Our collaborative anthology, The Ceaseless Way, drops on Amazon this Fri, Black Friday Nov 29. Each of us of the seven co-authors, wrote two of the science fiction and fantasy stories.
Today I am interviewing another of my The Ceaseless Way co-authors, Allegra Gulino. I know Allegra from the Durham Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Group. When you have a story critiqued in the group, you know that one of the valuable things you will take with you afterwards, will be a piece of paper Allegra has covered with very detailed feedback.
When I researched Nnn’s Children by visiting the Cryptobiology and Paranormal Museum in Littleton, NC, Allegra was my “partner in crime” for the adventure. She also came with me to visit the former Land of Oz theme park in Beech Mountain, NC. (I hope to get a story out of that visit later.)
Ada: The Ceaseless Way is about journeys. Tell me about your journey as a writer.
Allegra: As a kid I channeled my creativity into drawing, dance, singing and playing piano. Sometimes my desire to express myself through art was overwhelming. In addition, I’ve always loved reading and writing. In college I majored in English Lit, with a Fine Arts minor. My writing focus at the time was literary criticism – the analysis of books through essay-writing. I steered my creativity toward my art classes, my dreams and wild ideas. After college, I hoped to write professionally. I didn’t consider creative writing, though I love story-telling and appreciate fine writing/movies/shows. Then we struggled with infertility for several years. In during that existential gloom, I became a Yoga teacher. I loved creating sequences, based on what the students requested – I even taught pre and post natal classes with pleasure. It wasn’t until 2009, when I took my first Shamanic workshop with the Four Winds Society, that my inner story-teller came to the fore. Suddenly Huascar, who is a Shamanic archetype and an Incan emperor spoke to me – through the guise of an animated Sci-Fi epic (of course). I started writing Huascar’s tale, making many character drawings, crafting a couple of solar systems, detailed histories of four races (no humans). I was driven to share the story of a progressive general in an oppressive, warring empire, trying to heal his people. Eight years later, I had completed the first book in the trilogy I named Convergence. It isn’t yet published. As I worked on that, it became clear that Sci-Fi/Fantasy writing provides me with endless fascination, development, learning and delight – it’s another calling, along with Shamanism.
Since then I’ve expanded my skill, not only at creating worlds, but researching Earth history and
fashioning fantasy scenes against realistic backdrops. My short story, The Monkey In the Cove,
is set in California 1967 – the Summer of Love. I’m still submitting that one. I really got cooking
with historical research for my novel Monsters Unbound, which was spurred by a dream I had
while I was working on the second Convergence book. I thought, ok, this will be a short story,
then I’ll get back to my epic. Well, in two years it’s blossomed into a novel – I’m about two thirds done. My trilogy characters are calling, so I need to finish this ‘brief’ interruption. One of the things I’ve learned is, write your newest inspirations otherwise you will lose the spark – in this case, it’s a raging fire that must be shared. I’m now learning Romanian and last summer we
travelled there, to visit historical sites. The characters, setting and concepts are very rich and
engaging for me – it’s really fun to work on. Stay tuned.
Ada: What was it that led you to write your stories in The Ceaseless Way?
Allegra: Both of my stories in Ceaseless Way are excerpts from my
novel-in-progress, Monsters Unbound, which is set in modern Romania, where Dracula,
Frankenstein’s Monster and a Latina werewolf band together with others, to fight an extremist
group that wants to eradicate all the country’s monsters.
My piece, Demon, He Called Me, carries on the story from the ending of Mary Shelley’s classic
novel, Frankenstein – it’s a flashback section for the being that eventually takes the name of
Theodore, and befriends Dracula. Shelly’s book ends with the Victor Frankenstein’s unnamed
monster having a final confrontation with his Creator aboard a whaling ship. The monster
promises his Creator, who was dying of grief and strife caused by his Creation, to kill himself.
Once Frankenstein dies, the monster oars away toward the North Pole, intent on keeping his
promise. However, in my tale, his unceasing verve for life and appreciation of nature oppose his
suicide. The monster encounters a wounded baby seal, and decides to save it from being
crushed by an unstable ice shelf. This act convinces him that killing himself would be wrong
because he is the only being who could have saved the seal.
My second story in the anthology, The Ortega Wolves Migrate North, involves a middle-class
Mexican family that I invented for my novel. They opposed drug cartel members gaining political
power in their home state. For that, the Ortegas were terrorized, until they fled for the US border. However, before that conflict, their long-term plan was to legally establish a new life in the US away from drought, corruption and poverty. With the drug lords on their heels, the family decides to meet with a Bruja, a witch, in order to become werewolves and cross the border with ease. While the parents decided on that plan out of desperation, their middle daughter, Sonia is excited to have more power and a reason to better unite the disparate family members, while starting a new life.
Ada: Plotter or Pantser? (For those unfamiliar with these writer terms, a plotter means a writer who outlines what’s going to happen in their story before they start writing it. A pantser is a writer who writes by the seat of their pants. They just start writing and see what happens.)
Allegra: The way I write is as a plotter. When I receive the story inspiration in my dreams or as a reaction to situations, of course, I write that down. These are story seeds – without middles or sometimes, endings. Then, as I think about the story theme and the journey of those characters, I’ll plot the story, in order to reach a satisfying end. At this point, I may have to do a combination of research and creation, in order to flesh out the details of the players, setting and events. If I’m writing a short story, the plot text is just a document of bullet points. If it’s a longer piece, once the bullet point document gets overwhelming, I’ll make index cards of plot stages and play around with arranging them. Once I’m happy with the plot, I tack them on the cork wall in my office. Once I’ve settled on plot, I’ll begin writing the story – usually sequentially.
I’ve found that this method prevents me from getting stuck with unforeseen plot holes,
unresolved character development or vague endings. However, it’s no guarantee that I won’t
have to pause in writing to figure out logistics – the ‘how’ questions. Sometimes working on
logistics in complicated scenes can take months, if they’re complex battles, for example. To me,
it’s important to get the details and parameters right – that I stay as authentic as possible to
either the actual history or the universe that I’ve created. That way the Continuity Police won’t
come knocking on my door – ha! But, even if the logistics take a long time, I’m not too
depressed because I had already decided on so much before then, that the characters urge me
on and constantly tell me what they would do and feel about the action.
Ada: What’s your next writing project after what you’re working on?
Allegra: Currently, I’m working on Monsters Unbound, trying to finish it within three months. As I said, the story kept outgrowing my perceived length, but it’s been satisfying because as I add more, it gains dimensions. When I had almost finished the story, as a novella, sharing it in my Meet-Up group that it kept eliciting questions from readers. Questions, which I sometimes didn’t have the answers for – this meant I need to include more background, more setting, more history of the characters. So, I decided that, without changing the present day story, I’ll intersperse more back story for all the main characters. However, I also decided that Draculawill be the protagonist – that’s a change from my initial plan of giving equal time to all
characters. As most know, Dracula is beloved in general, but my version of him as a human
(Vlad the Impaler) whose war crimes caught up with him, were most compelling to my Meet-Up
group. In my tale, upon his death, he is rejected from heaven and thrown back to Earth to inhabit his dismembered body, scattered over a large geographical distance (the Impaler’s head
was sent to Constantinople). Through great travail, Dracula unites himself. From that point, he’s
a vampire – cursed by God, but craving forgiveness and a proper death. This ‘origin’ story now
has several scenes in my book.
Ada: What’s your next writing project after what you’re working on?
Allegra: I’m not good at multi-tasking, especially when focusing a project as rich as Monsters Unbound, but I am resolved to send out two of my best short stories while I’m finishing that. Once my novel is done and has had beta readers, and the subsequent revisions, I’ll be submitting it. If during that period, I didn’t have any more new story inspirations, I will rejoin the second book in my Convergence trilogy. My characters have been pining for me, and I, for them.
Ada: Do you have anything else coming out soon? How can people find it to buy/read it?
Allegra: Aside from Ceaseless Way, and my short story, Aquasphere, which came out about three weeks ago in issue 1065 of Bewildering Stories, I don’t have anything else now.
Ada: What story that you wrote are you proudest about and why?
Allegra: I’m proudest of Monsters Unbound. My first foray into alternate history and magical realism was my unpublished (so far) short-story, The Monkey In the Cove, about a mixed race couple who, with the help of a Hindu God, are able to halt the race riots that abounded in the US during summer of 1967. It was enlightening and enjoyable to combine historical research with my characters’ stories, and come up with a magical solution to an intractable American problem – racism. But, Monsters Unbound has gone deeper
into history, culture and my favorite thing – complex characters – than any of my writing to date.
I’ve always loved Dracula – Bram Stoker’s book, along with many depictions of him in movies and shows. For a variety of reasons, most of them shy away from linking the supernatural character to the actual person of Vlad the Impaler. Truthfully, I can see why. After reading several books about him, I had plenty of decisions to make about how he would rationalize his brilliant, yet extremely violent behavior. Since I write every character from a place of empathy, it was a bit scary at first, to consider finding that feeling for someone who butchered eighty thousand people – I’ve continually leaned into my Shamanic work to help that process.
To this day, some Romanians consider Vlad the Impaler a hero because his cause was just. With limited resources, but also insider knowledge (gained through childhood trauma) of how the Ottomans and their Sultan, Mehmet the Conqueror worked, Dracula resisted the Empire’s efforts to subjugate his lands and people. He was the only one who went to those extremes and got so close to success. Once he was killed, the Ottomans took over for many more years.
All along, I’ve been very careful to honor the history and culture of all my characters in the book, but especially Dracula. I’ve felt the importance of my task – to strive for an authentic depiction that also honors my vision. I’m striving to take the facts, the seeds of the Stoker tale, and the tropes and meld that potential into new story – that of healing and redemption. I feel now, that I am rising to those standards.
Ada Milenkovic Brown 