Hello folks.
After reading several reviews and becoming more and more inquisitive about Selah Janel's OLDE SCHOOL novel, I corresponded with this talented writer and author. Always interested in what makes other writers tick, and why they do what they do, and what their latest book(s) is about, I asked the following questions with the following responses from the author.
PW:WoHF: Why do you
write? For fame and fortune? Simply want to be read? If you don't get the muse out
you'll explode? Why do you do this crazy thing? :)
SJ: I write so that the ideas don’t eat my face off
when I fall asleep at night.
Seriously, it’s because I have to. I’ve always
been prone to stories of all sorts, ever since I was a kid. They may have taken
the forms of daydreams or playing pretend or mapping out elaborate adventures
for my Barbies and My Little Ponies to go on, but I craved stories the way some
kids crave candy bars, a later bedtime and less parental supervision.
Maybe
it’s me trying to make sense of the world or all the emotions that filter through
me on a given day.
Maybe it’s that I see so much possibility around me, so many
wonderful “what if’s” lurking behind an everyday façade…for whatever reason I
feel the need to dig deeper and just explore all of it. I full well know I’ll
never get to everything, but I’d like to think that I can at least do the ideas
that I can get to some justice.
Writing, storytelling, for me is a need, a
passion, a drive that’s hard to fully describe or name. It’s not necessarily
about escapism or trying to be famous…it’s wanting to share all the cool things
in my head and heart with those around me in the hope that maybe it will get
people talking and exploring their own ideas and imaginations.
I feel like at
some point a lot of people have given themselves rules for being creative, or
think that it’s only something certain people do. I write because I want people
to get lost in the things I explore and realize that it’s okay to get lost,
it’s okay to think and ponder, it’s okay to feel.
PW:WoHF: OLDE SCHOOL
is a conglomeration of, in your own words, fantasy, paranormal, urban
fantasy, horror, and comedy...and fairy tales. Is there a genre you wrote
within first and foremost when you started, or have you always liked to blend
things up a bit?
SJ: I think it’s always depended on the story. When I
first started out, though, I would think of an idea and very purposefully be
“Okay, well this should be horror. This will have to be sci-fi. This is
fantasy.” Which is fine, but when I go back to those early pieces they are
really stilted and borderline formulaic. I stand by most of my concepts, but I
think I was trying too hard to do things the “right” way, and for me that line
of thought wrecks a story.
Throughout that process I had started journaling (a
habit that I employ off and on still), but I would take a page from Ray
Bradbury and either jot down things that I was passionate about or things I
noticed or felt in the day to day. Those prompts started to inspire ideas or
concepts and I would just sit down and write. I wouldn’t try to make them
anything or slant them any one way. Was it a magic hack into getting myself
instantly published? Hell no, because I still had a lot to learn about
structure and characters and all the rest.
Still, it really started to give me
a sense of freedom and a confidence that I didn’t have when I was trying to fit
a mold or “be” in any certain genre. I started to realize that I could take
what I loved about different things and just write what’s best for the idea.
These days, unless it’s for a specific call, I rarely sit
down and slant an idea to a certain genre. I don’t like being put in boxes and
while I’ll admit genres help for marketing, if I go in consciously writing for
one, it affects things, and not always for the better. Personally, I feel like
if I have a concept or an idea in my head and other elements from other genres
want to get in on the party, why not invite them?
Life is not one thing at a
time. Emotions are not one dimensional. There are many layers to happiness,
grief, anger, passion. Humans are complicated, emotional creatures and life is
a complicated process so why should stories be any different?
Olde School started out as a short story idea and went
through a very long evolution, but it got better the more liberties I gave
myself. From the get go I had wanted a fantasy-type story, but I’d also wanted
to defy the “roles” that specific creatures or people usually play. Why can’t I
have the young girl be a conniving person? Why can’t the troll be the hero? Why
can’t the whole society combine modern technology with fantasy tropes?
To me,
as long as I can make things make some amount of sense and give them a fair
amount of “truth,” I have no problem going off in different directions. It’s
amazing to me that so many fairy tale or folk tale elements are close to
horror, and not just in the “people get tortured” kind of way. There are some
very creepy plot elements in a lot of those tales, yet I also fully admit it’s
kind of hilarious to put some of that horror through a fairy tale filter.
For
me, it was important that Olde School embrace all these different genres and
traits and be something fairly unique, but to not take itself too seriously.
The characters regularly call out different tropes or clichés for what they
are, they will absolutely point out if something is ridiculous. To me that just
adds to the fun.
It can be a hard balance, to be sure, but I’d much rather be
knee-deep in something that’s going to keep me on my toes than something that’s
rehashing the same old thing. I get that there’s comfort in the familiar, but I
also think that there are ways to take the tropes and genres we’re comfortable
with and dust them off and play with them. It’s like a mint in the box action
figure. Sure, it’s awesome that you have it and it’s totally respectable to
leave it as it is.
For better or worse I’ve always been the type of person to
rip those boxes open so I could get my paws all over the figures inside. Genres
are kind of the same way with me. I don’t expect everyone to agree or love my
habit, but it’s the way I have to be. If I really want to play with the action
figure, I’m not going to leave it sitting on the shelf in the hopes that maybe
someday I’ll do something with it. If the story wants to incorporate a lot of
elements, I’m not going to edit those out because they’re against genre and you
just don’t do that. I’m going to ask why not and see if it’s possible. If it
really doesn’t work, fine, but I’ve found that more often than not, people are
more willing to go along with a mix of things, as long as they’re blended well
and it’s not a hot mess that’s slopping all over the place. If all the elements
contribute to a tight story with relatable characters that keep a reader intrigued,
why not do what needs to be done, whether it’s typical for the genre or not?
###
Olde School by Selah
Janel
Book One of the Kingdom
City Chronicles
Available at:
Genres:
Cross-Genre: Fantasy, Fairy/Folktale, Paranormal, Urban Fantasy,
Horror
Kingdom City has moved into the modern era. Run by a lord
mayor and city council (though still under the influence of the High King of
The Land), it proudly embraces a blend of progress and tradition. Trolls,
ogres, and other Folk walk the streets with humans, but are more likely to be
entrepreneurs than cause trouble. Princesses still want to be rescued, but they
now frequent online dating services to encourage lords, royals, and politicians
to win their favor. The old stories are around, but everyone knows they’re just
fodder for the next movie franchise. Everyone knows there’s no such thing as
magic. It’s all old superstition and harmless tradition.
Bookish, timid, and more likely to carry a laptop than a
weapon, Paddlelump Stonemonger is quickly coming to wish he’d never put a toll
bridge over Crescent Ravine. While his success has brought him lots of gold,
it’s also brought him unwanted attention from the Lord Mayor. Adding to his
frustration, Padd’s oldest friends give him a hard time when his new maid seems
inept at best and conniving at worst. When a shepherd warns Paddlelump of
strange noises coming from Thadd Forest, he doesn’t think much of it.
Unfortunately for him, the history of his land goes back further than anyone
can imagine. Before long he’ll realize that he should have paid attention to
the old tales and carried a club.
Darkness threatens to overwhelm not only Paddlelump, but the
entire realm. With a little luck, a strange bird, a feisty waitress, and some
sturdy friends, maybe, just maybe, Padd will survive to eat another meal at
Trip Trap’s diner. It’s enough to make the troll want to crawl under his
bridge, if he can manage to keep it out of the clutches of greedy politicians
Selah Janel has been blessed with a giant imagination since
she was little and convinced that fairies lived in the nearby state park or
vampires hid in the abandoned barns outside of town. The many people around her
that supported her love of reading and curiosity probably made it worse. Her
e-books The Other Man, Holly and Ivy, and Mooner are published through Mocha Memoirs Press. Lost in the Shadows, a collection of
short stories celebrating the edges of ideas and the spaces between genres was
co-written with S.H. Roddey. Her work has also been included in The MacGuffin, The Realm Beyond, Stories for
Children Magazine, The Big Bad: an
Anthology of Evil, The Grotesquerie,
and Thunder on the Battlefield. Olde School is the first book in her new
series, The Kingdom City Chronicles, and is published through Seventh Star Press. She likes her music to rock, her
vampires lethal, her fairies to play mind games, and her princesses to hold
their own.
Facebook author page
– http://www.facebook.com/authorSJ
Twitter - http://www.twitter.com/SelahJanel
Amazon Author Page - http://www.amazon.com/Selah-Janel/e/B0074DKC9K
