fantastic history – Catherine Schaff-Stump

Fantastic History #35: An Interview with Karen Abrahamson

Cath: Death by Effigy is a powerful book that recreates a time and a culture with precision. What interested you in writing the book?

Karen: Writing this book was the result of a decade or more of a love affair with the Burmese puppets. In 1997 I travelled in Myanmar (aka Burma) and while I was there I researched the puppets for a non-fiction article I was writing for a magazine. I came back and wrote my article, but there was so much more to the puppets and the Burmese culture that I wanted to write about. I actually wrote a different novel about the puppets, but they kept cropping up in my writing and at one point I wrote a 10,000 word short story about Aung, the aging puppet singer. When I decided to expand that story I added the fantasy element of Yamin, the mischievous page puppet, but it was from Aung’s POV. Then one of my first readers told me that the novella came alive whenever the nats (spirits) and Yamin appeared and suddenly everything made sense. Readers needed to understand a creature like Yamin and the only way to do that was to have his POV be front and center. So that’s how the story came to be, but really it was all about the Burmese culture. The blend of Buddhism and Animism was so front and center in real people’s lives that I really felt it when I traveled there. The blend was so unique, it simply had to be written about. From there, it was a matter of doing a lot of research and then letting the ideas ferment in the imagination.

Cath: Can you talk a little bit about your own travels in Burma/Myanmar?

Karen: I was there in 1997. It was a closed country then, or almost totally closed so I was only able to travel to a few places, like Yangoon, Mandalay, Bagan, Inle Lake and Kyaiktiyo, and I could only stay for one month. Aung San SuuKyi was under house arrest at the time and you had to be very careful what you said and did. I traveled alone and the people were SO gracious. They were incredibly poor and yet entirely giving. I met puppeteers and priests, carvers and neurosurgeons and retired politicians in my research into the puppets. But most of all I remember the people’s small kindnesses that were too numerous to mention. They demonstrated so much about their faith and culture in how they lived every day. Learning about the puppets from a puppet carver brought home the myth and tradition of the puppets and the troupes. Learning about the many spirits that inhabit the landscape and villages became the topic of my research when I decided to write fiction about the troupes. One kind neurosurgeon who was trying to ensure that the puppet tradition wasn’t lost helped me immensely by connecting me with German anthropological research into the puppets.

Cath: In what year, approximately, is Death by Effigy set? Why did you choose this particular time in Burmese history?

Karen: The story s set roughly about 1820 during the reign of King Bodawpaya. That king had the misfortune to have to deal with some of the earliest English envoys to Burma who were demanding that Burma be opened to trade. It must have been horribly difficult, because from his seat in Burma he was watching the same English take over the Indian subcontinent by removing the various Moghul princes one by one. It was a time of horrendous change and pressure on the culture both from the English and from Jesuit missionaries. Plus the Burmese royal families were rife with subterfuge and murder. All that angst and conflict is a great backdrop for a puppet troupe trying to maintain the old ways.

Cath: What kinds of historical research did you engage in to flesh out Death by Effigy?

Karen: I read anthropological research on the nats, books on the puppets and found a wonderful Burmese history book at a Yangoon street market that I mined extensively for the history of the country. I also managed to find the diary of the first English envoy to King Bodawpaya’s court. The diary wasn’t flattering to either the King or the man who wrote it, but it sure brought out the attitudes of the foreigners attending the court.

Cath: As Daniel Hand mentions in his preface to your story, Burma has been at the center of political and religious tension throughout its history. Your main character Aung struggles with religion in the book, as he knows nats are real. Can you discuss the shift in religion throughout Burma during this time, and how you used this in your book?

Karen: Burma has always been at a crossroads where different religions mix. As with Thailand, the country has a mix of Theravada Buddhism, with an infusion of Brahmanism/Hinduism all overlaid on a far older animistic belief in nature spirits (nats) and other spirits. Over its history, Burma played a central role in the maintenance of Theravada Buddhism, with a lot of cross pollination with Ceylon/Sri Lanka in ensuring the retention and strength and, dare I say, purity of the religion. In Burma itself, various kings had attempted to exterminate the nat worship because it was seen to undermine the purity of Buddhist beliefs. Monarchs built huge Buddhist temple edifices to gain merit that might help themselves and their country now and in future incarnations.

In Bodawpaya’s time the country was under extreme pressure from the English. In the west the English were removing the hereditary maharaja system of governance and were fighting a war against a royal family that was related to Bodawpaya. There were also East India Company traders at the doorstep demanding that the country be opened to trade. At the same time Christian missionaries—mostly Jesuits—were proselytizing in the countryside.

Given this background, I thought it was reasonable that Bodawpaya would be under tremendous pressure and would, like his predecessors, fall back on the religion he knew (Buddhism) to seek help to deal with the threat at his door. Unfortunately, in the world of my series, turning away from the spirits threatens the very earth that supports you because of the symbiotic relationship between humans and nats. Humans give offerings, which give power to the nats. The nats in turn support the land, which supports the people. Of course, if you turn away from supporting the nats, who knows what will happen… This stress and struggle become more evident in the books that follow in the series.

Cath: The idea that the puppet shows were almost the only way to criticize the government of Burma is interesting. Why did you choose to use a puppet troupe as the main focus of your story?

Karen: Well, the research that I’ve done on the Burmese puppet troupes indicates that the puppets were actually the only way to critique the powers that be. As for why I chose the puppet troupe as the main focus of the story—I loved what I learned about the troupes. The puppeteers apparently really thought of the puppets as their little brothers and sisters. When puppeteers bathed, they bathed their puppets. If they did their hair, they would do the same for their small kin. And then there was the way that the puppets were carved from a single tree so they were their own special family within the troupe. Couple that with the role of the troupes to share news and make social commentary and MY GOODNESS, there were so many possible stories to be told.

And then there were the puppets. They simply ached for magic and Yamin most of all, because as a Page, he would be younger-minded and more inclined to get into trouble, like any other young boy. Using him as a foil against the older and wiser Singer of the troupe simply made sense. At least to me.

Cath: Could you tell us a little bit about nats and how you portray them in the book?

Karen: The worship of nats (or Nats for the great Nats), is something far older than Buddhism. Nats come in a number of forms. There are nature nats that protect a hillside, a glen, a rice field, etc. Then there are great Nats. Most of these are the spirits of some great being like Min Mahagiri who was a warrior blacksmith. There were other great nats who were ogres and so on, so there is a pantheon of Nats.

Within Burmese culture, there are patron nats or Nats of villages, and areas. For instance, a specific nat will be the patron of a cluster of villages and thus you’ll see shrines to this nat in a village. In addition, each household has a shrine to the house nat. Min Mahagiri is also the house nat and brings blessing on the household.

Households, villages and farmers know that nats can be devilish beings. Proper offerings can ensure a healthy happy household, a good rice harvest, and healthy children. Failure to make proper offerings can lead to strife, famine and the death of children.

While I’ve tried to stay true to the basic beliefs, what the nats actually look like and how they act as individuals is all my doing and thus probably westernized. So I’ve taken the basic concept of these somewhat ‘slippery’ characters and have imbued them with the desire to survive. I’ve also given them the ability to know who their allies are—thus the relationship between Aung and the nats. Most of all, in writing this book and the others in the series so far, I’ve fallen in love with Yamin and his awareness of the difference between nat and man and his desire to explore the human side of the equation.Of course that causes more trouble…

Cath: While this book obviously has elements of fantasy, it also reads as the first book in a series of mysteries, and I see from your website it is! Aung and Yamin complement each other well. Why did you choose mystery as a genre to write in?

Karen: I have always enjoyed reading mysteries and I was once told by a writing mentor that I should try my hand at writing mystery even though my focus at that time was fantasy. The original story was written about Aung for a mystery workshop where we were challenged to write a non-fantasy mystery about a crime that would not be a crime today. I thought the destruction of a royal puppet would be such a crime. Today you might get a willful damage or mischief charge, but it wouldn’t be serious. Anyway, the story was good, but I decided to rewrite it as a novella and then Yamin’s point of view came in and there you go. I enjoyed writing Aung and Yamin so much that I knew they had to have other adventures and now there are three books in the series and a fourth waiting to be written.

Cath: Can you tell us about your plans for the next two books in this series?

Karen: The two books after Death By Effigy take Aung and Yamin and the wandering puppet troupe to other locations in Burma where they run into other mysteries to solve. They visit the home of the King of the Nats (Mount Popa) and the ruins of the once mighty city of Pagan (or Bagan). Through it all Aung is dealing with his age and the desire for peace and quiet, while Yamin continues his transformation from an ancient nat to something—well—else. At the same time, Burma is experiencing the challenges of missionaries and European traders in a country that isn’t really prepared for such things. The yet-to-be written fourth book will take place in Yangoon—a scary place with its population of westerners when you travel with a band of living spirits—one of whom is Yamin!

Cath: Where can people find out more about you or your books?

They can find out more about me on my website and on Facebook.

Fantastic History #28: Because I Live in a Small Town by Catherine Schaff-Stump

A project I began about 10 years ago, currently on the back burner is the story of three teenage trolls who live in Decorah, Iowa, the premiere vanguard of Norwegian immigrants in the state. As a small town Iowan myself, I can extrapolate what life might be like living in Decorah, but for the details I needed, I needed field work. One thing I admire about really good urban fantasy is the setting becomes a character in the story, and in this novel I am striving for this. Decorah is a unique place where I could interpret traditional Norwegian folklore in a new setting. In order to make sure the story had the feel I wanted, I needed to know more about this place. Happily, I only live a couple of hours from Decorah, and I could get a feel for the town by visiting often.

Here are some things I did which helped me get a sense of the setting.

1. Websites: The websites I visited seem pretty pedestrian on the surface, but I learned about interestingly mundane details such as what schools were in the area, neighborhoods, town policies, and attractions. Municipal websites will highlight historical sites and attractions, like the Vesterheim museum, or Norwegian Ship, Decorah’s version of UPS. While not a substitute for visiting the town, nevertheless the local color and details can be found, which help add a sense of character to the town.

2. Visit the town: Proximity helps here. For the novel, I did also visit Norway to get a sense of where the trolls came from, and I had to make that trip count, because it was likely to be one trip. Going to Decorah, however, was something I could do periodically when I needed more details. I visited the Vesterheim, parks and landmarks I wanted to use in the novel, local places I wanted to have my characters frequent, and sites for places I would make up. I also know a writer in Decorah. He and his wife went to college there, and have lived there for many years, so they could give me insider knowledge. I have visited Decorah maybe around 10 times, and I’m due to go back before I finish this project.

3. Stay for longer than a visit: Another way to get a sense of the local is to live there. I stayed at a B&B so I could be in the town at night. I went to the small theater, toured the college, just ran around, ate at the co-op, lots of things you can do if you don’t have a visiting agenda. With the exception of lodging, I’ve gone to Decorah to stay for a few overnight trips with no agenda to get the experience of living in the town.

4. Attend the town festival: One of the most awesome things about Decorah’s Norwegian heritage is that each year they have a great festival. Lots of people come from far and wide to see the town and tour historical sites. Norwegians visit as a way to come to a friendly spot in the US. My favorite part of the festival is the chance to try Norwegian food, available on every street corner and in church basements, or to watch traditional dances mixed with a very Iowa small town parade. This is the unique blend of old world and new world at its best.

While I am far from an expert regarding Decorah, I feel like I know it well enough now to characterize it. By the time I get back to this project, though, my information may be a little out of date. I can set the novel in the time I visited, or I can update myself. Either way, I’ve got to get back there and eat some more rommegrot.

Fantastic History #20: Fact or Fantasy? Challenging Readers’ Expectations about the Past by Anne Lyle

Fantasy as a genre is inextricably linked to history; with its roots in myth and legend, it cannot help but reflect our past, even when the stories are set in some version of our present. The fantasy aspect gives us some leeway, of course, but a writer who is ignorant of historical fact is bound to attract criticism and even turn readers away. I well recall wincing at a book set in an otherwise fairly accurate medieval Western Europe that described a garden as having tulips among its flowers, despite “tulip mania” being a well-known 17th-century phenomenon (speculators would pay ludicrous sums for the rarest specimens of this new plant). I have not bought any other books by this author!

What is less obvious is that the reader’s ignorance of historical fact can also result in criticism of your work. Jo Walton christened this “the Tiffany Problem”, after discovering that Tiffany (an anglicized version of the Greek name Theophania) was quite popular in the Middle Ages. Because the name was out of fashion until fairly recently, it sounds very modern to a present-day reader and is likely to make them find a medieval fantasy novel with such a character “inaccurate”.

I had a similar problem with the gay and bisexual characters in my alternate history fantasy trilogy. Most of them move within the world of the Elizabethan theatre, well known for its practice of employing young male actors to play female roles, and it seemed likely to me that, then as now, such a milieu would be welcoming to gay men in a way that wider society tended not to be. I did my research, pretty thoroughly I think, but inevitably some readers found it implausible that anyone could be openly gay in Elizabethan London and not get burned at the stake.

In case you too have your doubts, I’ll briefly summarise my research. Firstly, it’s well known that laws get passed because something undesirable is already happening; it doesn’t in any way mean they will stop it continuing to happen (just look at the effect of the death penalty on murder rates). Secondly, I discovered that despite homosexuality being illegal, there were actually fairly few court cases on the subject in early modern England, and only a small percentage of those resulted in prosecution. Much of that is undoubtedly because any sexual misdemeanour is difficult to prove, and in the case of consensual gay sex neither participant is likely to come forward with an accusation. Indeed the case most often referred to, that of the Earl of Castlehaven, centred not around homosexuality but the alleged rape of Lady Castlehaven by a male servant with the earl’s assistance. Castlehaven’s homosexual leanings were then exploited by his wife and son to get him executed, along with the accused and another male servant.

Such a high profile case is atypical, and should not be considered the likely fate of a working-class gay man. More probably he would be subjected to queer-bashing, much as happened well into the twentieth century (and sadly still happens today), which would leave little or no historical record. However since my books are intended as fairly lighthearted adventure novels, not examinations of what it was like to be gay in Shakespeare’s London, I deliberately played this down, as I did with the bear-baiting, cock-fighting and other unpleasant activities that were considered perfectly acceptable in this period. For the same reason my characters don’t wallow in angst about burning in Hell, but apparently neither did the playwright Christopher Marlowe, who is alleged to have said “those who love not tobacco and boys are fools”. All in all I don’t think there’s anything in my novels that openly contradicts the historical evidence; the problem is all in the eye of the beholder.

A reverse form of the Tiffany Problem can afflict writers of secondary world fantasy, which by definition is not our world and therefore doesn’t have to work by our rules. The fans of grimdark fantasy like to claim that their favourite books are full of rape and torture because “it’s realistic for a medieval world”, ignoring the fact that it was the writer’s choice to focus on these aspects of the real Middle Ages and overlook the positive ones. You might therefore find that your heroic fantasy is criticized for being unrealistic, just because your world has sexual equality or decent public hygiene or whatever.

So how do you avoid the Tiffany Problem? The short answer is: you can’t. You just have to do your best and then prepare to roll with the punches.

The long answer is that you can work around the most glaring issues by having some beta-readers who don’t know much about history. They may tell you that your coin-operated water dispenser sounds a bit too steampunk for an Ancient Greek setting, at which point you realise you need to explain earlier in the book that the Ancient Greeks knew all about steam power and levers but only used them for gimmicky devices, because they had slaves to do all the hard work.

With secondary world fantasy, strong internally consistent worldbuilding can help. A public sewer system and abundant clean water requires massive resources and organisation, which is why the ancient Mediterranean empires had them and the squabbling kingdoms of medieval Europe didn’t. Baths need lots of hot water, which in turn requires fuel and hard work, so before the invention of domestic boilers only rich people with plenty of servants or slaves could afford them. Think about where your “modern” luxuries come from, rather than dropping them into the world just because you want them there.

In either type of setting, more complex pseudo-anachronisms like my gay Elizabethans are much harder to “explain”, and you will have to decide whether to try to slip in a brief incident or bit of dialogue to give it some context, or just accept that readers bring their own experience to a story and may find some things implausible. I feel it’s best to avoid infodumps unless your beta-readers have flagged it up as a major obstacle to believability.

Be warned, however, that there’s nothing you can do about the willfully ignorant, like the commenter I saw online the other day stating that the Ancient Greeks couldn’t have been gay because they followed the teachings of Jesus (*headdesk*). Like any criticism of your work, you just have to suck it up and move on—and on no account respond to the reviews! If it really bugs you why not write a blog post about it? The article I wrote on homosexuality in Elizabethan England is one of the top search hits on my website, which probably brings in a few readers who otherwise would never have heard of my novels, and all without feeding the trolls.

I hope this article hasn’t made you nervous about including lesser-known historical facts in your fantasy world. It will enrich your writing, make your story more believable to those in the know, and might even open readers’ eyes to how complex and sophisticated our ancestors’ worlds really were.

References
Tulip Mania
Archived version of interview with Jo Walton
Mervyn_Tuchet,_2nd_Earl_of_Castlehaven

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Anne Lyle was born in what is popularly known as “Robin Hood Country”, and grew up fascinated by English history, folklore, and swashbuckling heroes. Unfortunately there was little demand in 1970s Nottinghamshire for diminutive swordswomen, so she studied sensible subjects like science and languages instead.

It appears, however, that although you can take the girl out of Sherwood Forest, you can’t take Sherwood Forest out of the girl. She now spends practically every spare hour writing – or at least planning – fantasy fiction about dashing swordsmen and scheming spies, set in alternate pasts or imaginary worlds.

She prides herself on being able to ride a horse, sew a sampler and cut a quill pen but hasn’t the least idea how to drive one of those new-fangled automobile thingies. Paradoxically she is a big fan of 21st century technology, being a Mac geek and full-time web developer. Well, it’s the nearest thing you can get to magic in our own universe…