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I've had a lot of questions over the past few years about how I came up with the idea of Wraith and the Zoë Universe. My standard pulling-it-out-of-my-backside wasn't cutting it anymore, so I figured I'd spill the beans here.

 My secret?

 Shakespeare.

Yep, old Bill is responsible for about ¾ of what's come out of this series. And the other ¼?

My dad.

How? What? Are you high? No. It all came from this quote:

"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." ~William Shakespeare.

My dad gave me that quote during one of our numerous metaphysical conversations growing up.  He was a devout believer in the unknown-and that's how I'd describe him. He never really believed that all angels were good, and all devils were evil, but that circumstances drove them in moments that made them more than heroes, and less than Gods.

My dad believed that all things were flawed, and all things were possible.

I'd read the quote before-from Hamlet. And it'd stuck with me, more so than that #$%@ soliloquy I had to memorize.

It wasn't until I started thinking up the universe in which my character Zoë (created from using my RPG experience) would live that the quote hammered itself home.

So acting on the fact I've conjured this complex character with her experiences and background-I know her personality (mental note), I know her fears (clowns) and her joys (hot chocolate) and I know her quirks (bunny slippers)-it's time to submerge her into world wacky.

Start with the basics. Wraith. What exactly does that word mean? MerriamWebster-that saucy wench-says:

"an apparition of a living person supposed to portend his or her death."

Doesn't sound very exciting, does it? So...where do we go from here? I honestly have to credit my editor on this one-it was she that came up with the idea of using that name and making it our own. Brilliant!

Not sure about defining this new part of her, I went with a purely character driven approach to how the events would occur so that my definition of a Wraith would make sense. Being a huge fan of writers such as Patricia Briggs, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Kim Harrison, etc., I wanted to be somewhere in that ballpark, but not on the same diamond. Capisce?

So while writing Wraith, Bill's quote rode along side of me as an inspiration in this universe. Especially once I started researching theories on the different planes of existence. I mean, if a girl's gonna slip the mortal coil, she's gotta know where she's going.

Or what she'll bump into.

(Pulls up a chair and makes sure her coffee is somewhere she can't knock it off with wide gestures) Most everyone has a basic belief of good and evil, heaven or hell, up and down, top and bottom....

So let's start there.

There is nothing in this world either good, or evil...

Good and evil. Defined lines. If you're bad, then you go to hell. If you're good, then you go to heaven. Uh...so....what about that father who steals in order to feed his family? Or the woman who shoots and kills the burglar in her home in order to protect her baby?

So....these people did a good thing and a bad thing. Do we cut them down the middle? No. Because life isn't that cut and dry. This is where the shades of gray come in, like the ones I mentioned before in creating a character. Flat, emotionless, goody-two-shoes characters (the Mickey character) don't exist. If you find them, they're a robot and you need to run away really fast.

And Zoë is balanced in the middle. So-what do we do then?

How does she and her universe fit into this? Do we say because she's been touched by what many will perceive to be a minion of hell, is she evil? Or because of her father's existence and she bears a strong moral conscience, is she good?

Zoë doesn't ask for an Abysmal creature to touch, or to change her. But her soul does become tainted, and that taint is growing, mutating, and creating a new creature more powerful than any that exists within the Ethereal or Abysmal realms. She doesn't know to what end. She devours souls-and yet she saves them as well.

Again, is she good, or evil?

What if she has to effect evil in order to create good? What if her power is inherently dark, but her soul is white? And how great of a conflict is that? Zoë's ability is up for interpretation by herself, and her friends. Those around her. You have groups that believe she is dangerous, and friends as well. And you have others that know sometimes only great evil can affect progress, and eventual good.

Now I have this complex character full of experiences and background, which is going to be faced with the universal theme of good and evil and the world's perception of it (mingled with her own Catholic beliefs). And this is the setup for this series.

ZOMG!

But thinking makes it so...

In the course of Wraith, then Spectre, the ancillary stories on my website, and now in Phantasm, what we originally thought was good, isn't, and what we believed was evil, might not have been. Is TC good? Bad? Gray? Is Daniel now a bad person because he's made to do bad things? Is Zoë evil because of her power? Is Rhonda bad because of the decisions over other's lives she's made? Is Dags good because he possesses the essence of a magical book?

Was I the only one that knew that Snape wasn't really a bad guy?????

Good is good because we think we know what is good because it's what we expect it to be. What if we grew up thinking that smacking your little sister was good? As in a virtue? To our culture as it is now, that would seem so ridiculous. And what if baking a pie for a neighbor is bad?

I don't claim to know all the answers in making a good book-I've met some that don't get Zoë's humor. Neither do I sometimes. Her mind works like a hamster on an exercise wheel. But, the fun thing is I made her that way on purpose.

I'm not sure I've answered any questions-in fact I'm sure I've raised new ones. Because you know, blogs are little more than streams of consciousness, right?

I'll open up the blog to any comments or questions anyone might have. Or if you'd rather not speak in public (Mental Note: stagefright!) please go to my website at www.phaedraweldon.com and hit the contact page. Just email me. I'm a bit slow in response sometimes because I'm busy, but ask, and I'll give you the best answer I can.

 

Phaedra Weldon, Phantasm, urban fantasy, Penguin Books