Today on the Speculative Fiction Showcase it gives us great pleasure to interview Florian Armas, who novel Errant (Chronicle of the Seer Book 1) we featured in a promotional post on June 14.
Your novel Errant starts with the hero Codrin, last heir to Arenia, in flight from the invading hordes of the Serpent God, with only his sword for company. Tell us about your inspiration for the book.
The main character, Codrin, is based on two historical figures: Stephen the Great and Vlad Draculea the Third (Draculea means ‘The Dragon’), better known as Vlad Dracula. Both were medieval rulers, orphaned and exiled when they were young – strong military commanders who defeated much larger armies of invaders from the eastern steppes (Tatars and Turks).
The Tatars of the Golden Horde Khanate were the European branch of the Mongols, occupying the land between the Black Sea and Ural Mountains. They settled in Europe during the invasion led by Batu Khan in the 13th Century. For the next three centuries, the Tatars invaded the medieval states of Eastern Europe many times.
Stephen the Great fought thirty-six battles, and won thirty-four, the most famous being that with Mehmed the Conqueror (the sultan who took Constantinople). With 40,000 soldiers, Stephen defeated a 120,000 Turkish strong army at Vaslui in 1475, the greatest European victory against the Turks until the battle of Vienna in 1683. He was surnamed the Athleta Christi (Champion of Christ) by Pope Sixtus IV.
Vlad was famous for impaling his enemies (though impaling was a common practice in Central and Eastern Europe at that time), and for the Night Attack against the same Mehmed the Conqueror, who invaded the southern Romanian state of Wallachia in 1462, with 150,000 soldiers. Vlad had only 25,000 men and decided on a night attack, with 7000 riders dressed in Turkish clothes, using buglers and thousands of torches to confuse the enemy. He was fluent in Turkish (as well as Latin, German, Greek and Italian) and gave contradictory orders to the Turkish soldiers, who fought amongst themselves long after Vlad had retreated. (There is a famous painting of the Night Attack: The Battle with Torches by Theodor Aman.)
The attack failed to kill Mehmed only because the sultan was not in his tent, but the two Grand Viziers of the Turkish army died that night. The sultan retreated for a few days to reorganize his army, then restarted the campaign to take the capital. On his way, he encountered the Forest of the Dead. The 15,000 Turkish soldiers killed in the Night Attack were impaled there, with the Grand Viziers in front, placed on the tallest stakes. The sultan wisely decided to go home.
The series continues with three sequels, Ardent, Ascendant and Respectant. How does the story develop?
The use of heraldic terms in the titles gives a sense of evolution from one novel to another. There will be one more book in the series, with the final battle against the hordes of the Serpent God (the Toltars of the Khadate). Led by a Khad, the Khadate of the Toltars is based on the Golden Horde of the Tatars and their Khan. The Toltars worship a different god (the Serpent God, who is the enemy of the goddess Fate) and have a nomadic style of life.
The cover art for the series is particularly good. Can you tell us about it?
There are two main characteristics: the orange dust represents the wind of the eastern steppes, an alienating element, and the Circle is one of the three secret orders in the series. The stone ring, representing the Circle, was inspired by the temple of Sarmisegetusa Regia, the ancient Dacian capital. Its ruins lie in the Carpathian Mountains in central Romania.
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| Sarmisegetusa Regia |
Who or what are the Wanderers and how is their fate intertwined with the followers of the Serpent God?
The Wanderers is a secret order, similar to the prehistoric shamans, the priests of Zalmoxis (the Monotheist deity of the Dacians) and the pre-medieval Druids. They follow the goddess Fate, who was worshiped for four thousand years, after the White Salt War, which ruined the Talant Empire, and destroyed more than half of the continent.
The Serpentists are the priests of the new Serpent God, and they rule the horde of the Khadate. In general, each invasion coming from the eastern steppes brought not only different rulers and style of life, but another religion too. So, we have a classic war and a cultural and religious war.
Every two thousand years, an astronomical phenomenon named the ‘precession of the equinoxes’ takes place on Earth, when the first month of the Zodiac changes, and a new religious phase begins. After the first cycle, Fate, the goddess in the novel, resurrected herself, and ruled for another two thousand years. There is a new precession now, and the Serpent God tries to dethrone Fate.
I feel it more challenging and rewarding if the subjects of my novels alternate from one category to another.
The Other Side is a science fiction novel, placed in a conscious universe, describing a society ruled through the social media, a future that may or may not come to us in some twenty years from now. A society where the authorities, led by a financial nobility, are able to read people’s minds, through an AI chip implanted in their spine. People are permanently connected into the Net, and live a parallel, controlled life there. The nobility starts a process of destruction at planetary level, and a young man, a three-hundred-year old woman and a rogue AI fight to save humanity.
The Shamans at the End of Time is a time travel and alternate history novel. The deity in charge of Earth makes a strange decision: to restart the history of humanity at a divergence point, where human evolution could go in two different directions. After some deliberation, the timeline is reset to when the hunter-gatherers in Europe met the people who invented agriculture, and a modern man is sent into the past. It goes wrong, and the deity learns that changing history is a tough business.
You write both Science Fiction and Fantasy. Which one do you prefer and what will you write next?
Once the Chronicle of the Seer ends, most probably I will continue with the follow up for The Other Side– the challenge I mentioned before.
You mention that you love travelling and like to write on planes and trains. How have the places you visited influenced your writing?
It’s somehow strange, but the orange colour in the cover was inspired by travel into the Egyptian dessert and Luxor (the ancient Thebes). And in Latin America (Teotihuacan, Chichen Itza, Aconcagua), I understood more about how such an invasion, similar to the one described in this series, impacted the life of the natives, who lost their civilization in the process of being transformed into ‘civilized’ people.
If space travel becomes possible, will you journey to the stars?
I have been dreaming of travel in space since reading A. E. van Vogt’s The Voyage of the Space Beagle and watching the Star Trek movies.
What music do you listen to when writing and have your books got a soundtrack?
Music helps me to enter the right mood to write this or that text. For the ‘serene’ parts I use classical music, Enya or Zamfir (Doina de Jale and the Lonely Shepherd). When writing dark political intrigues and battles, I go for Pink Floyd, jazz or dark cabaret. It’s interesting how the soundtrack can enhance your experience, as Enya did for Lord of the Rings and Ennio Morricone for Once Upon a Time in the West or The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Once, I wondered how Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and Morricone’s Gabriel’s Oboe would work together in a soundtrack for Errant. We can dream sometimes, can’t we?
You talk about your interest in medieval and ancient history. Has that influenced your writing?
As the poet Ovid once said, ‘a new idea is delicate.’ There are usually some historical facts in my books. The idea for Errant has been in my mind for some years and has several sources of inspiration. Religious sources: Shamanism, and the Mysteries of Zalmoxis and Hermes Trismegistus. Historical sources: ancient Dacia and medieval Romanian history.
The Dacians had a monotheistic religion, worshiping Zalmoxis, a Christ-like figure who died and was resurrected. At its greatest extent during the reign of King Burebista (82–44 BC), the kingdom stretched from the Black Sea to Central Europe. Their capital was at Sarmisegetusa in the Carpathian Mountains of modern Romania. Dacia was conquered by the Roman Emperor Trajan in 106 AD, after three decades of war between the Dacians and the Romans.
You are right about Europe, but I will let the readers discover which of two versions is true.
Tell us about your interest in gaming. You like Civilization – does gaming demand different skills to writing, or can it teach you how to campaign?
My novels have some similitude to playing Civilization. After taking the fortress of Poenari through political manoeuvrings, Codrin develops his lands in small steps, his plans and actions are complex, and war is only used when political intrigue and diplomacy fail to advance his interests.
Will there be more overlap between books, games and movies in the future?
We are developing more and more into a digital society, dominated by virtual reality. Our books, games and movies have already started a process of integration into a new form of art that is still a bit nebulous.
Have any movies influenced you, and what are you watching now?
Every book and movie influence us, sometimes in subtle ways that are not conscious. The series started by Errant is somewhere between The Lord of the Rings and The Game of Thrones. If I am looking at the reviews, most readers consider the series closer to GOT (strangely, they use more the movie than the book for comparison), because of the political intrigue.
In the past, the majority of SFF came from America, but that is changing fast. How do you see the future of SFF?
Literary innovations and fashion follow the world with the advent or resurgence of new or past civilizations. SFF is no exception. Two thousand years ago, we had myths like the Ramayana and Lucian of Samosata’s A True Story, a voyage to the edges of the universe, and the first description of an interplanetary war. A thousand years later, we had The Tale of Awaj bin Anfaq (the first known ET, he visited Earth to write an account of our civilization) and Urashima Tarō (the first known time traveler, who went 700 years into the future).
Perhaps Japan, China or East Europe will become more relevant in SFF, or perhaps Latin America and Africa. That will only add new flavours to the existing literary landscape.
About Florian Armas:
Florian Armas writes science fiction and fantasy, including the Chronicle of the Seer series.
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