Category: Columns

A Fantasy Life

by Janet Quinn Cornelow

Rayna was the first character in the Augeas series. She had been sitting on the front porch with Grandmother for several years before I figured out who she was and where she belonged. There are now six Augeas stories and more in the works. Unfortunately, I write faster than my artist draws so my picture collection is behind.

This month has been filled with all the publishing part of the writing process. I’ve had to do edits and a galley with more galleys coming. However, as I read the galley for the re-release of Yesteryear’s Love, I thought about the fantasy part of time travel. It isn’t as hard core fantasy because the characters just move between one time frame and another and the author has to stay true to both time frames. Of course, if the characters went forward in time, then the author would need to create a new world.

With time travel the first thing an author has to figure out is what propels the character through time. There are many options, but finding a new one is a challenge. I chose a stain glass window. I came up with all types of reasons why the stain glass window was a portal. It was charmed before it was imported to nowhere. It was over a scared spot that the Native Americans knew about. Actually, none of it matter. It moved people through time and space and how it did so was never explained nor needed.

Then, if the character returns to her own time, how much time has passed since she left. Does time move at the same rate so that if she is gone for a year, a year has passed in her time? Or, does no time pass and does she return to where she started? It can work either way or something in between.

Then, if the character is going back in time, what about bathrooms? Who wants to use a chamber pot or the outhouse. It’s amazing when flush toilets came into being and the different types of bathtubs that were around in the 1800’s. Aren’t bathtubs, hot water and toilets important? It’s bad enough to do without microwaves, cell phones and computers.

Art work by Jasmine Tanner – http://veildandy.deviantart.com

A Fantasy Life

by Janet Quinn Cornelow

When writing fantasy, sometimes something out of mythology can trigger and idea that is just too good to pass up. A chimera seems to be one of those things.

A chimera is a mythological creature first mentioned by Homer in the Iliad. The creature is always referred to as a female. She is immortal, not human and made up of a lion in front, a dragon in back and a goat in the middle. Sometimes she has three heads. She also breaths fire. That has to be the dragon part of her. Most of us remember her from school. A scary creature who may have mothered the Sphinx and the Nemean Lion.

The interesting thing is that a chimera can also be a human being. (No dragon head or breathing fire, but just as interesting.) This condition occurs through the fertilization of two ova by two sperm, followed by the fusion of the resulting zygotes and the development of an organism which is actually two organism in the guise of one. A human chimera could have a heart with one DNA and a liver with another. Most chimeras never know that they are two people fused together. After all, how many people are going to have their DNA checked on different parts of their bodies to see if they are one or two people. It’s a rather creepy thought.

However, in fantasy, it is an intriguing idea. What kind of a character would a chimera be? An evil creature? The original one was. How can the other characters tell a chimera from everyone else? They’re not going to run out and do DNA tests either, so there has to be a way to tell. Otherwise, the whole idea falls flat.

Now that I have discovered this unique individual, I have to put her in a story. Dark fantasy. A chimera would never be in light fantasy.