The
Curse Giver
Dora
Machado
Genre: Fantasy, Romance,
Publisher: Twilight Times Books
ISBN: 978-1-60619-289-4 ASIN: B00DSUQL4I
Number of pages: 420 Word Count: 165,000 aprox.
Cover Artist: Brad Fraunfelter
Lusielle's bleak but orderly life
as a remedy mixer is shattered when her husband betrays her and she is
sentenced to die for a crime she didn't commit. She's on the pyre, about to be
burned, when a stranger breaks through the crowd and rescues her from the
flames.
Brennus, Lord of Laonia is the
last of his line. He is caught in the grip of a mysterious curse that has
murdered his kin, doomed his people and embittered his life. To defeat the
curse, he must hunt a birthmark and kill the woman who bears it in the foulest
of ways. Lusielle bears such a mark.
Stalked by intrigue and
confounded by the forbidden passion flaring between them, predator and prey
must come together to defeat not only the vile curse, but also the curse giver
who has already conjured their ends.
The Story Behind The Curse Giver
By
Dora Machado
The
Curse Giver was an
accident, a professional indiscretion, if you will, conceived during one of my
little escapades, and born out of unchecked passion. Yep, I might as well come
clean. Even the most disciplined writer can be unfaithful to her projects, and
no matter how thoroughly taken one is with one's current novel, the danger for
a tangent is always there when venturing into the world of research.
So there I was, researching one
book, working hard to finalize the Stonewiser series, when I came across this
insidious concept that kept disrupting my train of thought.
Now, to understand the story behind The Curse Giver, you must understand me
and my writing habits. I'm not easily distracted. When I'm writing a novel, my
brain goes into hyper mode. I'm disciplined, motivated and focused to the point
of obsession, which is why The Curse
Giver was such a surprise to me.
The subject of curses has always
fascinated me, not only because curses are such a vital part of magic and
fantasy, but also because they are so prevalent to the human experience. To be
honest, I had always been intrigued by the subject, but didn't delve into it,
until one very late night—or was it very early morning?—when the wind rattled
my window as a coastal storm blew in from the sea.
The clay tablets that popped up on
my screen dated from 600 BC and were part of the library of Nineveh, also known
as the library of Ashurbanipal, the oldest surviving library of cuneiform
tablets. This is the same collection that gave us the famous Gilgamesh epic.
Visually, the tablets weren't much to look at, chicken scratches on clay. But
the translated words had an impact on me.
"May
all these [gods] curse him with a
curse that cannot be relieved, terrible and merciless, as long as he lives, may
they let his name, his seed, be carried off from the land, may they put his
flesh in a dog’s mouth.”
I
know, hardly an inspiration for most. Me? I immediately thought of the man who
had been thus cursed, of the pain and hardship such curse would bring upon him
and his people, of the character that eventually became Bren, Lord of Laonia in
The Curse Giver.
From
there on, the curses flowed before my eyes, mysterious ones from ancient
civilizations in Egypt, India and the Far East; thin lead tablets dating from
the Greco-Roman world, judicial prayers, secret invocations, warnings and love
spells that streamed into my consciousness. I knew I should get back to my
original research, and yet I was smitten with the subject.
There
were curses quoted from the Bible, medieval curses, real and forgeries, Viking,
Celtic, Germanic, Visigoth, Mayan, Incan, Hopi, you name it. There were ancient
curses but also modern curses, some associated with Santeria, voodoo and the 21
Divisions, religions that are common in the Dominican Republic where I grew up.
Who
would cast these curses and why? What kind of creature could be capable of such
powers? What would motivate a person to curse another one? As I explored these
questions, a character profile began to emerge in my mind, someone whose
understanding of good and evil was very different from my own.
Sorting
through the research, I could see that some curses had practical applications
to make sure people did what they were told. They served as alternate forms of
law enforcement in lawless societies. Some were obviously malicious. They were
meant to frighten and intimidate. Some were more like venting or wishful
thinking. It turns out that mankind has been casting curses since the beginning
of time and will probably continue for as long as we have the imagination and
faith to do so.
A
new question formed in my mind. Once cursed, what could a person do to defend
himself? A third character emerged from this question, Lusielle, a common
remedy mixer, a healer of hearts and bodies, someone who didn't realize the
scope of her own power until it began to transform her life.
Eventually,
I wrestled myself out of the trance. I had a book to write and a series to
complete. I had deadlines. But my little detour had made an impact. The
concepts were at work in my subconscious, coalescing into a new novel,
fashioning these powerful characters who demanded their own story. My encounter
with curses had been but a slight detour from my research plan, a tiny
deviation, an indiscretion to my schedule, but the seed had been planted and The Curse Giver thrived, even if I
didn't know it yet.
