Erin M. Evans: Author of Brimstone Angels
Rejected at birth and raised in a village of tiefling misfits, Farideh expects a life without friends, love, or control over her destiny. Then she makes a pact with a devil named Lorcan, and everything changes.
Today at Nerd Caliber we present an interview with Erin M. Evans, author of Brimstone Angels: A Forgotten Realms Novel (Neverwinter Nights)
What influences shaped you as a writer?
For most of my life, my mother told me I should be a writer when I grew up, which I was not remotely interested in for some reason, even though I did very much like making up stories, usually to go along with the sketchbooks I carried everywhere or to ease my profound insomnia. I read voraciously (anything my local library had, but most especially fantasy), but I didn’t really connect that to writing until I hit high school and read a book I hated. I got so mad, I decided I could do better and banged out a truly atrocious historical fantasy novel. But, hey, I was fourteen. I think my mom was a little smug about it.
When I moved to Seattle, I started working at a small press that specialized in science fiction and fantasy. I got to read slush (unsolicited manuscripts) which was probably the very best thing for my writing skills at that point. A crash course in what worked and what didn’t. It also gave me the skills to get a job working in the novels department at Wizards of the Coast, where I learned a lot about the art of writing shared world fiction.
How were you first exposed to Dungeons and Dragons?
The 80s cartoon. I wanted to be Uni.
I didn’t play Dungeons & Dragons until I was 24. Despite being so constantly immersed in fantasy that “obsessed” doesn’t do it justice, D&D and I never crossed paths, until a friend of mine and my husband’s was putting together a game for a bunch of our friends who had played when they were younger but fallen out of the habit. Neither I nor my husband had ever played. I don’t know why I made a neutral evil sorcerer, but the DM let me. My play style mostly consisted of abusing my freakishly high Charisma score so I didn’t have to do things like take a watch shift and whispering incredibly naïve questions to the DM, but I really liked coming up with ways to solve problems by piecing spells together—Comprehend languages plus ghost sound means that those lizard men are distracted by panicky Draconic enough for the ranger to get some arrows in their backs. Hooray! It kind of made me bummed no one ever introduced me to the game sooner. I would have loved it.
This past November, your latest book, Brimstone Angels, was released. Where did the initial ideas for this story and these characters come from?
The first spark of an idea came from the backstory for a character I was playing in a Forgotten Realms game, actually, but it morphed significantly. When I got the opportunity to write Brimstone Angels, my direction was initially to make it a sort of introduction to tieflings and to make it the possible start of a series. My character in game was a tiefling warlock with a twin sister, but she was pacted to a fey entity who basically left them all alone. A devil and an infernal pact felt like a stronger way to explore the tieflings’ devilish ancestry, and a younger character felt like a better place to start from. I have two sisters, which made Havilar and Farideh a mish-mash of every conversation and fight we’ve had over the last twenty-five years or so.
At the time there was a popular series coming out that I won’t name where a girl gets romantically entangled with a supernatural fellow. I found the relationship off-putting and controlling and definitely not romantic, and I wondered what that would look like if it were handled if you acknowledged right off that it’s a bad deal. So that’s where I started with Lorcan and Farideh.
The plot in Neverwinter came from perusing the story bible provided by Cryptic for their upcoming Neverwinter MMO. I was hooked by the character of the Foulspawn Prophet. I came up with a plot where a succubus is trying to corrupt the Prophet, but ends up corrupted by the Prophet’s Far Realm connections. Then Cryptic decided the Prophet should be female and I offered up my succubus, Rohini, as a replacement. That made the other half of Brimstone Angels the story of Rohini.
Readers of fantasy seem to really be interested in characters that battle misconceptions about themselves and their race, from Drizz’t Do’Urden’s drow heritage to your characters, the tieflings Havilar and Farideh. Why do you think readers are interested in these issues?
I think they’re issues that a lot of readers have to deal with in real life. Whether it’s people assuming they know who you are based on your name or your skin color or your gender or your interests or the way you dress, most of us can relate on some level to having to convince people we aren’t what they assume we are. It doesn’t feel good when it happens and having characters who succeed despite the people around them discounting their abilities or values is pleasant to read.
Havilar and Farideh had a hard childhood. Abandoned as babies by their birth parents, raised by a dragonborn and living in harsh areas because of their tiefling background. Do you feel their past has had a strong impact on their personalities and affects their decisions about the futures?
Yes, in a lot of different ways. For starters, they’re the only children of an exiled scion from a dragonborn military clan. They’re not exactly shrinking violets when it comes to fighting or roughing it. But I think because of that they also don’t expect a lot of comfort out of life.
More importantly, they’re both terrified of losing what they have. Farideh keeps this pact with a devil because it gives her options in life she wouldn’t have otherwise, but she makes it initially because she’s afraid she won’t be able to save Havilar when her wild streak catches up with her. She’s really anxious about not having control over her surroundings. Meanwhile, Havilar’s greatest fear is that Farideh won’t be there to anchor her. It’s not a fear she knows how to express, but every one of their exchanges comes back to that.
Going forward in the series, they definitely have to work against those fears and expectations. And more mundane matters, like dealing with boys.
The relationship between Farideh and Lorcan, the Cambion devil is, to say the least, a very complicated relationship. When reading their interactions in Brimstone Angels, was I right in thinking that you had some powerful messages about “the allure of bad boys?”
I think a lot of the way we talk about “bad boys” and abusive relationships either glamourizes it or casts it like a morality play—this is what happens to weak, stupid women, and why can’t she just leave him? And the reality is a lot more complicated, and even in the worst relationships, there’s something I think we’re getting out of it, and it may take a lot to recognize that the bad doesn’t outweigh the good, and you can’t make people change.
In Farideh and Lorcan’s case, I don’t think the fact that she’s intensely attracted to him matters as much as the fact that the powers she gets from him give her a confidence and a direction she hasn’t had before. It’s enough that she excuses the fact that he’s controlling and occasionally vicious—up to a point. My hope is that you start out reading Brimstone Angels going, “Oh, honey. No. Get out.” But by the end you’re thinking right along with her, “But maybe he’ll change.” (You’ll have to wait and see which happens.)
What makes Neverwinter a unique and dangerous place from the other settings in Forgotten Realms?
Neverwinter is a city that’s been around a long time, and even falling victim to some astonishing catastrophes didn’t get rid of it completely. But it did make the city an excellent place to entrench a lot of really wicked powers—the agents of several archdevils and the Abolethic Sovereignty of the Far Realm, just to name two. On the surface you have a lot of well-meaning people trying to bring the “Jewel of the North” back to it’s former polish… and underneath you have a lot of powers warring to claim it for their own.
What projects are you currently working on? Will we see more adventures of the characters in Brimstone Angels?
I’m currently working on a sequel to Brimstone Angels called Lesser Evils, and planning a 2013 book as well.
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