Author Interview: C.E. Larke & Cora R. Bowen

A guest post by two more of our anthology authors!

Cosette: Hello, and welcome to our first ever author interview! Some quick information about me: my name is Cosette, pen name C.E. Larke, and my story in the anthology is titled “Songs of Sun and Stars.” I’m a young adult, Bible college graduate, and my favorite things in the world are books, tea, and friends.

I’m joined by my friend and fellow author, Cora R. Bowen, who I will be interviewing, and who will in turn be interviewing me. Cora, is there anything you’d like to say to introduce yourself?

Cora: Hello, all! My name is Cora R. Bowen. My story in the anthology is named “Yasisuth of Wind and Word.” Some of my favorite things are the dawn, the beauty of the sky, and trees. I love tea, company, and going on long walks. I find there to be so many wonderful and inspiring things in creation and in our lives. To start off our interview, I would love to ask what inspired your story, Cosette?

Cosette: That is a complicated answer. I honestly don’t remember for sure, but I think it was a recurring dream I’ve had for years. In the dream, I’m holding a baby that I know is my sister. I do have one sister, but in the dream, I can’t tell if the baby is my actual sister, or another one in the dream. But as the dream goes on, I slowly realize that the baby was never there at all, and I wake up with a sense of loss, like I really lost a sibling. I got the inspiration for this story several years ago, so I don’t remember for certain if that was what triggered the story, but I remember waking up knowing that I needed to write a story for my sister, one that encapsulated my love for her and a bit of a fear of loss.

What inspired yours?

Cora: This story built very slowly, similarly to yours. It started as a recurring idea that I had over a long period of time. At first, it was just the image of heaven splitting open and opalescent stars and light touching the earth. As time went on, I saw this scene much more clearly. Every time, it was a Being drawn out of the light of heaven. It seemed to be a completion of all the wonder and glory of the stars, and it was reaching down to touch the hand of a human man who was reaching up to it out of the darkness of night. I’d had this image for so long, and I just didn’t know where it went or what it was. All I knew was that I wanted to create a story around it.

Cosette: I love how we both have the imagery of the stars so poignantly in our stories.

Cora: Yes! The stars are wondrous.

Cosette: So can you give me a quick blurb of what your story is about?

Cora: My story is a story of longing and wonder. It is about a wanderer named Yasisuth who is trying to find his place and purpose. He has a vision where he encounters a celestial being of the stars who sets him on a quest, although Yasisuth isn’t entirely sure of his path.

Cosette: That sounds amazing, and like such a beautiful idea.

Cora: Thank you! Could you tell us a little bit of what your story is about?

Cosette: For sure! I’m bad at summaries, but this is a short blurb that I hope will work.

Sir Bahram is as adventurous a knight as anyone could ask for, never letting a quest slip by without at least trying it. Accepting a challenge from a fellow knight, Sir Bahram gets lost in the wilderness, all hope gone of fulfilling his adventure. But his spirits are restored when he hears two songs--one with the rising sun, and one with the shining stars--so beautiful that they break his heart. He sets out to find the singers of the songs and finds himself in the middle of a tale of two sisters, the younger drawn by the call of the stars, and the elder torn between her fierce love for her sister and the Sun-Song’s relentless pull on her heart.

Cora: That is beautiful! Your story seems like it would be sitting on a shelf with Edmund Spenser or George MacDonald.

Cosette: Given how much I admire George MacDonald, that’s a huge compliment.

Cora: What makes your story unique?

Cosette: Well, the obvious answer here is the style. I wrote it as an alliterative narrative poem, a style used in medieval times. Famous examples of it are stories like Beowulf or Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. I originally wrote this story as epic poetry, all those years ago when I came up with it…problem was, I had no idea how to write poetry. I showed it to my mom and she wanted to read it in more detail, so I wrote it again in prose, my more comfortable mode of writing. But when I later realized I loved poetry and found alliterative Medieval poetry, I was like “this is it!” I wrote four iterations of this story, so it was already pretty finished by the time I got to this version.

Cora: I love how this story has developed!

Cosette: Thank you! What about your story?

Cora: Although I have a number of supernatural beings in my world, they do not often play either a large role or a visible one in my stories. If they are involved, the characters often do not know it. This story is unique to my other writing in that I was able to introduce my Olamri, who are a group of supernatural people inspired by the beauty and wonder and joy that I associate with the stars. I was able to draw them in, into a story about humans and a mortal human world. Connecting these two things was so special to me, and something that’s made it very unique compared to almost all my other stories set in this world.

Cosette: That’s amazing. Drawing the seen and unseen together.

Cora: Is there anything that you relate to in your characters?

Cosette: This is one that I could talk about for a long time. My sister Eva is eight years younger than me. She was adopted and has several disabilities, one of which is a speech disorder called Childhood Apraxia of Speech. This story is dedicated to her. The symbol for Apraxia is a blue star. Through another book series I read a long time ago, I have come to identify with the symbol of the sun for me, as a symbol of hope and longing. I wanted to write a story about my relationship with my sister, so I took the two symbols and combined them. The sun to represent me, and the stars to represent Eva. You can see a lot of my protectiveness of her in this story.

So how about you? What makes you relate to your character?

Cora: The turning point for creating this story came out of a period when I was feeling very disconnected from my people and my community, and the people I was friends with and cared about. These feelings of separation helped shape the central character of this story. The beauty and the wonder and the almost overwhelming feeling of joy that carried through that time, despite these feelings of separation, that became the magic of this story. While I’m very different from my character Yasisuth, and we view things and respond to things differently, going through those similar periods I think is what makes me see him clearly.

Cosette: Yeah, for sure, going through things similar to the character is a sure way of seeing them better.

So is this story part of a larger world?

Cora: Very much so. This story is set in a world that I have been creating for almost two decades. In particular, this story centers around the kingdom that has been at the heart of a lot of my stories. This story was really special for me to write, because not only is it a “legend” in some of my later stories set in this world, but it connects so many symbols and themes. This story has shaped the history that affects the books I’m writing that take place at a later date.

Cosette: It almost sounds like we have the exact same scenario. I don’t know if it would be considered a legend, since it’s taking place at the same time as my other stories, however, there are some things in it that are considered legendary, such as the songs. It all very much connects to the rest of my stories as it is recounted as a legend. The name of the younger sister is Enna. I won’t say too much to avoid spoilers, but this is the name of the suns in one of my most significant worlds.

Cora: Are these different worlds in the same story universe?

Cosette: Yes. They are connected. This story was pivotal to worldbuilding different aspects of my other stories so much that it changed details in my stories that were almost finished!

Cora: That is amazing! I’ve loved how your stories have developed and grown!

When this story became difficult and hard to finish, what drove you to bring this story to completion?

Cosette: Honestly, sheer determination. I was tempted to give up and questioned why my first published work was Anglo-Saxon alliterate verse and almost went back to prose. But, in the end, it was the fact that I really love poetry. I had set myself a challenge and I wanted to see myself succeed. What about you?

Cora: The driving force in this story is joy. This love for an undefeatable hope, and the joy that came with that, kept me in love with this story. There is a German word, “sehnsucht,” that means a longing for something beyond this world, that this world can never satisfy. But the longing itself is so much sweeter than anything the world can provide that the longing brings with it a joy. This sehnsucht is what carries the character on his journey, and this love of hope and joy and longing is what drove me to finish this story, even when I was frustrated and quite literally tearing pages out of my notebook.

Cosette: I also have quite a bit of sehnsucht driving my story. It seems like we’ve both got a bit of C.S. Lewis influence in there.

Cora: It’s inescapable.

Cosette: So what has inspired you the most to pursue writing?

Cora: I was always reading from a very young age, and my parents would make up stories to tell me, which inspired me to do the same for my friends and siblings. When I was little, and people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would often answer, “I want to be a storyteller.” My small-child self visualized making my living by telling stories to people around a campfire as I wandered around the globe on foot.

Cosette: Ah, a traveling bard. A noble aspiration.

Cora: Quite so! Although, my career aspirations have changed a little bit. But telling stories is something I’ve always wanted to do. When I was nine, I started writing seriously, and it’s been a part of my life ever since. What about you?

Cosette: I grew up with my dad always reading to me. As soon as I was old enough I started reading. I was always making up stories. I remember writing my first story, a ridiculous, written version of a rather disturbing game I used to play with friends, scrawled on lined notebook paper and stuffed into a binder.

Cora: There’s nothing like the odd games we used to play when we were little for inspiration.

Cosette: Oh yeah. Even before that I was writing down small things. When I decided to write seriously was when I was 14. I was always a sensitive kid, and when I was a teenager and I started watching more grown-up movies, I didn’t like a lot of them. I was getting frustrated trying to find entertainment I was comfortable with. I had fallen in love with a series by a Christian fantasy author, and I remember asking myself, “Why can’t there be more stories like this?” The next question was “Why don’t I just write them myself?”

So I tried, and in the process of that first novel, I fell in love with writing and never stopped.

Cora: That moment of falling in love is beautiful.

What goals do you have for your writing?

Cosette: I’d love to make writing my career. I’m currently working on publishing the first book of a series I’ve written. My ideal situation would be similar to Lewis or Tolkien and the Inklings. They wrote, but had other careers on the side. I would like to do the same, since I know if I made writing my whole career it would lose all its charm. I have a job I love right now, so I would love to build writing into a second career. What about you? What are your goals?

Cora: I am in a rather similar space. I want to share my work, I want to be able to publish my writing and build a career out of it, however I want to have the freedom to publish when I think my stories are ready and when I think it would be best. I deeply love both linguistics and history, and much like you, I would like to have a second career separate from writing, as well.

Is this your first published work?

Cosette: Yes, it is! I never dreamed my first published work would be alliterative poetry. I have tried to publish work in the past unsuccessfully. In the end, I’m glad that it fell like this, that this is my first published story, because it’s dedicated to my sister. For me, even though she has difficulty reading with her disabilities, as a storyteller and a writer, writing and publishing a story about her, and for her, is the deepest way to tell her I love her. What about you?

Cora: That is beautiful!

I have done various work as a journalist and in writing articles, both on my own time and for work. And while I am glad that I’ve had the opportunities to work with some journals and newspapers, I have not yet had the chance to publish one of my stories. My stories are the reason I write, and I think it’s very fitting that this is the first of my stories to be published. And I am really excited that it is being published with a group of people who have helped me develop my writing and whose friendship I greatly value.

Cosette: What authors have inspired you to write?

Cora: I grew up reading George MacDonald, C.S. Lewis, and J.R.R. Tolkien. Those three authors are huge influences on the fantasy genre and they’ve greatly impacted me. As soon as I started reading, I read every fairytale from every land that I could get my hands on. I devoured fairytales, and I fell in love with them.

There was a book of illustrated short stories called “The Tales of Mr. Pengachoosa” by Caroline Rush and illustrated by Dominique M. Strandquest. I adored this book as a child. I picked it up again as a teenager, and it hit me how much this book had inspired and influenced me. The stories are beautiful fairytales that seem so otherworldly, and yet so close to the lives around us.

Trina Schart Hyman, an illustrator, was another great influence on me. The book “St. George and the Dragon” by Margaret Hodges and illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman was also one of the most influential on my life.

And you?

Cosette: Well, like I already said, I have a lot of influence from C.S. Lewis in my writing, and I’ve also been really inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien. Those seem like really obvious answers, and while they’re the ones who keep me going, it was actually more modern authors who got me going in the first place. Andrew Peterson is a huge inspiration, as well as his brother A.S. “Pete” Peterson, who encouraged me in person not to stop writing. But the one that made me start seriously writing in the first place is Wayne Thomas Batson. I was obsessed with his books as a teenager, and he was the one who wrote a series that made me ask why there couldn’t be more good, clean entertainment. Unfortunately I think his writing has gone downhill over the years and got a bit dark for my personal comfort, but I still appreciate the early series I read.