The Promised One, the first novel in the Cherokee Mists fantasy series by renowned writers Win and Meredith Blevins brings Cherokee myths to life.
Welcome to SFFWorld, many thanks for giving us some time here. The Promised One is the first novel in your Cherokee Mists fantasy series. Can you tell us a bit about it?
I wanted to do something entirely new to me, and knew that readers and people in the book world didn’t associate me with fantasy. Actually, I had written a previous fantasy novel, RavenShadow, in which a contemporary Lakota man time-travels back to Wounded Knee. He knew he needed healing, and hoped to find it in knowing what actually happened to his ancestors during the massacre there. He found what he was looking for. Though that book wasn’t promoted as fantasy, the Mythopoeic Society noticed that it was, and made it a finalist for their Tolkien award that year.
Why Cherokees? Why a thousand years ago? It’s easier to persuade an audience to believe in the power of magic if the setting is far away or long ago—witness the King Arthur stories and all the grand Celtic stories. So back in time for this story. Since I’m about half Cherokee, why not my own ancestors? Also, going a thousand years back in time limited the amount of research that needed doing. There’s very little archeological literature about the Cherokees of that place in time.
I started with the premise that their culture would somehow be a grandfather to the Cherokee culture we do know about (and we know a great deal), so would be similar in spirit. Otherwise I was free to invent their world.
Can you give us some insight into your main protagonist, Dahzi?
Dahzi is a hero of a certain archetype. Tales of a person promised to be born to a people as their savior abound in human stories from the oldest times to the most recent. Jesus of Nazareth would only be the most conspicuous example.
I had reservations about the title Zadayi Red and so have issued it under the new title The Promised One, which sounds out the theme of the novel.
I guess your own background is part of your fascination to bring Native American myths and folklore to life, but is there more to it?
My life and experience demand that I speak my truth about these matters. I am a carrier of the sacred pipe, a leader of the sweat lodge ceremony, a vision quester, a sun dancer, and more. These experiences convinced me that the view of the world that modern science gives us is far too reductive. In particular, its utter skepticism about “magic” and visions is a complete mistake. I don’t “believe” in magic and visions, I know them from first-hand experience. And people want to believe in magic, prophesy, and so on, as though such knowledge is born into us. So I want to create worlds like that. Right now I’m writing a novel in which someone returns from the dead to help my main character.
What are your plans for the series?
First, since we have the rights back from the original publisher, we’re re-publishing the books, one with a new title and new cover, and we’ll give both the promotion they should have had originally.
Then I’d love to write more books in the Cherokee Mists series. I like living in that world (and a novelist does just that in his head when he’s writing). Its second book, Shadows in the Cave, was named by the big trade magazine Kirkus as one of top five fantasies of its year, but the publisher ignored the book and it didn’t get the notice it deserved. I’m sure I’ll get back to doing Cherokee Mists, but right now am experimenting with writing novels that have a big fantasy element and are set in contemporary times, especially the Navajo world. Meredith and I live among the Navajos.
How different do you find working together on a project like this compared to writing everything on your own? How do you divide the work?
Meredith and I started out writing our own books separately. Then she rewrote one of my novels, Moonlight Water (a contemporary story with magic), and did it so extensively and beautifully that I felt that she deserved co-credit. We’ve continued to do books that way. One of us writes a complete draft of a story, and the other makes some changes and adds a lot of good stuff to it. So we work separately but share credit.
When you work on a new idea, do you tend to work from one key idea that you then refine, or do you spend a long time maturing ideas and mixing them together until you find something that works?
I try to work simply. I start out with a single idea, such as this: a very young man who lives in Pennsylvania in the 1820s is stunned by such a terrible event that he feels he has to run away from home. Naturally, at that time he would decide to go west and make a new life. What’s the event? What happens to him on this adventure? I start without knowing. (This example is from my novel So Wild a Dream.)
That’s important to me. I begin with an act of faith that page one will open the door to page two, etc. I know the world he will find on the way west, and the world of the far West at that time. I trust my imagination to come up with things in that playground that surprise even me.
I don’t outline, I don’t plan. To me, doing that would close doors in advance. I work every day with nothing but the sketchiest of ideas what will happen, and take delight is discovering what does happen.
Do you do a lot of research for your projects such as these when they are founded on myths and history?
I’ve done a lot of research on the worlds I write in. I steeped myself for several years in history of the very early American West, before the settlers came. I also moved to Wyoming so I could walk the land and ride the rivers before I wrote my novel about Crazy Horse. I spent years steeping myself in Lakota culture before I wrote that book. When I’m writing in the contemporary world, it’s easier, because I live here. But I still must do research, and observe carefully. Eighteen years ago we moved to the edge of the Navajo reservation, partly it’s an enchanting place, and partly because I wanted to write about the contemporary Navajo world, and the worlds of the other Indian people who live nearby.
What is your favorite and least favorite part of the writing process, and why? Do you feel you are complementing each other in any of these aspects?
My favorite part is sitting at my computer and letting my imagination drive my fingers—I hope making them run wild. Every day I hope to astonish myself, to write something that makes my own feelings explode like geysers, and my real self stand up and wave flags. My least favorite parts are coping with the business of writing and going on tour. Praise be that Meredith likes the business of writing and is terrific at it.
What’s next? What projects are you working on at the moment?
My big project of the moment is a story with the provisional title Going Home. It’s about a writer in his early seventies whose wife dies. He’s from Hannibal MO (where I went to college) and has lived his entire life on the Mississippi (as I did until adulthood). His grief has put a stop to his writing, and is choking off all his pleasure in life. So his dead wife sends—guess who!—Mark Twain back from the world beyond to help him heal. They make a steamboat trip down the Mississippi together and . . .
That is kind of contemporary fantasy I want to write.
If anyone would like to get in touch, please do. You can find us on the web at www.meredithandwinblevins.com.
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Interview by Dag Rambraut – SFFWorld.com © 2016
