Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the external sources writers tap into for their creative ideas. In my own writing, I happen to feel a kind of connection to what Jung referred to as a type of “collective unconscious.”

But I’ve been seeking out other authors to see what they tap into for their own inspiration; and maybe if they share this sense of something else being out there. So, I plan on bringing a few authors in on this discussion and give as broad a view as possible to the elements behind the creative process.

My first stop: author Cynthia Leitich Smith, whose otherworldly stories (TANTALIZE, ETERNAL) have inspired countless readers.

Here are some of the questions and answers I got from Cynthia:  

Q: First, I’m interested in the idea of common threads that link mythologies and legends across cultures. How has this commonality influenced you as a writer?

Cynthia Leitich Smith: When I was first working on my YA Gothic fantasy series, I spun off the idea that in Bram Stoker’s DRACULA (1897), vampires could take the shape of wolves. I thought it would be interesting to write a murder mystery (TANTALIZE) in which the central external question was whether the murderer was a vampire in wolf form or a werewolf.

This led me father back to the oral stories in which these “mythology” traditions—the werewolf and vampire appear—and I found plenty of examples of both from around the world.

It greatly influenced me that societal forces behind the tales—the mystery of death, the question of the eternal soul, the role of organized religion and its symbols, gender power struggles, the “dark” foreigner, invasion, alienation, plague, the “other,” sexuality, etc. were pertinent as early as Stoker’s time and still today.

With regard to the werewolf, I realized that many cultures had a shapeshifter, and that it was usually the dominant predator that competed with humans for food and territory. Therefore, in the stories, that animal competitor was demonized and too often hunted to extinction.

So what do I do with that? Reinforce it? No, that wouldn’t be very ecologically sensitive. I made my Wolves natural instead, one of many types of shifter species that traced their origins to the Ice Age, and gave them the free will to be good guys.

Q: Do you see a trend emerging — a surge in the publication of paranormal romance and dark fantasy for young adults?

First, it was under-published not long ago, and the market will eventually fill a vacuum. Horror in particular offers terrific metaphors for adolescence. In the immortal words of Joss Whedon, “high school is hell.”

But when I started writing my series in 2001, there hadn’t been hardly any similar books since the late 1990s and only a few—by people like MT Anderson, Annette Curtis Klause, and Vivian Vande Velde then.

I remember hearing more than one editor say at a writer’s conference, “Fantasy is old fashioned. It’s over. Kids like realistic stories now.” Hello, Mr. Potter.

And from a business perspective, Harry’s commercial success (and later Twilight’s, though of course paranormal romance is more about the romance than the truly scary) did pave the way for Gothic fantasy pieces springing in part from the traditions of wizards, monsters, and the like. It opened publishers to the possibilities and signaled to fantasists that their time had come again. Granted, many of these were manufactured or packager books (as opposed to author-originated works), but just as many—if not more—were not.

The majority were a response by writers to their own artistic influences and predispositions as well as to what they perceived a need for in their audience/society.

Although it should never be forgotten that publishing is an international industry and community, the U.S. does have an influence on the whole, and, on many levels, the ‘00s have been a relatively scary time for us.

Nowhere near as scary as, say, the Indian Wars (I’m saying this as a Native writer) or slavery or the U.S. Civil War or the Great Depression, but relatively scary after a time of at least what was generally perceived by most folks to be a period of peace, security, and prosperity.

And one of the best ways for people to process fear is from a safe distance and in the pages of a horror novel. As Annette Curtis Klause has said, it helps them to build “coping mechanisms.” It’s what the heart hungers for, the heart of the artist and the heart of the audience.

Q: Where do your stories come from?

Thinking back, the earliest stories I remember were those told around the family kitchen tables. From a very young age, it mattered to me that there were people I would’ve loved—my grandfather, for example—who’d died before I was born and I could only know them through story. These voices had an impact on my early Native-themed fiction.

Beyond that, I’m very interested in the conversation of books over the generations and how they relate to the oral tradition, and you can see that in my work, especially with the current YA series. But beyond that, the stories come from those experiences that bond or separate us as people—intergenerational relationships, struggles with dependence, prejudice, loving across racial/ethnic boundaries, faith, and so forth.

Q: What are you the deadline baby of right now?

I’m currently revising my latest YA Gothic fantasy novel, BLESSED, which crosses over the casts of TANTALIZE and ETERNAL and picks up where TANTALIZE left off. I look for it to come out in spring 2011.

The books are non-linear companions, set in multicultural multi-creature-verse, which includes vampires, a variety of shapeshifters (werearmadillos anyone?), angels, and ghosts. They include elements of romance and some humor.

There also are a couple of new tie-in short stories–”Cat Calls,” which appears in SIDESHOW: TEN ORIGINAL TALES OF FREAKS, ILLUSIONISTS, AND OTHER MATTERS ODD AND MAGICAL, edited by Deborah Noyes (Candlewick) and “Haunted Love,” which appears in IMMORTAL: LOVE STORIES WITH BITE, edited by P.C. Cast (BenBella).

I keep thinking I need to cut about 15,000 words from BLESSED. So far, it’s 2,000 words longer than when I started revising.

Thanks for taking the time to give such fascinating answers, Cynthia!

You can read more from Cynthia Leitich Smith on her blog at:
http://cynthialeitichsmith.blogspot.com