Author Longoria Wolfe Discusses the Genesis of Evah & the Unscrupulous Thwargg
THE SHADOW & LIGHT OF A FANTASY NOVEL EMERGES
Well, it seems like a hundred years ago now, I was living in the LA area working as a classical actor. I was working on film scripts and deep into Joseph Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces. The archetypical hero always intrigued me. That there was a score of elemental markers that consistently made for resonating story and character, gave me a sense that the human troubles we lived with could somehow find psychic resolution through their experience. Or at least ease our troubles for a while. It was back then I began to imagine strange adventures, but they had a scope that could only be realized with big commercial industry budgets. A far distance from the independent field I was closer to. I guess it was then that Varin, The Extuiter of Constance, first appeared in my imaginings, deep in murky waters with six hundred pound fish, up to something mysterious. The worlds he walked in were often dark, anachronistic, and seemed to have a magic that was just beneath the surface. He was an adaptation of the Orpheus mythic construct. A character between the mortal and the gods. He was a lover with outrageous fortune to contend with and his greatest battle was holding on to a hopeful faith in a world ravaged by mortal and divine destruction. As I was a child of the eighties these imaginings were dressed in an aesthetic of urban fantasy films like Terry Gilliam’s Brazil or Tim Burton’s Edward Scissor Hands.
My friends were reading books about the deterioration of the feminine energy and identity. The cover-up of the goddess history. Women who Run with the Wolves was a big read. Other books floating around were The Tibetan Book of the Dead and The Egyptian Book of the Dead. The mythology of Isis and Osiris and the mythologies of the Mediterranean. Though it wasn’t until I had become a Christian that I started to really understand Campbell’s ideas of initiation, the special world, and the return, along with some other essential concepts like sacrifice and love which at first seemed far-flung from his more agnostic position. So it was that these varied traditions, which I found had more in common than most soapboxing zealots would agree, started to color the shadow and light of my imagined world with there inherent debates and unyielding presence that demanded consideration. And as I was busy in the development of great classical literature on the stage the depth of the tale was bound to be operatic.
A WOMAN'S JOURNEY BEGINS
I knew that any story I wanted to be apart of would have to examine some issues that were important to me. Watching the flood of mainstream entertainment in films and other media, I guess I started to become dissatisfied with the color and gender boxes. When one season of television yielded more new shows about super-duper white guys than even the stereotype comedy color and gender blasts I decided if I were going to contribute a story to our culture it was going to be one that attempted to toss something into the giant zeitgeist hole that just didn’t seem to really want to tame itself.
I have a daughter and she deserves stories about independent women. As Reese Witherspoon has said, “stories about women who are more than just someone’s wife or someone’s daughter.” Forgive me it is a slight paraphrase, but the kernel of it is what stuck with me. At the same time, I see a struggle. I see we are in a period of transformation and reconciliation with the male masters of entertainment industries and there foolish abominable activities. So, I guess that’s why in book one, where Evah’s story begins, there are two key features. One, the reconciliation with the male mentor identity, and two, the conflicts that are tough to get around in the bringing in of a new feminine era. A new culture that is made up of opposing features. It is a dichotomy of reason that will work its way out through the series. Technology and a forgotten spirit presence that transcends the technological limit. There are great stories of Yogis. Through meditation, they transcend the body and travel across great reaches of space to visit someone. Then there’s us common scientific-minded people that just go get on a jet, pay hundreds of dollars, purchase in-flight movies and help burn off huge sources of carbon-based fuels. Two vastly different paradigms. In Evah & the Unscrupulous Thwargg, the Thwargg destroy an exotic culture with unimagined possibilities only to try and recreate it synthetically so they can feel like masters of the universe. Though Evah does have to meet with adventure and danger we see a lot of action with the previous extuiter character Varin. Evah’s story is about the rediscovery of lost experience. It is the lost experience and connection that would make some classes and planetary races viewed as lesser to be far more relevant. Therefore it is a common struggle for many of the characters in the book to find where they belong. A female Thwargg seeks to find her power apart from man, an anarchist seeks to find a home. and a planetary culture seeks to rediscover its history as Evah must do.
LOSS & AN ALL KNOWING BEING
In my late twenties, I was gutted in a string of emotional losses that I thought I would never recover from. Then after dragging myself out of that, it happened again. I remember in those days wishing so badly that I could go back in time, jump the track of reality and get back to where I wanted to be. That was the first time I had thoughts like, ‘In my other life I lost I would be doing this or that.” It was the first time I mourned for activities and choices within my own power.
I was talking with this girl not too long ago. She was telling me terrible things about her father; all these horrible things he did. First, she told me about things he did when she was no older than four or five. This was not sexual abuse, I wouldn’t drop that on you like this. But she told me of these things and then she told me of things he did when she was being born, even before her birth really. Now her parents separated and she went through a really bad time. I began to realize these things were impossible for her to have memories of unless she was some omniscient being. She was either omniscient or she was in mourning and fabricating a tapestry of fantasies to protect herself emotionally. Not wanting to judge I tried to relate, and I remembered those times of grief and how badly I wanted to magically be able to just have reality be whatever would have been easier for me.
It is in times of loss that dissociative identity issues can begin. Then we may be acting like two completely different persons. Two persons with completely opposing psychological points of view. For all that pain that I could relate to for this girl who lost a family unit and a strong relationship with her father, I decided to dedicate the book to the healing of such pain. I know a book can’t heal all wounds. I guess I just want those in the world who feel alone with their pain to know they aren’t alone. Evah is on a journey to discover her history, but she is also on a journey to discover herself. And if she can find a balance, that will be the most valuable power she can possess.