Introducing J Damask

Today Toad welcomes an urban fantasy author, J Damask, who offers readers a glimpse into the very different world of Singapore, one that I do not believe we see painted with such magic and beauty, and with an obvious love for the supernatural.

Wolf at the Door is set in Singapore, which is a world away from most urban fantasy novels out there. What do you offer your readers?

A different world/landscape. An unique perspective, that there are also shifter types in places like Southeast Asia, a region itself rich in myths and legends.

Why wolves? And what makes your wolves-who-are-also-people different from those encountered in fiction?

Wolves are my favorite animals. ;)

What makes them different? They are wolves *and* humans. The wolf is inseparable to the human and vice versa. To me, the stereotype of the half-man, half-wolf never really appeals to me. To me, a wolf should be a wolf, four-legged. They are also a people, a race steeped in tradition and culture (in this case, Chinese). They honor the Chinese lunar festivals as much as they honor the hunt and chasing prey.

Tell us more about Jan and some of the conflict she faces.

Jan Xu is the daughter of the leaders of the Xu pack/clan. She is also married with two girls. She faces the dichotomy of being wife, mother, daughter and sister - she struggles and tries to balance all these roles while knowing that she is wolf.

Jan also has a younger sister, Marianne, whom she has a stormy relationship with. This stormy relationship is explored in the novel. She wants the rift to heal, yet Marianne has her own ideas...

Do you have any favourite legends you can share?

have many. *chuckle*

One is the legend/story of Madam White Snake. Madam White Snake is a snake spirit/jin who falls in love with a human scholar. With her maid-in-waiting Green Snake, Lady White Snake wants to live a comfortable married life. Yet, as stories go, things are not smooth. A Buddhist monk is determined to separate White Snake with her human husband, because snake spirits are evil and should be destroyed. He concocts a plan to unmask her for what she is, putting a magical potion in her wine (or tea). As a result, she reverts back to her snake form. Her husband is shocked (of course). A long battle ensues with White Snake imprisoned in the end.

Who are some of your favourite authors and why?

Anne McCaffrey, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Octavia Butler, Frank Herbert - They showed me different worlds where I happily explored. ;) At the same time, I was inspired to write!

I was also inspired by the strong female characters too. [That's why I tend to write strong female characters in my stories... Hehe!]

* * * *

J. Damask is the pen-name of Joyce Chng who writes speculative fiction and has published her fiction in online magazines and small presses like Semaphore Magazine and Crossed Genres. She likes werewolves, steampunk and all things speculative fiction. When she's not writing, Joyce is busy wrangling kids (two girls!), cat-herding and container-gardening. She sometimes wishes she has more time to write. Her website is found at http://awolfstale.wordpress.com.

Some mojo on the side...

Today toad welcomes Sonya Clark to her corner and features a free, downloadable read that supplements Sonya's upcoming urban fantasy release, Mojo Queen. Mimosas at Dusk is available in a variety of formats.

Sonya Clark writes at a desk equipped with High John the Conqueror root and a mojo hand. She has worshipped at the mother church of country music, traveled the back roads of the blues highway, been to the crossroads at midnight, and though she’s never cooked up a mess of polk salad, she has been to Graceland four times. She lives with her husband and Yorkie in Tennessee.

Learn more at www.sonyaclark.net

MIMOSAS AT DUSK

PDF:

http://ow.ly/42ppR

MOBI:

http://ow.ly/42pqQ

EPUB:

http://ow.ly/42pro

Tea with Sonya Clark

Welcome to urban fantasy author Sonya Clark, who graces Toad's Corner this week. Sonya's debut novella, Bring on the Night, introduces readers to her world of vampires in werewolves, but Mojo Queen is coming soon, bringing an intriguing glimpse into the doings of magic practitioners in a contemporary Southern setting. This is an author who pushes all of Toad's buttons, in all the right places. **grins**

* * * *

Tell us a bit more about your setting for your debut novella, Bring on the Night, and does this tie in with your novel Mojo Queen in any way?

Bring on the Night is set in a fictional town called Concord. Most of the action takes place in the rougher part of town on the waterfront. What I envisioned was a sort of semi-abandoned industrial area like what you’d find in a city with a failing economy. All the blue-collar middle class jobs are gone, and what’s left is poverty and predators. The setting, along with many other aspects of the story, was very noir-inspired.

Bring on the Night and Mojo Queen are unrelated stories, but they do have something in common: people living outside the bounds of normal society, trying to do the right thing and help others.

Obviously you love vampires. How are yours different from the standard vampiric themes gadding about in the media today?

In Bring on the Night vampire Jessie is not afraid to drink straight from the tap, so to speak. She’s sexy and flirty but she’s there to break heads, not fall in love. With vampire Daniel in Mojo Queen, I made him basically a sidekick just because I wanted a vampire that wasn’t a main character. Usually vamps get the headlining role. Neither of them are broody, love-obsessed, or at all interested in passing themselves off as high school kids. I want to write vampire-free stories too but at some point I know I have to write something where the vampires are evil. Sometimes you just have to let monsters be monsters.

Which one of your characters do you resonate with the most, and why?

In Bring on the Night it would probably be Brandon, the curious journalist who discovers vampires are real and at one point asks Jessie to show him her fangs. I’d probably do something really stupid like that in a similar situation, let curiosity overrule fear and good sense. In Mojo Queen it’s the main character, Roxanne Mathis. Without really thinking it through I gave her my love of music and it changed the character. You look at the world through the lens of what you’re passionate about, because that’s what you’ve studied, even if informally. With a love of music being so much a part of who I am, it’s almost impossible to keep it out of anything I write. So far she’s the character that has been the most informed by that.

What are the top three movies you'd have in your collection and what is it about them that makes you revisit them?

I love Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies – love the intensity of them, love how they took what is really a crazy ridiculous idea (vigilante in a bat suit!) and made it fit with the world we live in now. Especially Dark Knight – the metaphors at work in that movie alone are dissertation-worthy.

The Princess Bride is like an old friend. There are few situations in life that a quote from that movie would not be relevant to.

There’s not been a movie vampire I really loved yet, but I have high hopes for Dark Shadows. I’ve been waiting for Johnny Depp to play a vampire since I was fifteen!

Who is your all-time favourite villain, and why?

I’m having a hard time thinking of a villain that didn’t go through some sort of redemptive story arc. If I can count villains like that, I have to go with Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I always loved how he thoroughly embraced being a vampire, even after he changed from villain to anti-hero.

Care to spill the beans with regard to your works in progress?

My next novel-length work will be a sequel to Mojo Queen, tentatively titled Red House. MQ is set in Nashville, which was hit by catastrophic flooding this past May. In deciding whether or not I wanted to deal with that in a fictional setting, I thought about what it might do to have that kind of energy unleashed through the spiritual plane. People are uprooted when a natural disaster strikes. What happens to the spirits that haunt a place when that place has been smashed by the enormous energy of a flood? I’ve got some ideas about that, and I’m doing some research about ghost stories from this area as well as other major floods, plus some other things.

I always have other projects going on, too, for fun or to experiment. I’ve found that when I challenge myself, even if I fail it somehow manages to push my writing forward. So that’s cool.

* * * *

Useful links:

http://www.lyricalpress.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=245

http://sonyaclark.webs.com/