Gail Martin, Dreamspinner Communications The Allure of the Outlaw By Gail Z. Martin
What is it about bad boys, girls who break the rules, and outlaws that hooks us into stories over and over again?
Maybe part of it’s wish fulfillment–a chance to escape the confines of ‘appropriate’ behavior by proxy without fearing the consequences. Perhaps some of it is trying out our rebel wings before we fully commit to burning bridges. Often, it’s just sweet to see the outsider win, the outcast show everyone up, the misfit save the world.
Think about some of the outlaws we love the best: the crew of the Serenity, Captain Jack Harkness, Han Solo, the Winchester Brothers, Butch and Sundance, the Doctor, and even, eventually, the command team of Babylon 5 and many more. They do the right thing, even if it’s in the wrong way, even if their methods don’t fit with what society expects. We wish we had their courage, and sometimes, we do.
In my Chronicles of the Necromancer/Fallen Kings Cycle, we saw a couple of kinds of exiles. Prince Martris (Tris) Drayke became an exile along with his friends when Tris’s half-brother seized the crown and killed the king. Jonmarc Vahanian went on the run after raiders murdered his family and he double-crossed a vyash moru blood mage. Cam and Carina’s father threw them out of their home because of Carina’s magic and the bad luck thought to accompany twins.
The Ascendant Kingdoms Saga finds disgraced lord Blaine McFadden exiled to the Velant prison in the harsh arctic expanse of Edgeland for a murder he doesn’t regret. His circle of close friends–Kestel, Dawe, Piran and Verran–have been sent into exile for their own crimes. When they return to a devastated homeland where even magic no longer works, they find themselves strangers in a hostile land.
Scourge is the first book in my new Darkhurst series for Solaris Books (launching July 15). Undertaker brothers Corran, Rigan and Kell Valmonde become outlaws when they refuse to obey the laws forbidding them from killing the monsters that are murdering friends and neighbors, and that would kill or jail Rigan for his unsanctioned ability with magic. It’s medieval monster hunters in a corrupt and dangerous system. It’s Supernatural meets Game of Thrones.
One of the things I think we like the best about outlaws is that they take risks and defy the powers that be in ways we often wish we could in the real world. They actually tell off the bully, fight against the unfair system, and bring about a rough sort of justice. We cheer for their victories because those wins are so hard to make happen in real life. Watching them win gives us hope, and makes us believe there is a reason to continue resisting.
Sometimes, the heroes we read about inspire us to do the right thing even if society disapproves. Whether it’s standing up for something who is being harassed, voting against laws that unjustly target vulnerable groups, or refusing to go along with an institutionalized injustice, our fictional heroes give us courage to be our better selves. There’s a little bit of outlaw in all of us.
Nathaniel Bishop: Edvin Endre http://www.imdb.com/name/nm5481344/mediaviewer/rm214560768 Nathaniel is a seventeen-year old indentured servant, working on a tobacco plantation in Maryland 1706. He’s tall, with a lean, muscular build from years of physical labor, his back and body badly scarred from years of abuse. He wears his long brown hair tied loosely back from his face, out of the way of his fiddle. Once, he had brown eyes. But when he rises from the grave, Tori observes that his eyes take on a “shade of green common in nature, but completely unnatural in the context of a human face.”
Emmeline Belle: Odeya Rush https://static.cinemagia.ro/img/db/actor/28/06/60/odeya-rush-646542l.jpg Emmeline Belle came to Maryland on the same ship as Nathaniel when they were children. She has long, wavy black hair and startlingly light gray eyes. Though her beauty was undeniably rare, her fierce personality, shameless immodesty, and rebellious spirit angered some and terrified others. She was often suspected of being a witch.
Ruth: Amandla Stenberg http://ell.h-cdn.co/assets/16/17/980×490/landscape-1461617059-gettyimages-507244236.jpg Ruth was a slave to Archibald and Dorothy Slaughter in the early 1700s. Having grown up alongside Nathaniel and Emmeline, even though she was Emmeline’s best friend they had very different personalities. Ruth was reserved and quiet, fearful of drawing attention or challenging the rules. She had dark brown eyes, high cheek bones, and a delicate build. She wore her curly hair tucked inside a white cap, and often pulled it low to cover a missing ear, which was cut off by Archibald Slaughter as punishment for a failed runaway attempt when she was fifteen.
Tori Burns: Willow Shields http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3094377/mediaviewer/rm3895869184 Tori Burns looks nothing like the rest of her family, a fact that bugs her more than she likes to admit. She wears her black hair cropped close to her head, longer in the front so her bangs shadow her eyes, and layers of dark clothes covering most of her skin. She’s not “goth”, but whatever. Let people assume whatever they want about her. She doesn’t much care.
Jesse Slaughter: Lucas Till http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1395771/mediaviewer/rm439793920 Jesse is the blond-haired, blue-eyed boy next door. Literally. Tori’s family inherited a strange piece of land right in the middle of his parent’s farm, making Tori his new neighbor. The son of Dorothy and Alistair Slaughter, Jesse is the town golden-boy. Smart, popular, destined for a big inheritance and a bright future. . . until Tori’s family showed up and ruined everything.
Alistair Slaughter: Mark Wahlberg http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000242/mediaviewer/rm434810880 Jesse’s father is a pillar of the community, from a long line of farmers and philanthropists. The salt of the earth, everyone knows he’d give anyone from Chaptico the shirt off his back. . . that is, if their family had lived their long enough, and if he felt they deserved it. As far as he’s concerned, the Burnses haven’t earned anything that belongs to him. Strong, stern, and quick to pull the trigger on his temper, he doesn’t plan to make their stay in his family’s home a comfortable one. Or a long one.
Dorothy Slaughter: Liv Tyler http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000239/mediaviewer/rm913100032 Jesse’s mom, Dorothy (please, call her Dot) is proud of her home and family. It shows in the way she keeps everything in perfect order, from the tasteful décor in her living room to her modest hair and make-up to the pristine hem of her perfectly pressed skirt. Her family is highly respected in the community, a community that has centered around their generations-old farm since the founders of Chaptico first set foot in this county. And even if things aren’t going quite as she planned for her family since the Burnses came to town, she’ll do everything she can to keep up appearances and take care of her family.
Matilda Rice: Alfre Woodard http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005569/mediaviewer/rm2864366080 Matilda Rice has lived in Chaptico her whole life, just like the rest of her family have all the way back to Emmeline’s time. She should know. Hunched over her cane on her rickety front porch overlooking Slaughter Farm, she and Emmeline talk quite often. Truth be told, they talk a lot more than Matilda would like. Especially now that Nathaniel’s come back. Most people think she’s just old and senile, mumbling to herself and seeing things that aren’t there through her cataract-clouded eyes. As the bridge between the past and the present, Matilda sees a lot more than people realize. And definitely more than the Slaughters want her to know.
Archibald and Elizabeth Slaughter: Colin Farrell and Jessica Chastain http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0268199/mediaviewer/rm2649147136 Wealthy and powerful, the Slaughters lorded over Slaughter Plantation from the late 1600s until it burned in 1706. After the plantation was restored and the structures rebuilt, the land was passed down to Slaughter’s son.
About The Suffering Tree: “It’s dark magic brings him back.”
Tori Burns and her family left D.C. for claustrophobic Chaptico, Maryland, after suddenly inheriting a house under mysterious circumstances. That inheritance puts her at odds with the entire town, especially Jesse Slaughter and his family-it’s their generations-old land the Burns have “stolen.” As the suspicious looks and muttered accusations of her neighbors build, so does the pressure inside her, and Tori returns to the pattern of self-harm that landed her in a hospital back in D.C. It all comes to a head one night when, to Tori’s shock, she witnesses a young man claw his way out of a grave under the gnarled oak in her new backyard.
Nathaniel Bishop may not understand what brought him back, but it’s clear to Tori that he hates the Slaughters for what they did to him centuries ago. Wary yet drawn to him by a shared sense of loss, she gives him shelter. But in the wake of his arrival comes a string of troubling events-including the disappearance of Jesse Slaughter’s cousin-that seem to point back to Nathaniel.
As Tori digs for the truth-and slowly begins to fall for Nathaniel-she uncovers something much darker in the tangled branches of the Slaughter family tree. In order to break the curse that binds Nathaniel there and discover the true nature of her inheritance, Tori must unravel the Slaughter family’s oldest and most guarded secrets. But the Slaughters want to keep them buried at any cost.
Courtesy of Disney-Hyperion, I have a copy of The Suffering Tree by Elle Cosimano (as well as other goodies!) for one (1) lucky winner!
Contest is open to US residents only. No PO Boxes please. To enter, just fill out the form below. Contest ends June 30. I’ll draw a name on July 1, and notify winner via email.
Guest Post: “Who are your influences?”by Marshall Ryan Maresca
Any artist of any stripe gets asked this question, and I know for me, it’s always challenging to come up with a coherent answer. My influences come from so many places, different mediums. It all filters into my head and percolates in my subconscious to create the sweet, dark brew that I write. It’s not always easy to say, “That, that’s where that comes from.”
Not always.
However, in the case of The Holver Alley Crew, it’s pretty easy. Not the heist-story influences, though many of those are probably pretty evident. No, I’m talking about the influence on the feel of the book; its soul.
“Have you got soul? Then Dublin’s hardest working band is looking for you.”
The Commitments is possibly one of my favorite movies ever. If you’ve never seen it, I highly recommend you stop right now and go find it on Netflix or something and dig in.
I’ll wait.
All right, back?
The Commitments is full of the sense of place that I wanted to capture with The Holver Alley Crew, as well as the sense of desperate people coming together to form a group to achieve something greater as a team than they ever could individually. Of course, in The Holver Alley Crew they’re coming together for crime and revenge, rather than music—but the spirit is the same.
Because they’re people who life has beat down, and in coming together, in doing something, they give themselves hope.
“You’re missin’ the point. The success of the band was irrelevant – you raised their expectations of life, you lifted their horizons. Sure we could have been famous and made albums and stuff, but that would have been predictable. This way it’s poetry.”
It’s a movie where the impoverished and rundown Dublin is very much the main character. People know each other, they support each other—unless they’re screaming at each other and trying to crack their skulls open. There’s pride in where they’re from, even if it’s a s***heap, because it’s their s***heap. This is what I tried to invoke in creating the West Maradaine neighborhood of North Seleth.
My Holver Alley characters—the Rynax brothers, the Kesser cousins, Kennith, Mila and Almer—they’ve been discarded and stepped on throughout their lives, especially after the fire that destroys Holver Alley.
And, of course, for them, the heists and thieving is their art. It’s as much what they do and how they express themselves as the music is for the band in The Commitments.
Soul is the music people understand. Sure it’s basic and it’s simple. But it’s something else ’cause, ’cause, ’cause it’s honest, that’s it. It’s honest. There’s no f****’ bull****. It sticks its neck out and says it straight from the heart. Sure there’s a lot of different music you can get off on but soul is more than that. It takes you somewhere else. It grabs you … and lifts you above the s****.
And that’s what they’re doing for themselves in Holver Alley Crew—lifting themselves above. But, you know, with knives and crossbows instead of soul and song.
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Courtesy of DAW, I have a copy of The Holver Alley Crew by Marshall Ryan Maresca for one (1) lucky winner!
Contest is open to US residents only. No PO Boxes please. To enter, just fill out the form below. Contest ends March 24. I’ll draw a name on March 25, and notify winner via email.
