Creative Monsters

If you’ve read my book you will have noticed I use my own spin on mythical creatures to create species on Sytas. Mythical creatures have fascinated me for years, even before I could read. This is because from the age of 5 till I was 7 I was an appalling reader. I would memorise books and ‘parrot’ them to my parents and teachers. Mum and Dad clicked when they tried getting me to read certain sections of a book and I couldn’t do it *grin*.

Anyway the school library, even though I couldn’t read, was one of my favourite places to go. It had giant cushions you were allowed to drag around and pile up. Now as youngling I wasn’t discrete about my imagination (course I thought it was normal to imagine EVERYTHING!) and I got introduced to embarrassment rather quickly when other kids teased the heck out of me. For pretending to be a fairy/My Little Pony/Cat/magickal or for having an imaginary pet (a foxy called Katie). This makes me sound like I was excessive about it *grin* I wasn’t, but as a child I took critical comments very hard. So while it might only have happened a couple of times I didn’t forget.

The worst time was when I was 5 and in the new entrants class. I had discovered humming. The only problem was that I didn’t realize others could hear me. I thought because I had my mouth closed it meant I only heard it in my head… oops.. I nearly died when the teacher pounced on me after repeatedly asking ‘for the person making that noise to stop’. Anyway in the dark ‘safe’ corner of the library I would drag one of the monster cushions and climb onto it and pull books from the shelves to look at their pictures. The dark safe corner was actually the non-fiction corner were books on mythical creatures, UFO’s, mysteries’ and Dinosaurs were shelved. Thus began my rather intent fascination with mythical creatures and classical times.

This fascination has helped shape a lot of what Sytas is. Things that annoyed me about mythical creatures I was able to fix to my liking. I’ve also attempted to make the species as ‘real’ as possible. Just like in a normal ecosystem, each creature has its place. It makes for some intense planning as I work through a creature (the harpy idea is getting much bigger – I’ll explain in another post) what its habits are, where it lives, why, what it eats, potential threats if it is introduced to any area it isn’t native to. This is one of those parts of writing that I love and loathe. I loathe it for the time-consuming side of it and then love it as it helps to make Sytas more and more real. Every time I plan a creature though I wish SO much that I could draw and really create a physical image of it *sigh*

Well until then I just have to rely on the creativeness and utter talent I discover via the internet and very often Elfwood.com a site I highly recommend if you need.. something different *grin*

What’s your favourite mythical creature – how would you change it? Or if you could create one, what would it look and be like?