Interview with
Taggart Rehnn
Author of
Today I have the pleasure to introduce an author who creates a genre-bender populated by unconventional beings, an eclectic mixture of science-fiction, urban fantasy, horror-fantasy, thriller, action-adventure and historical fiction. Welcome into Taggart Rehnn’s unusual world, introduced by his first three sagas "Vampires and Spies", “The Council” and "Gods at War".
When did you start writing?
Many of the ideas I’ve used in my novels were often written in scraps of paper over a number of years. They languished first in two boxes, then a large chest, alongside trinkets of all sorts. Scores of them eventually met an inglorious demise, on the wastebasket or fireplace or even the barbeque. The surviving ones clamored to become something each time I opened that chest, until I surrendered and started writing regularly, then tried to get it published and was rejected a few times in the mid 1990s. Writing was then an itch I had to scratch, but professional life left little room to do it consistently. As an indie author, I started writing regularly in 2015 or so—but even then, waited a few years to publish on Amazon.
What genre do you feel at home writing and why?
After working on scientific R&D for over 30 years, I produced an eclectic mixture of science-fiction, urban fantasy, horror, thriller, action-adventure and historical fiction novels, the emphasis on each genre varying from book to book. Imagine “Dune” meets “Dracula”, with a healthy dose of Indiana Jones, spies aplenty, secret societies, commandos, and international political intrigue. This hybrid approach came about gradually, through evolution, not by design.
My novels tend to be more dark-fantasy/thrillers/action-adventure than horror novels, with gore used very sparingly, never as the main course; the characters in them, both human and supernatural, tend to be flawed yet rarely irredeemably evil or over-the-top righteous. Since they often venture substantially into sci-fi territory as well, more often than not (whether in international or interplanetary—sometimes, also dystopian—settings), I stretch science as far as it would go without snapping rather than defaulting to magic.
Why write historical fiction?
Why not, indeed? History provides an incredibly rich quarry where one can mine the best and worst of human qualities, from acts of near-superhuman endurance and selfless sacrifice to the most abjectly egomaniacal abuses of power and darkest machinations to destroy enemies or entire nations, and anything in-between. Historians patiently toil to unravel mysteries of the past, to get to the bottom of how, why, what and when things happened, acted upon by whom and so on. And often, despite their best efforts, can find only plausible, not definitive answers to many lingering questions. For example, nations need heroes. To become one, human or mythical, the latter cannot be flawed in ways that go violently against the mores of their time and place. Therefore, history is rife with falsehoods, suppression of inconvenient stories, and distortions that turn monsters into heroes and victims into villains, and vice versa. To get past those ‘alterations’ by unearthing better evidence, is the task of historians.
However, armed with logic, patience and imagination, we authors can creatively fill in the blanks, study where the what-ifs might lead, enjoy the challenge, and, hopefully, create something novel and worth reading. In particular, following pivotal episodes of history and—much like the Celtic, Norse, Slavic, Ancient Egyptian and other peoples did—injecting the supernatural into tall tales of familiar heroes, engaged in fantastic quests, seeking objectives far greater than the average human could handle, has always fascinated me. That’s why I feel at home writing historical fiction enriched with incidents, journeys and crises ideally suited to the undead in a more contemporary or futuristic setting, rather than going full-tilt into dungeons and dragons.
What makes “Freer of Souls” so hard to classify?
One could see it as historical fiction, religious fiction, archaeological fiction, a novel on espionage, action adventure, paranormal romance, mystery, urban fantasy and/or a few other things—and be right and very wrong at the same time, since it doesn’t neatly fit any mold.
This didn’t happen by design. As this story matured, the characters so naturally took charge of the narrative that pigeonholing it became extremely hard—and, probably, also pointless.
The novel’s main subject is a quest for the Ark of the Covenant, in which vampires, spies, exorcists, a rabbi, secret cabals, archaeologists, a meteorologist and a French countess are brought together by the savage butchering of a priest in Budapest. That priest was studying a symbol, painted with blood by hands unseen, in ways unknown; a symbol only seen in Jewish cemeteries and places of pogroms, which is invariably followed by glacial dust devils—unexplained, icy, mini-tornadoes. To pursue the dead priest’s work, another member of the same secretive Order of Saint Michael, teams up with a rabbi in Los Angeles, the meteorologist and a vampire. After a deadly game of cat and mouse across Europe and America, they find an unusual scroll and take it to a castle in Provence to be deciphered. There, as others join the group, with a traitor in their midst, surrounded by enemies closing in for the kill, it becomes clear they only have at most three weeks to get to the Ark of the Covenant and stop Armageddon. Would they live long enough to do it? If they find and reach the Ark in time, would then the ‘Freer of Souls’ dare approaching it and, alone in the darkness, overcome his demons, push the boundaries of his faith, and do the unthinkable to prevent the Apocalypse—or would he, instead, by unwittingly fulfilling an ancient vendetta, become an instrument of humankind’s doom? That's the story, in a nutshell.
Writing this novel required a good deal of research into not just the Crusades, but other aspects of the history of France and that of Jewish prosecutions and pogroms in Europe since the days of Constantine, and various theories about the Ark of the Covenant’s most plausible location, studying archaeological technique and examining in detail aspects of the Beauce, France’s breadbasket, southwest of Paris.
Since one of ‘Freer of Souls’ reviewers wrote: “This book is the best fusion of fact and fiction I have ever read. At times, because of the level of research and attention to details, I felt like I was reading a definitive history of vampires. But, the book is fiction. The rich presentation of characters with their unique voices will pull you in. The story is a sweeping saga that will entertain, inform and intrigue.
This is an excellent book and series that I highly recommend,” the research seems to have paid off.
Other reviewers, however, have complained there wasn’t enough romance in it. And therein lies yet another challenge to anyone authoring hard-to-classify novels: those lives the narrative interweaves can become incredibly rich, textured, multi-layered, and produce incredibly original characters; but, to fully explore every aspect of their potential while telling a story that includes so much intrigue and action, one might have to far exceed the length of Tolstoy’s “War and Peace”—another problem I didn’t anticipate when this writing adventure began, seduced, perhaps a bit much, by this alluring terra incognita. Nevertheless, given that all my novels are standalone but form part of a growing ecosystem, some of those aspects are further developed in other books, either within that same saga or in other ones. For example, if Countess Chloé, one of my favorite characters, seems larger than life in this novel, she becomes monumentally complex and incredibly human as her deeply flawed, wounded soul, hidden behind a defiantly badass façade, is revealed in subsequent books.
As for the sagas, there are currently three available on Amazon: “Vampires and Spies”, “The Council” and “Gods at War”, all in KDP eBook and paperback. “Freer of Souls” is the first book in “Vampires and Spies”.
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This is an excellent book and series that I highly recommend,” the research seems to have paid off.
Much thanks, Uvi, for your feature of my book today! So appreciated! ox
ReplyDeleteMy pleasure Sarah! Can't wait to read it :)
DeleteThank you so much for this opportunity, Uvi. The presentation looks fantastic, too.
ReplyDelete