly long ‘to read’ list, which includes Jilly Paddock’s SF book Starchild, Joe Hill’s Strange Weather and Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of  Time.

If you had the chance to preserve one bit of media in such a way that it would last forever, what would it be?

That is a tough one! I’m sure greater minds than mine could come up with worthy answers. It would have to be beautiful, inspiring and reflect all the good things humanity is capable of achieving. I would have to choose music – classical wonders like Allegri’s Miserere Mei Deus and O Mio Babbino Caro by Puccini. Also a selection of world and popular music. The beauty of good music is timeless and universal.

Raven Dane’s Cyrus Darian and the Wicked Wraith is available now.

Ed Fortune

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