PLEASE WELCOME Sandra Hurst, author of The Sky Road Fantasy Series, to today's blog.
Growing up England, stories and legends surrounded her, and taught her the power of imagination. AT 8, she moved to northern Canada and found new legends. The Fae and the little people were replaced by the Thunderbird and woodland stories.
Growing up in Northern Alberta gave her love and respect for the wild lands and indigenous cultures and informed the worlds she creates. She's grown from poetry in middle school to epic fantasy in her books.
She lives in Calgary, Alberta with her husband and son. She loves them dearly, but occasionally puts them up for sale on e-bay when their behavior demands it. She balances life between a job as a paralegal counselor and her inner life as author/poet. She studies the Cree Language and aboriginal history, writes book reviews, blogs on her website, and studies mythologies from around the world.
Hi Mahrie, Thank you for the opportunity to be
interviewed for your blog.
Have you always thought you might someday write a book? Or did you come
to that decision as you got older?
My mother said I’ve always been good at telling stories, although I don’t think she meant writing. Born with a vivid imagination I frequently used it to try and slide around things when in trouble. I started writing in junior high. It was a science fiction story that never got past chapter two. The story was about a team of super-kids. I’ve written poetry, fantasy, science-fiction and romance, but never finished anything longer than a short story until I was introduced to the NaNoWrMo Group in Calgary Then I got serious about actually finishing a book.
As a result of your path to publication, do you think writers are born
or made? In other words, is it a genetic based urge or do our lives shape us
into writers?
Honestly, I’d have to say both. Every person is born with a gift inside of them. It doesn’t matter whether it comes out as words, art, music, crafting, cooking, anything; as long as it finds a way into the world. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. *Shakes head* Sorry, I fell down the Yoda hole for a moment.
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So, to further confuse the issue, I believe everyone can create, but life, training and opportunity often determine who will
Please
tell us what inspires your imagination and how you came to write the Sky Road Fantasy Trilogy.
My imagination has always been filled with the stories I learned as a child. I grew up loving tales of King Arthur and the Fae, learned Greek and Roman mythology in school, and adopted the legends of the Native peoples when I moved to Northern Alberta. These influences made me a myth-maker. I love building worlds that allow me to examine the issues of real people in an everyday world, but in a different way.
The Sky Road came out of two unconnected events about four years ago, the first was an off the cuff comment made by a relative on the reactions she dealt with when she came out as LGBTQ in the early 80’s, the other was a long night sitting beside a campfire in Grande Cache, Alberta watching the Northern Lights dance over the horizon
Myths give us a way to interpret the world past our normal experience. To ask questions and explore answers in a larger-than-life game of ‘what if.’ In my novel, Y’keta, the question is about identity. Is Y’keta willing to give up his identity to please his father? Is he willing to risk being honest about himself, even though he may lose everything he has grown to love.