Sunya Mara: On Inspiration

Sometimes my own stories are mysteries to me, and the inspiration behind them even more so. Fragments of ideas, of lived experiences, of daydreams, of news articles and childhood storybooks—I’ve drawn on all these and more. I’d like to invite you into how I work, and here I’ll share some of the origins of the biggest concepts that went into The Darkening, my debut young adult fantasy, and its sequel, The Lightstruck, which comes out this summer. 

First, let me paint a picture of the world of The Darkening: imagine a kingdom trapped in the eye of an eternal hurricane that curses all who touch it. From the ground, the storm looks like a wall of churning black clouds that surrounds everything. And it’s growing—every year, the storm devours a little more of the city, and people must move as their homes are taken. The world of The Darkening is one that is slowly being lost—not unlike ours.

Our planet feels so vast sometimes, like when standing in an open field or stargazing, that it can be hard to reconcile it with the idea that on the scale of the universe, it’s the only planet with life like ours (as far as we know), and that it’s so small and precious in the face of all that darkness. In The Darkening I wanted to make that feeling palpable and immediate, as the dark clouds of the stormwall are only a few yards from where our protagonist, Vesper Vale, calls home. 

From there, I added more pieces to the Storm. When I was in high school, I read a book called Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami, which begins with a passage of a boy being told to imagine he’s being chased by a black sandstorm, and that wherever he goes, the sandstorm will follow. He’s told that the only way out is for him to turn and face it. That metaphor stuck with me, and I wanted to capture the idea of facing one’s innermost demons using the visuals of dreams. That grew into the Storm having two properties: it bestows curses on all who touch it, and it gives birth to creatures of shadow and lightning. The Storm became the embodiment of fear and all that which was too terrible to face for both Vesper as an individual and her community as a whole.

As the counter to wild and unknowable magic of the eternal Storm, I wanted to design a magic system that was very man-made, a very logical sort of magic. That was the birth of “ikonomancy”—the magic system in The Darkening and The Lightstruck. In this world, with any writing tool—say, a piece of chalk, a stick in dirt, or, in desperate cases, a knife to skin—one can draw symbols that unlock an infinite array of magical abilities. Everything, from the street lights, to hidden locks, to even the flourishes on pastries, are done with these highly detailed and sometimes forbidden symbols.

I built ikonomancy from the concept of language itself—as the trick is that each symbol must be drawn precisely and correctly, so it takes years of study to become fluent. I borrowed how ancient roots combine over time into new words, as well as how mathematics has become a universal language that can be used to describe pretty much anything. And as both math and language are living, evolving things, I wanted ikonomancy to be growing and adapting as well.

The tension between these two ideas—the unknowable Storm and the knowledge-based principles of ikonomancy—created the garden where many of the other ideas grew. Our major antagonist—the ruler of the kingdom—is the living embodiment of ikonomancy, and has a full body symbol that gives her great power. That symbol is meant to give her the ability to hold back the storm, but the storm is winning, and she’s dying. Her son, the prince, will do anything to save her—especially because if she dies, he inherits the throne and her awful responsibility.

Vesper Vale, our protagonist, is the daughter of revolutionaries who tried to overthrow the ruler and find a better way, but they failed. So Vesper, with the burden of her parent’s legacy, faces off against the prince, who’s dealing with the death sentence that comes with his own family tradition. That idea of inherited pain is the backbone for the story, as Vesper and the prince must face their common enemy—the encroaching storm—while also facing their inner storms. 

I’m sure there are a thousand other things that were little seeds of inspiration for these books, but they’re still a mystery to me for now!

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Sunya Mara grew up in six different cities across five different states and now calls Los Angeles home. She studied film and business at the University of Southern California and went on to write and illustrate at Kobe Bryant’s Granity Studios. When not telling stories, she spends her time haunting old movie theaters and staring at museum walls.

Find out more about Sunya on her website https://www.sunyamara.com/

Follow her on Twitter https://twitter.com/sunyamara

THE LIGHTSTRUCK

In this epic sequel and conclusion to the Darkening duology, which has been called “enchanting and wildly clever” (Ayana Gray, New York Times bestselling author of Beasts of Prey), Vesper Vale, once savior to a city plagued by cursed storms, finds herself facing an even more sinister threat when an ominous light summoned by the Great King seizes control of the city.

Vesper Vale sacrificed everything to save her city from the cursed storm. After becoming a vessel of The Great Queen, Vesper awakes from a slumber three years after her life altering choice.

What she finds isn’t a home freed from the terror of the storm, but one where its citizens are besieged by the even more sinister force of The Great King and his growing army of the lightstruck—once regular citizens who are now controlled by the ominous light encroaching on the city. And the people are all looking to Vesper, now revered as a goddess after her sacrifice, as their city’s only hope.

To save the rings from the Great King, Vesper must contend with the obligations of being a deity to her people and the growing chasm between her and Dalca, the prince she swore never to love. Haunted by the guilt of their past choices and faced with the pressures of a city near ruin, Vesper and Dalca find themselves torn between the growing factions within the city and the royal court.

But in order to save her city from the light, Vesper must face the power most outside of her control—the goddess within.

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Tags: featured, women writers

Category: On Writing