Darkly Bound: Inspirations
It’s difficult to say what inspired the novel as a whole, since the storyline has changed a lot since it was originally conceived. Avalon was originally conceived as a superhero character for an animated series I created in my head of Lightning Girl, a comic script I had written. Her Nightshade curse was still there, but she was a student at the same school as Coral (the titular character) and a nightclub singer instead of a stage manager. She was ordered away from Coral by Dr. Crestwell, leader of the Percival House Heroes, and spent a year on Phi Andromedae before returning as the superhero Astraea, the Star Child (a galaxy-wide savior position) of the Andromeda Galaxy, making her a counterpart of Vega (the Star Child of our galaxy). She did not appear in the Lightning Girl novelization attempts. Her superhero traits hung on for a while, however; my original synopsis for Darkly Bound retains superhero powers for her, though the background of them is different. I ultimately got rid of them, feeling they were not needed.
Nightshade is compared to Jack the Ripper in the novel at one point, and similar to that famous murderer, Nightshade does kill pretty indiscriminately, though with some purpose. Her use of postcognition to torture victims was somewhat inspired by typical interrogation scenes I have seen in movies and such.
Avalon’s mother leaving her husband because of his conversion and then pretending he was dead is actually inspired by a story my paternal grandfather recorded in Can Do, the book he wrote while taking a life story writing class for seniors, about his father David Levin. David was Jewish but at some point became a Christian and was disowned by his family as a result (and afterwards changed his surname to Le Vine). He actually was declared dead much later in 1928 by the Canadian Mounties, after he went looking for work in 1925 and never returned. Unlike Ofelia Jacobs, my great-grandmother Anastasia Ivanoff Le Vine did remarry, but not until after David was declared dead, of course.
The kurinache scene was inspired by a few different things. First, the line “I invoke the right of kurinache” itself was inspired by Keira Knightley’s line “I invoke the right of parlay” from Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. The circle idea was inspired by the story of Rama and Sita as retold in the movie A Little Princess, which also involved a magic protective circle. The method of questioning and the circle’s ability to detect lies were based on how lie detector tests are typically conducted.
The theatre subplot was based on my experience both as a drama class student and as a volunteer usher at the home theater of Lambs’ Players, a Christian theater group, on Coronado Island. Sometimes I would see the stage manager on the stage checking stuff before the show or at intermission when I acted as stage guard. Her job seemed rather tough. Both of these, along with my research, taught me how tough it is to run a theater.
So far, those are my inspirations. I’ll probably think of more once I finish the novel.
