Interview: Dia Calhoun: PART ONE

I had the chance recently to interview Dia Calhoun, author of the brilliant story Avielle of Rhia and other YA fantasy novels. (I just finished reading another of her books, Phoenix Dance, a retelling of the 12 Dancing Princesses tale.) Dia is also one of the four divas who brought readergirlz into being. Visit her online at www.diacalhoun.com and her MySpace. I hope you enjoy the interview!

Please describe your writing process for Avielle of Rhia, from idea to final draft.

After 9/11, I had a great personal and artistic crisis. I kept imagining all kinds of terrible ways the terrorists might strike next. I had to drive across a big bridge and I use to think, “Hurry, get across before the terrorists blow it up!” I had lots of irrational thoughts like that. I was working on another book in the Firegold series, and I just quit writing. It didn’t seem important anymore. Finally one day, I was huddled under the covers reading a fairy tale about a magic carpet, and I thought, I wish I had a magic cloak I could wrap around myself to keep myself safe. Well, I flung back the covers, marched to the computer, and said to myself: I am a writer. I have to write about this fear and terror I am feeling. It’s the only way through this dark tunnel. So I began writing a story about a common girl who dreamed of weaving a magic cloak to keep herself safe after a terrorist attack on her kingdom. That was the genesis for Avielle of Rhia, originally titled, The Magic Cloak.

The first draft I wrote was too close to the real events of 9/11. I had twin towers blown up. I had people flying the flags of Rhia to show their support for their besieged kingdom. It took two years, and for another part of the story to arrive on wings, before the book finally came into its own. First, I realized that Avielle should be a princess because she needed to be concerned for the safety of the entire kingdom in the face of terrorism, not just her own safety. Then the birds, the image that tied the whole book together, came. I don’t know where they came from; they were a gift from the blue. Avielle’s Dredonian great-great grandmother Dolvoka uttered a curse that killed all the birds in Rhia and kept the kingdom bereft of them for a hundred years. All kinds of ideas flowed from that, but mainly that the people linked Avielle with Dolvoka’s evil. Thus, Avielle was ostracized. I think the birds are really a symbol of Avielle’s spiritual awakening.

I’m not certain at what point I realized I was writing about love. Avielle has to learn how to love others—that is what she learns from all the colorful characters on Postern Street. I realized, though, that it was not enough for Avielle to love individuals. To save all of her people, claim her queenship, and her fullest magical power, Avielle had to make the leap to loving all her people. I realized about three-quarters of the way through that the book is about how Avielle’s heart opens. At the end, she has overcome the great trauma of losing her entire family to terrorism, and her fear of being killed by the terrorists—the Black Cloaks. She has one shining magnificent moment when she no longer wishes for revenge upon them, but wishes instead for their hearts to be opened. My hope is that when people read the book they will have such a moment. With that conclusion, I had come full circle in the writing of the book, overcoming my own deep terror and anger about 9/11.

What do you have in common with Princess Avielle?
I would say I share her great sense of fear over terrorism. And I share her discovery that love is the answer to that fear. Another thing we have in common is that we are both artists. Avielle is a weaver, though, of course, she has a magical gift. I wish magic helped me write my books!

The book is dedicated to: “Living under the shadow of terrorism calls for a special kind of courage, a courage that does not come easily for some. This book is for them.” Did you know you wanted that to be the theme of the book from the very start, or did that element find its way in later?

I knew from the beginning I wanted to write about how you find your courage after living through a horrendous catastrophic event like a terrorist attack. After 9/11 many people made eloquent speeches exhorting us all to be courageous. We were all told, as I have come to think of it now, to go marching bravely on. To go on with our lives in order to show the terrorists that they had not won.

However, as one speech followed another, as the days passed, and as the terrible tape of the towers’ fall played over and over again, I felt hollow—as I wrote above. What, I thought, if you can’t go marching bravely on? What if you do feel despair? I felt awful having these feelings because they seemed so unpatriotic. Un-American. I was letting the terrorists win.

I kept waiting to hear some one talk about these feelings I was having. Surely, there had to be others out there like me who could not go marching bravely on. Oh, there were occasional news-reports by psychologists about people being depressed by the events of nine-eleven, but there were no great speeches, there was no hero for the frightened and the despairing. Who spoke for me?

Being an artist and a writer, I turned to my writing to make sense of what was happening to me, as I described above. And I made Avielle the hero for the frightened and the despairing, for those to whom courage did not come easily. I wanted to write about someone truly traumatized, someone for whom the journey back would not be easy, but filled with doubts, fears, and regressions. One of the reasons I wrote the book is that I needed someone to speak for me, to speak for my experience of 9/11 and terrorism. I had to create Avielle to do it.

Check back tomorrow, when I'll post Part Two!