Everyone knows I’m a massive fan of Sonya Clark, and I reviewed her latest release, Witchlight, two days ago. I’m very pleased to be able to welcome her to the Cabinet of Curiosities today, to talk about cinematic influences of the Magic Born series! Take it away, Sonya!
Books and film may be different mediums, but all forms of storytelling can influence each other. In writing the Magic Born series, I was influenced by a few movies in particular that made a deep impression. The series is a mix of things: futuristic dystopian, romance, murder mystery, political commentary, next level urban fantasy, and a combination of magic and cyberpunk that I like to call witchpunk.
When you talk about futuristic dystopias, there’s no avoiding Blade Runner. I first saw this classic sci-fi as a child and it has stayed with me ever since. A massive cityscape, the extremes of privilege and poverty, and the singular image of a neon-filled, rain-soaked night−those things were in my head as I began to construct my fictional city of New Corinth.
In the Magic Born world, witches are identified by DNA test at birth and sent to live in urban zones, with no citizenship rights. Not every city has a zone. New Corinth is home to Magic Born Zone Number Thirteen, known locally as FreakTown.
The film Chinatown inspired the nickname for the zone. The movie’s twist and turn mystery plot with a highlight on corruption and family secrets is textbook noir. When outlining the plot for Trancehack, the first book in the Magic Born trilogy, I knew I wanted some of that flavor. A high-profile murder, a cop set up to be a fall guy, blackmail, politics, secrets and lies−I’ll always think of this book as my 1940s noir set in 2065. No one actually says to Detective Nate Perez, “Forget it, Nate, it’s FreakTown,” but only because I couldn’t find a place to make it fit.
The magic in this series is urban-based. Instead of invoking fire and earth, many of the witches in this world call on neon and concrete. Spelled apps and hex viruses are also part of the magical fabric. Using astral projection to enter cyberspace is called trancehacking, and it is my favorite bit of magic in the series.
So where did that come from? A lot of different sources, but visually it was inspired by imagery that made a lasting impression from another movie from my childhood−Tron. Neon color against a vast electronic night gave me a place to start, but the internet really opened up what a trancehacker could do, where they could go. That freedom was especially meaningful to characters trapped in the magic zones, forbidden by law from traveling or making a better life for themselves elsewhere. Here’s an excerpt:
In a quiet corner of cyberspace, he stopped to rest. In realspace he sat at his desk, eyes closed, stylus wand in one hand and tablet in the other. Pain behind his temple and squeezing the back of his head like a vise tried to kick him out of trance. He breathed through it until it subsided into a dull throb.
Vadim had taken refuge in the murky remains of a defunct site. Curious, he pushed energy into it. A ghostly echo of mournful song rose from the broken code, patchy and falling into silence at odd moments. Faint color rose around his avatar, a washed-out gold that shimmered as magic wafted through the site like a gentle breeze. He could have made sense out of something deleted more recently but this had to be decades old. There wasn’t enough HTML left to figure out the original purpose of the site. Beyond the faded lines of gold lay a vast expanse of velvet black. In the distance, bright lights shone like stars burning in a spectrum of color. A galaxy full of energy and information and worlds he could never touch while trapped in FreakTown. Melancholy rose from that part of himself that still yearned for something more, a part he’d learned over the years to keep locked up tight and hidden away. The emotion filled in the parts of the music skipped by broken code, turning it into a heavy, bass-laden industrial rhythm. Dark as empty cyberspace. Almost as dark as the realspace he existed in.
The pressure in his head told him he didn’t have much time left before he’d have to drop out of trance. As quickly as he could, he crafted a search spell and planted a marker in the site. With a push of will he cast the spell and watched it spread out in a ripple of electric blue. He would return for the information the search spell gathered as soon as he was able to trancehack again.
There is another cinematic influence for Witchlight, book two in the series, in particular. As it’s the middle book of the trilogy, I realized I was going to have to freeze someone in carbonite, but I can’t talk about that without giving away too many spoilers!
Thanks for popping over, Sonya! Witchlight is book two of the Magic Born series, and is published by Carina Press, having been released on June 30, 2014. It’s considered ‘Futuristic Paranormal Romance’, and is available in digital formats from Carina Press, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other online book retailers.
About the author: Sonya Clark grew up a military brat and now lives in Tennessee with her husband and daughter. She writes urban fantasy and paranormal romance with a heavy helping of magic and lot of music for inspiration. Learn more at http://www.sonyaclark.net and sign up for her new releases announcement list at http://eepurl.com/bT3NL.
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