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Revisiting a favorite series is like reacquainting myself with an old love. I’m in constant danger of falling in love all over again. Or perhaps I should have say I’m fortunate enough to taste that passion once again.
Before creating The Keep with a group of other creatives (an interactive fantasy yaoi game where vampires and clerics struggled for control of a walled city), before I discovered CLAMP, there was Storm Constantine.
It’s hard to remember when my love affair with her began. I think I picked up the first of the Wraethru books, feeling a measure of fascination, but I was truly hooked when I discovered The Crown of Silence at my local Barnes & Noble.
I’d never read anything like it. The cast of complex characters, major and minor, each offering a point of view, often warring with each other’s, created a mythic landscape which lay over the complex fantasy world, informing and shaping it.
The Crown of Silence was the second book in a trilogy. Not only did I have to have Sea Dragon Heir and The Way of Light (Books 1 and 2). I had to read more of Storm Constantine’s work. Everything I could get my hands on.
I was happy to find her at the L.A. Library, delighting in Sign of the Sacred. Here was a complex fantasy story with at least one LGBTQIA+ major character, a quest surrounding a dubious mythic figure whom inspired to people to follow him for reasons as much to do with themselves as him.
This was the kind of fantasy I wanted to write. Emotionally driven, filled with as much speculative thought as action. More so. Fiction which allowed the feminine eye and male eyes not as obsessed with what females were to them to create the philosophical landscape.
Something wondrous happened. More of Storm Constantine’s work started appearing in bookstores. I snatched up Calenture, Burying the Shadow, and Sign of the Sacred (for I wanted to own it, to read it again and again) at Street Lights in San Francisco.
How I loved it, fallen angels as vampires in a fantasy setting where the main character was not only the protégé of one of them, but she was a soulscaper, a fascinating profession which involved entering a person’s inner mythic landscape! Or a sole survivor of a mysterious condition which turned everyone but himself into transparent, statue like-creatures, creating characters in his loneliness. Characters who populated a fantastic world, characters he’d fall in love with and resent, only to find they were more real than he’d imagined. Certainly as real as he was.
As a lonely, overimaginative person who loved to speculate in fiction, but seldom found people she could share these ideas with, Storm Constantine’s stories really spoke to me. They dared me, challenging me to step out in a way which worked for my style, my ideas, even my experiences rather than telling another tale about a star ship, a space station, or a rugged quest across a rough fantasy landscape.
The quest could be so much than this. They could take place inside the imagination, shaping the world around them.
I played with these possibilities, marveling at them when I found Scenting Hallowed Blood. I grabbed it, started reading, found myself enchanted. Again. Shem’s irrascible passion and irritation in the face of his destiny, Daniel’s aloof sweetness; the greedy ambition of Sofia, Tamara, and even Meggie all captivatd me. Enniel’s elegant stuffiness was worthy of a prince in Vampire: The Masquerade. How like and unlike these fallen angels were to vampires.
Once again I’d picked up the second book in a trilogy. I searched for the first and found Stalking Tender Prey. I was delighted and alarmed by Peveral Othman. He reminded me of people who’d fascinated and hurt me as a child and a teenager. How well I understood the jealousies he inspired in everyone he touched. How chilling to recognize the games he was playing, to see his victims realize what was happening, and struggle to free themselves. Often they failed.
This was a story which was only too real to me, yet it was threaded with magic and myth. How I longed to tell my own stories of troubling passion, wrapped in my own fairytale twists. Too long had I been trapped, crushed under the pressure of genre, the tropes of genre I thought I had to follow. Storm Constantine showed me just how speculative fiction could be. You could push the limits of gender, of expectations. You could create entire worlds by pushing them.
I was fortunate enough to find the Wraethru omnibus which contained the first three of Storm Constantine Wraethru tales. Swift’s story of isolation, growing up sheltered in a far from ideal setting while he awakened to the truth also spoke to me, kindling awareness of how sheltered I was. How much those who’d protected me had given to do so.
I saw myself in Storm Constantine’s stories, but I also saw the possibility of what I could write. Characters could shape their own landscape with their belief and passions. They could fall in love with people who weren’t there, have conversations with them. They could create gods. They could create reality. They might be trying to figure out what reality was, often questioning it.
My Tales of the Navel were shaped by the ideas Storm Constantine inspired with her writing as was The Players Are the Thing. She showed me how speculative fiction could. What I wanted my speculative fiction to be.
Thank you, Storm Constantine, for offering up your stories. Thank you for inspiring me by showing me what I could write. I wouldn’t be the author I am today if not for you. Your work continues to inspire me when I’m trapped by writer’s block even while they tempt me.
It’s only too easy to drop everything and surrender to the pages of your stories, losing myself in your characters once more. At the same time you remind my own stories, making me want to write, reminding me of what I want to write.
Thank you.
Before creating The Keep with a group of other creatives (an interactive fantasy yaoi game where vampires and clerics struggled for control of a walled city), before I discovered CLAMP, there was Storm Constantine.
It’s hard to remember when my love affair with her began. I think I picked up the first of the Wraethru books, feeling a measure of fascination, but I was truly hooked when I discovered The Crown of Silence at my local Barnes & Noble.
I’d never read anything like it. The cast of complex characters, major and minor, each offering a point of view, often warring with each other’s, created a mythic landscape which lay over the complex fantasy world, informing and shaping it.
The Crown of Silence was the second book in a trilogy. Not only did I have to have Sea Dragon Heir and The Way of Light (Books 1 and 2). I had to read more of Storm Constantine’s work. Everything I could get my hands on.
I was happy to find her at the L.A. Library, delighting in Sign of the Sacred. Here was a complex fantasy story with at least one LGBTQIA+ major character, a quest surrounding a dubious mythic figure whom inspired to people to follow him for reasons as much to do with themselves as him.
This was the kind of fantasy I wanted to write. Emotionally driven, filled with as much speculative thought as action. More so. Fiction which allowed the feminine eye and male eyes not as obsessed with what females were to them to create the philosophical landscape.
Something wondrous happened. More of Storm Constantine’s work started appearing in bookstores. I snatched up Calenture, Burying the Shadow, and Sign of the Sacred (for I wanted to own it, to read it again and again) at Street Lights in San Francisco.
How I loved it, fallen angels as vampires in a fantasy setting where the main character was not only the protégé of one of them, but she was a soulscaper, a fascinating profession which involved entering a person’s inner mythic landscape! Or a sole survivor of a mysterious condition which turned everyone but himself into transparent, statue like-creatures, creating characters in his loneliness. Characters who populated a fantastic world, characters he’d fall in love with and resent, only to find they were more real than he’d imagined. Certainly as real as he was.
As a lonely, overimaginative person who loved to speculate in fiction, but seldom found people she could share these ideas with, Storm Constantine’s stories really spoke to me. They dared me, challenging me to step out in a way which worked for my style, my ideas, even my experiences rather than telling another tale about a star ship, a space station, or a rugged quest across a rough fantasy landscape.
The quest could be so much than this. They could take place inside the imagination, shaping the world around them.
I played with these possibilities, marveling at them when I found Scenting Hallowed Blood. I grabbed it, started reading, found myself enchanted. Again. Shem’s irrascible passion and irritation in the face of his destiny, Daniel’s aloof sweetness; the greedy ambition of Sofia, Tamara, and even Meggie all captivatd me. Enniel’s elegant stuffiness was worthy of a prince in Vampire: The Masquerade. How like and unlike these fallen angels were to vampires.
Once again I’d picked up the second book in a trilogy. I searched for the first and found Stalking Tender Prey. I was delighted and alarmed by Peveral Othman. He reminded me of people who’d fascinated and hurt me as a child and a teenager. How well I understood the jealousies he inspired in everyone he touched. How chilling to recognize the games he was playing, to see his victims realize what was happening, and struggle to free themselves. Often they failed.
This was a story which was only too real to me, yet it was threaded with magic and myth. How I longed to tell my own stories of troubling passion, wrapped in my own fairytale twists. Too long had I been trapped, crushed under the pressure of genre, the tropes of genre I thought I had to follow. Storm Constantine showed me just how speculative fiction could be. You could push the limits of gender, of expectations. You could create entire worlds by pushing them.
I was fortunate enough to find the Wraethru omnibus which contained the first three of Storm Constantine Wraethru tales. Swift’s story of isolation, growing up sheltered in a far from ideal setting while he awakened to the truth also spoke to me, kindling awareness of how sheltered I was. How much those who’d protected me had given to do so.
I saw myself in Storm Constantine’s stories, but I also saw the possibility of what I could write. Characters could shape their own landscape with their belief and passions. They could fall in love with people who weren’t there, have conversations with them. They could create gods. They could create reality. They might be trying to figure out what reality was, often questioning it.
My Tales of the Navel were shaped by the ideas Storm Constantine inspired with her writing as was The Players Are the Thing. She showed me how speculative fiction could. What I wanted my speculative fiction to be.
Thank you, Storm Constantine, for offering up your stories. Thank you for inspiring me by showing me what I could write. I wouldn’t be the author I am today if not for you. Your work continues to inspire me when I’m trapped by writer’s block even while they tempt me.
It’s only too easy to drop everything and surrender to the pages of your stories, losing myself in your characters once more. At the same time you remind my own stories, making me want to write, reminding me of what I want to write.
Thank you.
