A five-book series, focusing on the end of the ancient avian-serpiente war.
The process that ended with the Kiesha’Ra Series’ creation was a rather drawn-out one, but more than any other book I have written, I believe I can trace its inspiration.My avian elavie first appeared in my work in 1998, when I began a novel set in present day called Birds of Prey. The most specific inspiring source I can pinpoint would probably be James Patterson’s When the Wind Blows. I don’t want to give away too much of the storyline of that book (which I would recommend to anyone who likes mystery/governmental cover-up type stories), but it deals with a group of children that have been genetically engineered so they have wings. I have a fondness for winged images, and that one specifically struck me, and ended up inspiring the Demi forms of my avian elavie. I had previously written werewolves (though they aren’t in anything published), but didn’t know of any bird shapeshifters at the time, and thought it might be fun to experiment. Birds of Prey was also the novel that introduced me to my serpiente elavie, specifically, the Cobriana.
The next part of the saga brings us back two hundred years in Nyeusigrube’s timeline, and into 2000 in ours. During the time of Midnight’s first reign (I’m assuming you’ve read Midnight Predator here, or else you probably have no idea what I’m talking about), the avian and serpiente elavie, while mostly independent, were still forced to acknowledge Midnight as the greater power. Though I had been introduced to the idea of Midnight in Midnight Predator, my first exploration of the original was Ebony, told through the eyes of one of the Cobriana Arami. One of the minor characters in Ebony, a hawk who had been a slave in Midnight for ten years, became the protagonist of the next book in that series, Aureate. Between those two novels, I learned bits and pieces of the history between these two races. I wondered about it.
While simultaneously working on Aureate and the third in the trilogy that began with Birds of Prey, I began working on Hawksong. This was spring, 2001. Mostly, I began the novel because I wanted to know the histories of the characters I had already written. I wanted to know why these cultures were the way they were. I wanted to know who this “Danica” was.
(Oddly, Danica is one of my oldest characters, though Hawksong was a more recent book. I remember writing her name on the side of a desk in white chalk, so I would remember it, in eighth grade. Her personality grew slowly over the years, before I had any idea who she was. My friend Riana still calls her “chalk girl.” Darien, who you will meet in Falcondance, was another character like that—I knew her long before I knew why.)
I don’t know what in my personal life inspired the story behind Hawksong., aside from the scant knowledge I knew about their descendants, but there are many dynamics in this world that added to it, especially when I began to do heavy editing in September, 2001.
Can anyone blame me that I started to wonder about the nature of war? About why hatred began, and what it would take to end it? Danica Shardae and Zane Cobriana are two individuals who, at the beginning of Hawksong., hate each other purely because that is what their cultures have always done. They don’t understand each other. They don’t bother to try. They simply war.
Until one of them gets angry enough, frustrated enough, to say, “This has to stop.” Finally, despite their fears, they start to fight against thousands of years of hatred in an attempt to keep the needless killing from continuing.
It’s probably a familiar story. Hatred is a too familiar story in our society. The hope beyond it, of two people from opposite realms coming together to bridge that gap, is also a very common theme. The question that Zane and Danica ponder, Aren’t we more than our animal forms? is the same question that has been asked historically a thousand times. Are we defined by the color of our skin? Our religion? Our sexuality? Our gender? Our birthplace? Our language? And do we really have the right to say our way is better than another’s? Do we have the right to kill another person because one of those traits is different?
I don’t write with the attempt to moralize. I don’t write with the specific intention of imparting a “deeper meaning.” But my beliefs do show through in my writing. You can read my work just to enjoy a pretty story and I think that too has its value-- but another meaning is there for anyone who wants to see it. That’s true of all my works. The Kiesha’Ra series specifically speaks to ideas I hold very strongly.