Karen Lord wrote the fantasy novel, REDEMPTION IN INDIGO, which is inspired by West African folk tales and Caribbean legends. She won the Frank Collymore Literary Award of 2008 for Redemption in Indigo, and then won it again in 2009 for a science fiction novel called The Best of All Possible Worlds. REDEMPTION IN INDIGO was released last week.

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Please tell us what REDEMPTION IN INDIGO is about and how you were inspired to write it.

Chapters 2, 3 and 4 of Redemption in Indigo are based on a West African folktale about a woman who leaves her husband. He comes looking for her and causes trouble, and she has to deal with him. Her happy-ever-after is based on the fact that he leaves again for good – quite the opposite of gaining Prince Charming, but still a happy ending in its own way. It was one of my favourite stories when I was little, and I liked her character so much that I decided to give her a larger story.

The entire book is about making choices, making mistakes, improving, and not giving up. It’s also about the problem of suffering, and the power of the ordinary. That sounds a bit heavy, so let me add that this all unfolds around a supernatural adversary, talking animals, an adventure-filled journey, love at first sight, fireworks, family and food!

Were the djombi (or undying ones, who are deity-like entities) inspired by any myths, or are they your own invention?

They were inspired by every myth. Jumbies. Djinni. Wood, water, earth and animal spirits in mythologies around the world. And quantum mechanics. Imagine sentient groupings of subatomic particles and forces … but branes, not brains!

I took the baccou name from a Caribbean legend, but I adapted it to fit my story.

REDEMPTION IN INDIGO won the Frank Collymore Literary Award for 2008. Could you tell us about that?

It’s one of the most coveted literary awards in Barbados. Frank Collymore was a teacher, author, poet and editor, well known for his own work and for promoting the work of other writers in the region, like Derek Walcott, Kamau Brathwaite, George Lamming and Austin Clarke, among others. You can read more about him and the award here:

http://www.fch.org.bb/fch/fcdata.shtml

I was advised to enter by Dr Peter Laurie (published author, diplomat, former colleague), who had given me excellent advice when I was reshaping my first draft. I’d already had the manuscript rejected by about four publishers and one agent, so I was mainly hoping for feedback. I certainly didn’t expect to win.

How did REDEMPTION IN INDIGO come to be published?

I have to thank Nalo Hopkinson for that. She posted the news about the award on the Carl Brandon Society blog (http://blog.carlbrandon.org/2009/01/barbados-frank-collymore-prize-goes-to.html). I think it caught her eye that the winning manuscript was a fantasy novel. I was shocked and delighted to see my picture on the Carl Brandon blog! I emailed her my thanks. Small Beer Press later contacted me through her and asked to have a look at the manuscript. They read it and they accepted it!

You also won the 2009 Frank Collymore Award for a science fiction novel named The Best of all Possible Worlds. Is it going to be published any time soon, or if you have anything else that we could look forward to?

I hope to get The Best of All Possible Worlds published soon.  I’ve also got about 45 000 words written of the sequel to Redemption in Indigo, and I’m pushing to finish and edit that before the end of the year so it can go out to publishers as well.

You break some so-call writing rules in REDEMPTION IN INDIGO, such a speaking directly to the reader. But it works so well, and the narrator has as much personality as anyone else in the story. How did you decide to tell the story in this unorthodox manner?

I didn’t realise I was breaking rules! I thought I was following convention. It’s an old storytelling trick, to address the audience from time to time. I wrote it that way because it’s a folktale at heart, and folktales are always told by storytellers, not novelists. Even C. S. Lewis does it in the Narnia Chronicles, like when he pauses the story to tell his young readers/listeners that it is very, very foolish to step into a wardrobe and close the door behind you.

Do you have a favorite part of REDEMPTION IN INDIGO, or a part that was a particular joy to write?

As much as I love my main characters, I really enjoy the side scenes with the minor characters. The parts that are tied for favourite are the Storyteller and Kwame talking in the village courtyard, and the Trickster buying a round for Rahid and Pei in a town bar. But I also like when the Trickster first encounters Kwame, and when Kwame finally meets Paama. Perhaps it’s the wonder of first-meetings, especially meetings between strangers who already have a connection and may not even realise it.

Why did you write such a short novel?

The first draft was planned out and written for NaNoWriMo, which is why it’s so close to 50 000 words.

Please tell us a little about yourself. What inspired you to start writing? What books were especially influential to you?

Voracious reader. Fast reader. Always reading at the dinner table, read all the books assigned for Eng Lit before term began, spent all my allowance on books. When my mother realised that, she gave me a book allowance, quadruple the original amount. She also got the Caribbean Examinations Council’s reading list, and gradually bought me almost every book on the list from year one to year four (ages 11-14). That’s a lot of books. It was a great list, with lots of Caribbean authors: Andrew Salkey, Edgar Mittelholzer, Samuel Selvon.

Year five we didn’t worry so much about because by then I was choosing and buying my own books. Speculative fiction galore, starting from the Narnia Chronicles, moving into Tolkien’s Middle Earth, checking out Ray Bradbury’s surreal alternate 1950s of rockets, Martian colonies and unusual people. Mind you, Ray Bradbury and John Wyndham (The Chrysalids, The Midwich Cuckoos, The Day of the Triffids, Chocky) were already on the schools’ reading list. Add to that Asimov and Clarke in the school library (also borrowed and lent between friends), and Diana Wynne Jones, Ursula Le Guin and Madeleine L’Engle in the Public Library. Should I mention the X-Men? Why not. There were some great stories in those early 1980s issues.

Reading inspired me to write. It was almost impossible not to go from one to the other.

Which books were influential? So many. Better to say which authors. C. S. Lewis – not just for Narnia, but for a lot of his later works, both fiction and non-fiction. Till We Have Faces is my favourite Lewis, and possibly my favourite novel. Ray Bradbury for the humanity in his stories. The short story ‘The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit’ is a classic. You’ll find it in his speculative fiction anthologies, but the only magic there is the magic of people learning to become fully themselves.

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You can purchase REDEMPTION IN INDIGO here. Karen has promised to come by every now and then to reply to comments, so if you’d like to chat with Karen, or if you can think of a question I neglected to ask, please do so in the comments.

Liz Fichera is an author living in the American Southwest by way of Chicago.  She likes to write stories about ordinary people who do extraordinary things, oftentimes against the backdrop of Native American legends.  When she’s not plotting her next novel, you can find her hanging out on Facebook and Twitter, dishing about writing, books, LOST reruns, and the best brands of chocolate.  Please visit her web site at http://www.lizfichera.com/.

Liz’s novel appealed to me because I used to live in Arizona and I’ve visited many of the same places she has, many times. Reading her novel will be like visiting my former home!

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Your main characters are Hohokam Indians.  Please tell us about the Hohokam and how they inspired your historical romance debut, CAPTIVE SPIRIT.

Well, first of all, CAPTIVE SPIRIT is set at the dawn of the sixteenth century in what we now know as Arizona in the American Southwest.  The Hohokam Indians are considered the original inhabitants of the Sonoran Desert, particularly to Phoenix, Arizona.  They arrived around 300 BC from ancient Mayan and Aztec cultures and existed peacefully as farmers and master canal builders until around 1500 AD when their population vanished for reasons unknown.  And that’s the little-known piece of history that inspired me to write CAPTIVE SPIRIT and include it as a storyline in my novel.  Why would the Hohokam vanish? There are lots of theories—fire, famine, drought, migration, war—but no one knows for sure.

Please give us a teaser about CAPTIVE SPIRIT.  What’s it about?

Here’s the back cover summary:

Sonoran Desert. Dawn of the sixteenth century.

Aiyana isn’t like the other girls of the White Ant Clan. Instead of keeping house, she longs to compete on the Ball Court with her best friend Honovi and the other boys. Instead of marriage, she daydreams of traveling beyond the mountains that surround her small village. Only Honovi knows and shares her forbidden wish, though Aiyana doesn’t realize her friend has a secret wish of his own…

When Aiyana’s father arranges her marriage to a man she hardly knows, she takes the advice of a tribal elder: Run! In fleeing, she falls into the hands of Spanish raiders and finds herself being taken over the mountains against her will. Now Aiyana’s on a quest to return to the very place she once dreamed of escaping. And she’ll do whatever it takes to survive and find her way back to the people she loves.

The book trailer for CAPTIVE SPIRIT will also give you a good sense of the setting, along with some additional cool photos of Hohokam petroglyphs and the Sonoran Desert where the story takes place.  Plus, I think the music that accompanies it is pretty awesome.  J  Many of the shots in the book trailer were taken near my home.

Tell us about the names of your characters in CAPTIVE SPIRIT.  How did you come up with them?

All of the characters in the book are Native American with the exception of three.  Naturally, I chose Native American names for the others and I chose them based on their meanings.  Aiyana, the heroine in the story, her name means “Eternal Blossom.”  Honovi, Aiyana’s love interest, his name means “Strong Deer.”  Then there’s Eyota, Chenoa, Sinopa, and Manaba and many others.  Each name means something special.  J  I got lucky with Aiyana, though.  Not only do I think the name is lovely but its meaning is just as lovely.  Perfect for a heroine.  She definitely grew into her name.

Do you have any favorite parts of CAPTIVE SPIRIT that we can look for as we read?

If I had to pick a favorite, I’d say that I love the part when Aiyana, Honovi, and Diego meet up with the Apache.  Writing the chapters with the Apache was a blast.  There was so much tension and build-up in those scenes.  My fingers practically exploded getting the words onto the page.  And it took place in an entirely new setting, much different than the Sonoran Desert that Aiyana was used to.

How about any parts that were difficult to write?

CAPTIVE SPIRIT was just one of those stories that flew into my laptop from my fingertips.  It was like I could see the story in my head and I couldn’t get it on the page fast enough.  I love it when that happens! I could immediately “see” my characters too, their personalities, conflicts, idiosyncrasies.  So, the first draft was relatively easy.  All of the editing and fine-tuning that followed was a little more tedious and difficult but that’s par for the course.

Did you try to sell any other novels before CAPTIVE SPIRIT?

At the time I wrote CAPTIVE SPIRIT, my agent was trying to sell a young adult novel that I had written and loved dearly.  And that young adult novel was getting kicked in the teeth and rejected by editors all over the place, unfortunately.  I tend to write stories that are out of the norm—my young adult novel did not include the currently very popular vampires, werewolves, zombies, and fae.  While I love a good vampire story as much as the next person, that’s not what my heart desires to write.

How difficult was CAPTIVE SPIRIT to sell?

Carina Press was the only publisher that I queried about CAPTIVE SPIRIT.  I queried Angela James last January when I saw a tweet where she said they were “hungry for historicals.”  I figured it was a sign.  By March, she called to tell me Carina Press was interested in buying my novel.  I got lucky.  Selling CAPTIVE SPIRIT was pretty easy.  And working with Carina Press has been a dream.

Why Carina Press? Why digital books?

Well, for starters, I love how Carina Press is not afraid to shake up the traditional publishing model.  Their motto intrigued me from the start: “Where no great story goes untold.”  They seemed less about trends and more about publishing stories and good writing.  Plus I think that it’s only a matter of time before more and more people begin reading books on e-readers.  I don’t think that hardcovers and paperbacks are going to disappear overnight but I do think demand for them will decrease while people will opt for the convenience and cost of e-books, especially as the cost of e-readers continues to plummet.  It’s already happening.

Which e-reader do you own?

I went for the Nook.  And I love it.  At first, I didn’t think I’d warm up to an e-reader.  But I said the same thing about email years ago too! Things change.

Final question: Tell us about yourself.

I live in Phoenix, Arizona, although I was born and raised in Park Ridge, Illinois, just outside of Chicago.  I never in a million years thought I’d wind up living in the desert but here I am.  And I love it.  I write full-time, although I teach the occasional writing class at a local college near my home.  When I’m not writing, I like to travel (money and time permitting), visit museums, support local theatre, and I’m one of those freakazoids who actually likes to run and hike in the desert.  But it balances out my chocolate habit.

Giveaway!

Liz is here to answer your questions, and she’ll give a copy of CAPTIVE SPIRIT to a random commenter.