Official Interview: Shane Hallawa

[kandscreeley]

Today's Chat with Sarah features Shane Hallawa author of The Stylite.

View Official Review

View Kindle edition on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited)

**************************************************************************************************************************************
1. Why do you write?

I started writing around fifteen years ago just as a hobby. I've long been a tokusatsu fan and began coming up with Kamen Rider, Metal Hero, and Super Sentai fanfics featuring my own characters and my own plots, but retaining the respective tropes of each series. Since then, I began to move toward creating completely original stories unattached to established franchises and drawing inspiration from books, media, etc. on a variety of topics.

With the increase of indie media coming out in response to the growing criticism of mainstream media put out by Hollywood, et al, I decided to try publishing "The Stylite" officially, along with adapting the story into a potential shooting script, and see if anyone would like it.
The creative process is simply fun, which is why as the years have gone on I keep coming up with ideas and trying to create worlds for my characters and stories.

2. Which authors have been most influential in your writing?

For my stories in general, there isn't any one particular author. My greatest influences, aside from the tokusatsu gene, have largely been movies and TV shows from decades past, usually from the 1940s up to the 2000s. The scripts, dialogues, and acting from media of that time are always a well to draw ideas from.

When developing Teresa and her mother Juliana as characters in "The Stylite," though, one big inspiration was Par Lagerkvist's novel "Barabbas" and the 1961 film adaptation starring Anthony Quinn. Teresa and Julianna embody two aspects of Barabbas' character" for Teresa, the innate feeling, though without full understanding, that something is not right in the ways of the world, in modernity, society, etc; and for Juliana, the cynic who rejects whatever is not "reality," plain and tangible. It is on Teresa, as well as her cousin Matthew, to find a way to reconcile the two with all she has been taught, to overcome herself and the world in order to defend it.

3. Let's discuss your book The Stylite. How did you come up with the idea?

The Stylite was ten years in the making. I first got the idea for the story while reading Tom Holland's book In the Shadow of the Sword: The Birth of Islam and the Rise of the Global Arab Empire. The first several chapters of the book discusses the both the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) and Sassanid Persian Empires during Late Antiquity, between the fall of Western Rome and the start of the Islamic conquest of Arabia and North Africa, and gave special attention to the stylites (or "pillar saints") and Desert Fathers & Mothers, Christian ascetics who lived in the wilderness. "Pillar saint" derives from the practice of some stylites literally ascending to the top of pillars in the desert and residing there. Reading this book outdoors in the summertime, and the descriptions of a hot, dusty Mediterranean world, one could feel almost immersed in that time period.

With the idea of a Byzantine-themed superhero/adventure story in mind, I began deciding what the details would be, and designing the suits of armor and arsenal for the heroes. I had written prior stories starring either male protagonists or an ensemble of male and female characters, so this time I thought I could have a heroine as the main. The concept for Teresa Amadei gradually grew from there.

The first draft was started in 2019. I took a break from writing in the middle of 2020, and didn't resume until late 2021. By June of 2022 the draft was done, and for the next year and a half I went through several revisions and further developments of characters and lore, before finally self-publishing the novel this January.

When writing the story, there were two tropes I wanted to purposely avoid. First, when creating Teresa's backstory, was that of the "problem kid always in trouble with the law, school, etc." While Teresa has many things to overcome, among them dealing with her father Peter's murder when she was a child, and making peace with her recently-deceased mother whom she is torn between filial piety and scorn, her troubles are more of the mind and spirit. An uncertainty over how exactly she should live. So instead of "acting out," her 'demons,' so to speak, manifest in her a sort of "listlessness."

The second trope is that I have noticed in media since I was a kid, of "sibling relationships." Often in movies, books, and TV, we see an older brother-younger sister dynamic where the brother's 'authority' as the elder sibling in the family is "undermined," either from his own shortcomings and hypocrisies, a lack of maturity despite his posturing, and/or irreverent snark and disrespect from the "more adept" sister.

In The Stylite I wanted something more "balanced" for Teresa and Matthew's dynamic. As Father Simon says in the novel (paraphrasing), the cousins can draw out the potential in each other when times are hard; referring to the two meditative/martial art forms, the Ways of Fire and Stone, Matthew is the Fire for Teresa, Teresa is the Stone for Matthew. While not literal siblings, they develop the older brother-younger banter picked up where they left off from childhood. I wanted it so that Teresa may tease Matthew, and Matthew poke fun at Teresa, but all without robbing Matthew of "dignity," so to speak. The audience, and the characters, can respect him as an intelligent, competent fighter and scholar, and Teresa can shore him up in moments of doubt with encouragement, in return for what he tries to do for her.

The concept of the Daemoklos, the villains of the novel, was inspired by the Horrors from the Garo series, and the Grongi (or Gurongi) from Kamen Rider Kuuga. The Daemoklans speak their own language, which is based off a cipher of Greek, and have their own written script, which somewhat resembles cuneiform and Phoenician. Each of them are based off characters from Greco-Roman, Persian, and Egyptian mythology, historical figures of Antiquity and the Medieval world, and even historical sites in some cases. While the Daemoklos often are the standard demonic entities preying on humanity, there are aspects to them that hint that even they, like all sentient beings, have the capacity to overcome themselves, their thoughts, passions, and ego, should they have the will to. We can see this in the character of Órthos, a literally two-faced canid demon Teresa meets on the road to Alexantine, and even the Daemoklan god-king Varazhah himself.

4. The book incorporates ideas from multiple religions. How much research did you do? Why did you feel the need to add these?

When I write, I typically compile a list of references from which to get information or draw ideas from. For The Stylite, I used several news articles and opinion pieces on current events in the US and the world. In addition to Holland's "In the Shadow of the Sword," my other literary resources included "Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire That Rescued Western Civilization" by Lars Brownworth, and "Notes From A Derelict Culture" by David Solway.

For media sources, I watched and rewatched several older "religion-themed" novels and movies to get a feel of how the dialogue and spiritual themes in the story should work, for both my villains and heroes. Here I focused mainly on the 1940s through 1970s, the period I would consider the "Golden Era" of Bible movies because of both their written and production qualities. Among these were "Quo Vadis" (1951), "The Robe" (1953), "Ben-Hur" (1959), "Barabbas" (1961) "The Greatest Story Ever Told" (1965), and "Jesus of Nazareth" (1977).

Because of the Byzantine motif of The Stylite, I knew that religious or spiritual ideas had to feature someplace, given the importance of Christianity in the Byzantine Empire, and how its interactions with Zoroastrian Persia and the Islamic Caliphates were part of its ultimate fate. However, while many characters in the story may be nominally religious or grew up with religious influence, and the three heroes represent the millennia-old back-and-forth between Christianity and Islam, this is not meant to be a religious novel in the sense of evangelization or proselytizing. I wanted to make that clear in my disclaimer, so that neither those who are irreligious nor those who are religious and seek a testament of theirs, may get the wrong idea. I invite anyone to read and (hopefully) enjoy the novel.

5. What was the most difficult part about writing the book? What was most fun?

As said above, the general creative process is always the most fun for me, worldbuilding and the sort. What's always difficult is coming up with dialogue for my characters. There is a lot of "contemporary" forms of speech you see in modern media that I've always found "cringey or corny," which is one reason I was drawn to older media. But at the same time, the dialogues from there are often not "realistic" for modern times. So the challenge for me is to try to blend the two in a way that comes off believable.

6. The book includes pictures. Who drew them and were they exactly as you imagined?

There are photographs and illustrations in the book. The former were taken by me over the years, that I've saved and started to use as visual aids for my stories. The artwork was done by the artist Jeff Brown, who resides in Canada and who I found on Reedsy. We collaborated over several months to get the cover art and story illustrations just right.

7. The reviewer uses many words to describe the story. Young adult, adult, action, fantasy. How would you describe it?

The Stylite is intended for all audiences interested in action/adventure, fantasy, superhero media, and "spiritual" stories, but al
so for those who're interested in current events. There is some subtle commentary on political and cultural issues going on in Western countries today, but I made a conscious effort to weave all of that into the main story and the journey of my characters.

8. What's next for you? Any other books?

I am finishing up two new novels as we speak. The first is Akelarre Under The Sun, and is meant to be a "prequel" of sorts to the other, Zheng Taishi.

Without giving too much away, Akelarre is about a US Air Force captain, Anthony Cavada (who is actually a character from one of my fanfics I wrote from 2012-2014), who is on vacation with family in the Caribbean and discovers a secret society plotting a political/cultural takeover of the region.

Zheng Taishi follows up on this, and is about a martial arts dojo that secretly runs a team of vigilantes who battle a centuries-old crime syndicate that has been manipulating world events from the shadows.

As for any sequels to The Stylite, two are already in the works. One will be a crossover with Zheng Taishi, and the other will also feature a character from Akelarre.

I like to end with fun questions.

9. What's one book you could read again and again?

Years ago, I would often reread sections of The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien. Most recently, I often like flipping through The War That Ended Peace by Margaret MacMillan. I've always liked reading about the "last days of the 'old world'" in the West, the late 1800s to early 1900s, that was lost with the world wars.

10. What calms you?

Usually, just sitting or driving alone can be relaxing.

11. Where would your ideal vacation be?

I don't have anywhere in particular in mind. Within the US, I have considered a trip to Promontory Point, Utah, where the Transcontinental Railroad was completed, and riding on the Alaska Railroad. Internationally, I suppose it would be interesting to visit Mauritius, or Suriname, or other places that usually aren't traveled to, or at least talked about much.

12. Do you have a favorite quote you can share with us?

There is a quote from the end of the 1966 film Khartoum: "A world with no room for the Gordons, is a world that will return to the sands."

It refers to the British General Charles "Chinese" Gordon, which the movie is about. I do not know if this quote is historical, or created just for the movie, but I think the idea of it can apply to The Stylite in a metaphysical or spiritual sense. The Western world, and humanity as a whole, is in danger of "returning to the sands" if it does not take a good, hard look at itself. The stylites, Teresa and Matthew and their mentor Father Simon, Sister Agnes who teaches Teresa the Way of Stone, and even the Saracen, present a way to build up and rise above, if the world decides it can accommodate them.