I'm pleased to welcome to the Inkpot Morgan Keyes, whose debut mid-grade fantasy, Darkbeast, is in stores now! The premise of this novel - that every child has an animal companion he or she must kill before reaching adulthood - fascinated me as soon as I heard about it, so I leapt at the opportunity to ask Morgan some questions. And best of all, there is a giveaway for a free copy of Darkbeast - just comment to enter!
1. In your novel, every
child has a darkbeast who takes his or her negative emotions – and who the
child then kills before reaching adulthood. As a mother of three, I have to
admit I can’t imagine a child without strongly-expressed negative emotions! How
are the children in your book different from children we know, and how does
that affect the world they live in?
In many ways, Keara is a typical twelve-year-old girl. She has strong feelings about the world she
lives in, about all the injustice she witnesses (both not being allowed to eat
all the sweets she wants and being
required to sacrifice her darkbeast.)
She is on the cusp of assuming responsibility for her actions, for the
day-to-day choices that she makes, even when they affect others in the world
around her.
At the same time, Keara is different from many of the children in my
real-world life. She lives in poverty,
constantly on the edge of going without necessary food and clothes. In fact, her mother has hidden her from the
Primate's tax collector for the past year, because the family cannot pay her
annual head tax. As a result, Keara has
a deeply-rooted awareness of societal expectation – she knows that every one of
her choices will have an impact on her family, her darkbeast, and her village –
on all the people she truly loves.
2. Your main character’s
darkbeast, whom she loves too much to kill, is a raven. Ravens, of course, have
a long history in fantasy… was your choice of a raven deliberate?
Darkbeast grew out of a short
story that was originally written for an anthology where all the stories
involved children and animals. Alas,
when I spoke with the editor for that anthology, my first-choice animal (a
griffin) was already taken. Ultimately,
though, I'm thrilled to have chosen a raven.
I continue to be surprised by the number of ravens that appear in fantasy
literature and by their extremely varied personalities. In just the past month, I've read works with
ravens that are harbingers of doom (Poe's totemic raven, reread for approaching
Halloween), single-minded guards intent on murdering anyone with a hint of
magic (Tiffany Trent's Raven Guards, in The
Unnaturalists), and something rather more complicated (Jonathan Auxier's
birds in Peter Nimble and his Fantastic
Eyes, which begins with the image of an infant whose eyes have been plucked
out by ravens.)
Caw has the wit and wisdom of many of his brethren. He's a combination of pride and humility,
guiding Keara even as he is bound to follow her. Of course, Caw might be the hungriest of all ravens in literature; I
very much enjoyed layering in that aspect of his personality.
3. The idea of an animal
companion who forms a part of a person’s soul will, I suspect, inevitably draw
comparisons to The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman. Did Pullman’s book have
any influence on your work? How do you feel about those comparisons?
Of course, I've read Pullman's His
Dark Materials, and I loved Lyra and Pan and all the other human/daemon
pairs in that series. As I wrote Darkbeast, though, it never occurred to
me that I was writing a story that some readers would compare so directly.
Pullman's daemons are meant to complete their human companions, providing a
solidity and balance for life. That
"completeness" is represented by the animals' physical beauty and by
the gender opposition of animals and humans.
Daemons are a physical expression of a spiritual soul.
My darkbeasts, on the other hand, are despised creatures who represent
their hosts' most negative impulses.
Humans cannot wait to be freed from their bond, released from the
constant reminder of their weaknesses and their failings. Darkbeasts have far
more in common with the Biblical notions of "scapegoat" than of
"soul."
Pullman's novels are magical; when I first read them, I was fully drawn
into his words. I can only hope that the
readers of Darkbeast experience the
same sort of awakening to a world that might have been, some other place, some
other time.
I feel fortunate that none of my theatrical productions was ever shut down
by the authorities. And I never needed
to flee town because people disliked my shows.
But I folded my real-world theater experience into the sense of wonder that
Keara feels when she watches the Travelers perform. She sees theatrical tricks (a fire that burns
bright but does not consume the stage, a whisper that can be heard at the far
end of a village green), and she allows herself to be carried away on the tide
of excitement from those productions.
Keara's enchantment survives the moment when she learns some of the hard
truths of theater – there are costumes to be repaired, sets to be built,
blocking to be memorized and changed and memorized again… When I stage managed plays, I always hoped
that the audiences would leave the theater somewhat transformed. I wanted them to think about what they had
seen, about what the play meant, about how it was performed. And I think that Keara wants all those same
things.
Many thanks to Leah and the Enchanted Inkpot, for allowing
me to visit and tell you about my Darkbeast. Due to the generosity of my publisher, Simon
& Schuster, I will give away a copy of Darkbeast
to one commenter chosen at random from all the comments made to this post by
11:59 p.m. EDT October 31.
