Probably the question I’ve received
most often about A Soul to Steal is
whether its central mythology, a legend called “The Prince of Sanheim,” is
based on something real. I’ve had friends admit that they Googled the term after
finishing the book, and others who suggested they had heard of it before.
There is very little as gratifying
for a writer, since the truth is that I made up the entire story. What makes me
happy is that it doesn’t feel fake. A good mythology should seem real or
vaguely familiar, the kind of thing you heard once but have since forgotten.
I’m not sure exactly when the idea
came to me. I know a lot about Halloween, and much of what we think we know is
not actually true. Occult fanatics and religious zealots in the 19th
century invented a past for All Hallow’s Eve which has very little to do with
actual history.
Instead of rejecting that, however,
I wanted to embrace it. I wanted a legend that drew from those old myths—real and
fictional—and created something new. And I needed something that would go to my
central theme: the nature of fear.
What I wanted to know was this: do
your fears define you as a person? What would it be like if your worst
fear—whatever that is—suddenly took shape? Would you have the strength and
courage to face it?
I also wanted something that drew
from a dark place. Fear is a powerful thing. We tend to view it negatively, but
it’s also a great motivator, among other advantages. Still, it cuts both ways.
It can either save you or paralyze you, depending on the person and circumstances.
So I needed a legend that drew on
old Halloween myths, explored the nature of fear, but also was something
unique.
Here’s what I came up with. Do you
want to hear a new Halloween legend? Pull up your chair and I’ll tell you a
story: Centuries ago, a Celtic tribe was on the verge of annihilation, facing
the increasing incursions of a rival. In desperation, they made a deal with
Sanheim, the Celtic god of the dead. Despite the fact that most of their young
people were killed as a result of the neighboring tribe’s attacks, they agreed
to sacrifice one man and one woman to Sanheim. They tied them to a post, bound
their wrists together and left them there to die.
But they didn’t die. A few days
later, they returned to the village and the young man—who had seemed like just
a boy before—was now a powerful warrior. The woman was his priestess. The town
elders were frightened, but pleased. The two left the next day to wreak
vengeance on the rival tribe. Except when they returned, instead of taking
orders from the town elders, they took control.
The two had immense powers—and were
intimately bound together. When there was a battle to be fought, the man led
the charge. But it was the woman guiding the tribe, making most of the
decisions. Apart they were nothing. Together they were what became known as the
“Prince of Sanheim.”
But there was a weakness. Their
powers waxed and waned with the changing of the seasons. They were strongest at
Samhain, the harvest festival we now call Halloween. They were weakest the next
day, what Christians call All Soul’s Day. And the power they wielded tended to
corrupt them.
Every generation, a man and a woman
had the chance to become the Prince of Sanheim, but there was a catch. The man
must first face his Cennad—a Celtic word for ambassador—that embodied his worst
nightmare. If the man could defeat his Cennad, he and the woman would have
access to great powers. The woman, too, would have to face her own test, but of
a different nature.
That was the basic legend, but I
couldn’t really stop there. I didn’t want to just have an old myth with no
echoes through history. So I invented stories for several Princes of Sanheim
through the ages. In the original version of the novel, there were flashbacks
to many of them so that the reader got a greater sense of their powers and
vulnerabilities.
In the end, however, I cut most of
that, simply because my novel already has a lot going on. The entire backdrop
of the Prince of Sanheim unfolds while on the hunt for a serial killer with his
own twisted history and I was wary of throwing too much at the reader.
The story I did tell was that of
the most famous Prince of Sanheim: a Romantic-era poet named Robert Crowley. On
Halloween night in 1873, he hosted a party at his estate in Scotland . Over
50 men showed up and history does not record the number of women who also
attended. What is important, however, is that all but one disappeared. Only a
man named Horace Camden survived and he shouted to anyone who would listen that
Crowley had
found his bride and become the Prince of Sanheim.
The event was so mysterious it gave
birth to a creepy rhyme: “Fifty men went up a hill, none of them came down.
Fifty men went to see him, but none of them were found.” Camden went on to become a priest of the
movement, talking about the coming of the next Prince of Sanheim.
The final step was to set up an
environment where this new legend was born again. Quinn O’Brion and Kate
Tassel, the main characters of the novel, don’t know anything about the “Prince
of Sanheim” when the book starts. Instead, they are more worried about catching
the killer named Lord Halloween before he strikes again. But as the novel goes
on, they eventually realize that the key to finding the killer may lie in uncovering
the mystery of the ancient Celtic myth.
They also have to learn something
else: you are what you fear.
The novel can be bought for Kindle here.
This post was originally published in October 2011. This year's guest post can be found here: http://bit.ly/NBRGuest.
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