The novels Island of Fog and Labyrinth of Fire are represented by Whitt Brantley Management and Talent, a Literary, Film and Television Agency.
Creatures of myth, magic, and imagination
We've all heard of dragons, ogres, goblins, elves and trolls. Many are familiar with griffins, sphinxes, harpies, the minotaur, and Medusa. Those with a greater interest in mythical creatures will have heard of manticores, basilisks, naiads and dryads, as well as the Naga and the Ouroboros. But there are so many mythical creatures, from so many cultures, and with so many variations and names, that it's virtually impossible to list them all in one place.
So I won't even try. But, as time goes on, and when I get a moment here and there, I'll add a post about some creature or another. The thing is, apart from the famous Greek, Roman and Egyptian legends that we all might have heard of, there are also regional legends that are not so familiar. A famous regional creature is Big Foot, or Sasquatch, in the northern parts of America... and the Abominable Snowman, or Yeti, is a similar monster found wandering the icy mountains of Tibet. (I firmly believe this creature is related to the Hoth Wampa in The Empire Strikes Back.) But whereas these are ones we've heard of, there's no end of region-based legends and creatures that the rest of the world might not have heard of. Where does it end?
I don't know where it ends but I do know where it starts, and that's with the creatures I've used (or thought about using) in my own books...
Manticores
Posted on February 2, 2010
Look, I can't help it – I'm a fan of manticores. Most people like dragons, others like centaurs and faeries and griffins and what-have-you. But I was always a bit partial to manticores, and so I had to include one in my Island of Fog series.
Traditionally they are composite beasts with "a blood-colored lion's body, the face of a man with blue eyes, and a tail resembling the sting of a scorpion." They are powerful beasts that "can leap great distances." The manticore eats human flesh and devours the clothing too; it's said that no trace of a victim is ever found. Its voice is "a whistle that sounds like a melody from pipes." Some say it can "shoot spines from its tail."
I always laugh at early depictions of mythical creatures, because they always look more ridiculous than frightening. I think it's just the way people used to draw in the olden days. Modern illustrations are much better! Whether they're accurate or not depends on which version of the creature you prefer – for instance, with or without wings.
According to a really ancient description: "It is said, that in India is a beast wonderly shapen, and is like to the bear in body and in hair, and to a man in face. And hath a right red head, and a full great mouth, and an horrible, and in either jaw three rows of teeth distinguished atween. The outer limbs thereof be as it were the outer limbs of a lion, and his tail is like to a wild scorpion, with a sting, and smiteth with hard bristle pricks as a wild swine, and hath an horrible voice, as the voice of a trumpet, and he runneth full swiftly, and eateth men. And among all beasts of the earth is none found more cruel, nor more wonderly shape, as Avicenna saith. And this beast is called Baricos in Greek."
The creature has a number of name variations including manticore and manticora (both common) as well as the older mantichora and mantikhoras. Basically it means "man-eater." Somewhere I read about the "man-tiger," which struck me as logical; after all, the beast is red-furred and savage like a lion, and "manticore" even sounds a little like "man-tiger." But whatever you call it, these creatures are pretty nasty!
I first met a manticore (or manticora in this case) when, back in the 1980s, I read A Spell for Chameleon by Piers Anthony. This is the first novel in the long-running Magic of Xanth series, and in this case the manticora was serving time as a guard at the Good Wizard Humphrey's castle. The creature wasn't really "used" much in the novel, though, and when I introduced a manticore into my own novel, Island of Fog, I wanted to make full use of its hideousness. My version has the blue eyes, the human face, the three rows of needle-like teeth, a ball of poison-tipped quills on the end of its scorpion tail that can fire across distances and bring down victims, and a deadly black stinger that protrudes from this ball of quills oozing thick yellow venom. My manticore has no wings though. I think that's going too far; my characters have to have a fighting chance against this monster!
One eerie aspect of the manticore is its high, fluty voice. I made use of this to describe the human aspect of the manticore in my book, as though the young shapeshifter (who is stuck in his manticore form) were trying to escape the monster he had become.
The manticore gets quite a bit of action in Island of Fog, but only a little bit in Labyrinth of Fire. But those who would like to see more of him, fear not – he will return with a vengeance in the third book, Mountain of Whispers.
Male harpies
Posted on August 29, 2009
To those who know anything about Greek mythology, the term "male harpies" might seem like an oxymoron. Half bird, half woman, harpies are nasty creatures – but female. Some pictures depict them as large birds with human heads, while others present them as a little more human-like. The "original" drawings suggest they look like this:
To quote from Wikipedia:
The harpies were sisters of Iris, daughters of Thaumas and Electra. Phineas, a king of Thrace, had the gift of prophecy. Zeus, angry that Phineas revealed too much, punished him by blinding him and putting him on an island with a buffet of food which he could never eat. The harpies always arrived and stole the food out of his hands right before he could satisfy his hunger, and befouled the remains of his food. This continued until the arrival of Jason and the Argonauts.
So the original harpies were three ugly sisters, and the word "harpy" derives from the Greek harpazein, which means "to snatch." It seems there are endless ways to describe harpies, and every book or movie has its own preference. Sometimes harpies have arms as well as wings, and other times only wings.
Over time, harpies have become not just a few ugly thieving sisters but a whole species of nasty, hideous bird-women. Plenty of modern artists have come up with some really vicious-looking beasties, and I like all these versions better than the comical bird-with-human-head type. However, with a target audience of 9+, I have to make sure that my harpies are covered from head to toe with plumage so there are no rude bits showing! But otherwise I like the idea of human people with wings, and talons for feet.
Just to be different (or awkward), the harpies in my own books are both male and female, although mostly female. Apart from certain types of sea life and plants, I can't see how a species can survive without males. (I can hear women out there disagreeing with this.) Then again, how does a half-bird, half-human species like this get started in the first place? Let's not even go there...
A modern dictionary says that "harpy" simply means "grasping, vicious person," so I don't see why we can't have males as well. Turning the legend on its head, maybe the original harpies in Greek mythology were just a few female harpies from a pre-existing species. Still, in keeping with tradition, the harpies that show up in Labyrinth of Fire have a queen (not a king) and they live in a nest (although not the cute little bowl of twigs in a tree that you're probably thinking of). These harpies are filthy and cruel, and they steal food from the nearby village on a regular basis. And they steal babies too.
If you haven't yet read Island of Fog then you might be wondering what harpies have to do with anything. If you have read it, then you'll understand... and maybe you'll feel sorry for one of those kids! I've just got halfway through Chapter Twelve of Labyrinth of Fire and it's left a nasty stench of harpy in the air.
Gumberoos and squonks
Posted on July 8, 2009
This week I've been having a bit of fun throwing all sorts of ghastly monsters at Hal and his friends. I'm on Chapter Seven of Labyrinth of Fire (the sequel to Island of Fog) and the young heroes have just entered a forest. This isn't a major part of the plot so I'm not giving anything away here, but during their travels they come across some very strange beasties indeed.
Apparently, in real life, lumberjacks and forest workers have their own catalog of mythical creatures, or Fearsome Critters. Among them (and there are plenty!) there are gumberoos and squonks. Gumberoos are bear-like creatures with no fur; instead their skin is black and leathery. Many stories say they have comically large feet. Anyway, you can shoot at gumberoos, but arrows and bullets bounce right off. Worse, the arrow or bullet will likely bounce right back at YOU. Only fire can kill these critters.
Squonks are the sort of things you joke about around a camp fire. They're incredibly ugly, with wrinkly skin covered in warts and moles. Squonks are so aware of their ugliness that they cry all the time. You can actually track squonks by following their trail of tears, but if you catch one in a sack, it's likely that you'll get back to camp with nothing but a patch of damp and some bubbles, because the squonk has dissolved into tears.
Now, I'm not trying to make my book comical by including such creatures in the story. Quite the opposite, in fact; I tend to take these creatures and darken them so that they're kind of creepy or scary, perhaps more realistic, but still rooted in legend. Legends often come from something real, but are distorted and embellished over centuries to make the story-telling more exciting. In Ye Olden Days, there were no books or historical records – only stories around the camp fire and tales passed from one generation to the next by word of mouth. So it's not surprising we have a plethora of mythical creatures!
For instance – Cyclops, the one-eyed giant, might have been based on the finding of a dwarf elephant's skull on one of the Greek islands. At the time, Greeks were unfamiliar with elephants and this ancient skull was a curiosity because it was twice the size of a human head and appeared to have one large eye in the center (the elephant's nasal cavity). The elephant's eye sockets were around the side and might have been mistaken for ears. So, the story of a one-eyed giant might have started because of the discovery of an ordinary elephant's skull.
Everyone knows about gryphons, or griffins, fabulous creatures with the head, front legs and wings of an eagle, and the body, rear legs and tail of a lion. One possible origin of this creature (that I happen to like) is one of many discoveries of a protoceratops dinosaur skeleton. This particular dinosaur is about the shape of a lion, but its head has a large beak like a bird. You can easily imagine how a superstitious traveler, thousands of years ago before we knew of dinosaurs, might stumble upon this skeleton and make up wild tales of a fantastic creature. A gold digger in the Gobi finding such a skeleton might assume the beast once guarded the gold, hence the traditional idea that griffins guard treasure.
As for the wings... well, bones shift around in the ground, and maybe, during its long burial, some of the smaller bones broke apart and shifted away from its head and frill, and ended up lying scattered near the backbone. An active mind might assume they were once wings.
I'm pretty sure there are plenty of creatures that are just completely made up on the spur of the moment by some drunken lumberjacks around the camp fire. But most of these mythical creatures were based on something, however mundane.
Either that, or these creatures really did exist and the so-called elephant's skull actually was the bones of Cyclops, and there was no such thing as a protoceratops but griffins once roamed the earth. It's a thought.