After our once-in-a lifetime round-the-country trip to promote our novel Pilgrim Maya, Bela vowed she would never take a trip like that again. But she didn’t say anything about writing another book together! Stephen, who originally published well-received fantasy novels, suggested it was time to give genre a try. We’re halfway through a new fantasy novel, Wu Wei Warrior.
Another great idea came from our daughter Sophia who proposed we set the book in the 1960s-1970s. That way we wouldn’t have to wrestle with references to social media and other modern technology. The timeframe provides the opportunity to bring in world events as they happened from 1969-1975: Vietnam, Watergate, moon landings, subjects that we are comfortable with, and gave us a unique setting for our story.
We’re having fun, using the same process we used on Pilgrim Maya – passing a single file back and forth every other day, editing each other’s writing and adding more. We will have a first draft by the end of the year.
Our heroine, Lucy Chung-Corbyn, starts out as a teenager, who learns she has powers passed on from her professor father when he took the Kool Aid® while participating in secret government research. His genes mutated. Lucy inherited powers that ignite entities within her from her Chinese heritage. There’s the six-armed, three-headed demon of destruction Asura:
and the soothing and wonderful Guanyin, the Boddhisattva of Compassion:
These two entities co-exist in Lucy as she takes up the formidable task of defeating the twisted demonic character of young genius Guy Mandanis.
Lucy develops a unique superpower, which is that she does nothing, but she does it powerfully. In the book, she learns and uses the Taoist concept of wu wei, non-action action, going with the flow,” “rolling with the punches,” “not forcing anything,” to defeat Guy. Okay, okay, we know, that goes against all the tropes of DC/Marvel superhero comics and movies, which are full of action and violence. You will be surprised at how much mayhem we can put into a fantasy novel with a non-violent superhero!
Lucy is aided in her heroine’s journey by wonderful allies. There’s even a helpful dragon! We look forward to sharing this book with you soon.
