Invincible (40 page)
Authors: Dawn Metcalf
AUTHOR'S NOTE
WHEN I'VE BEEN
asked what inspired the Twixt, I remember Richard Peck saying of book ideas, “As if we can't think of them ourselves?” And although I'd love to claim credit for the whole kit 'n' kaboodle, I'm a big believer that the best ideas are cocreated, inclusive and influenced by the brilliant, creative, insightful and oddly weird and wonderful people who share our little blue planet. So, bottom lineâthere are lots of things that inspired the Twixt.
The idea for the books themselves began with a rant, which seems to be where I get a lot of fuel for my fires. I had been getting a little tired of the glut of stories that featured an immortal guy falling for a sixteen-year-old girl and sweeping her off her feet to “show her the way to love.” (Cue eye-roll here.) I thought, “Why not flip it?” I remembered how much I loved my literary crush, Peter Pan, and later Johnny Depp as Edward Scissorhands and Brad Pitt in
Meet Joe Black
. Wild, boyish and innocent, these otherworldly heartthrobs were clueless, cocky and a little bit dangerous. There was something sorta sexy about the mysterious, guileless guy with both power and principles who wore his heart on his sleeve! These were the first seeds of Indelible Ink. (And, of course, I flipped every single one of them to create his sisterly foil, Invisible Inq.)
I named my main character “Joy” because, while she'd been through a lot, at her core she was a happy person who was gleefully expressive. I wanted her to be very physical, and aware of herself, someone who belonged to something biggerâa group that she'd lost along with her motherâand have that be a huge part of her identity. Her journey back to that place of happiness is a return to who she truly is, as well as a decision about who she'd like to beâas always, it's a choice. Additionally, as Wendy to Ink's Peter Pan, I wanted Joy to know the difference between “a thimble and a kiss” so she wasn't as innocent as some of those other clueless characters out there. I think of Joy as being like a lot of real girls; someone who knows something about herself before she goes looking for another person to tell her. And I hope that the whole prude/slut dichotomy burns a horrible, fiery death.
As for, “Why gymnastics?” I'd had experiences being on a sports team with soccer and basketball, skating and martial arts, but I decided to give Joy something different so she didn't come off as too “Buffy” aka “every other paranormal heroine on TV who just happens to know kung fu.” I spoke with a lot of young gymnasts, instructors and an Olympics-level coach in Australia who helped me translate Joy's world into something I wanted to use and Joy Malone sprang out of those initial conversations and multiple links on YouTube.
Most of the other characters were made up as I went along, coalescing out of the weird, twisted miasma of my brain; notable exceptions being Avery, who was inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's
The Wild Swans
; Filly, the youngest Valkyrie, whose bravado was heavily influenced by Zeetha of
Girl Genius
by Phil & Kaja Foglio; and the Bailiwick, Graus Claudeâwhose name sprang fully formed out of nowhereâwho is an amalgam of an old RPG character, the voice of James Earl Jones and Baron Von Greenback from the British cartoon,
Danger Mouse
. (I never claimed these made sense, it's just the way my mind works.)
The world of the Twixt is a collection of all the myths, legends and fairy tales I know and love; everywhere I thought magic might exist in the world was a part of it, strung together like an archipelago, inhabited by everything other-than-human so that everyone's Other Thans had a toehold in truth. The Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot and the Emerald Isle's “fair folk” coexisted on the same plane as Romanian vampires, Japanese Kodama, Danish mermaids, Hindu Rakshasa, Greek satyrs, Islamic djinn and ancient Egyptian godsâI wanted all of our stories from all over the world to conceivably originate from the Folk of the Twixt because this is
everybody's
world, and therefore this is anybody's story. For this series, I focused on one local chapter anchored in a place that had special meaning for the Folk, so I invented the Glen, a small patch of the sacred First Forest, that later became known in America as Glendale, North Carolina. (Apologies to all North Carolinians if I messed up the geography. I invented the entire city and all surrounding environs with the exception of Lake James State Park. Sorry, folks, there's no Carousel. Pity.)
Nods and/or blame should be shared with early influences including, but not limited to, Jim Henson, Spider Robinson, Neil Gaiman, Joan D. Vinge, Connie Willis, William Gibson, Tim Burton, Wendy & Richard Pini, Phil & Kaja Foglio, Brian & Wendy Froud, Alan Moore, Nick Park,
Cirque du Soleil
,
Monty Python
, Guillermo del Toro
Gómez
,
Hayao
Miyazaki, and, of course, my parents, siblings and friends, which should come as no surprise to anyone.
If you loved
Invincible
, be sure to check out all titles in the Twixt series by Dawn Metcalf!
Somewhere between reality and myth lies...The Twixt.
Indelible
(Book One)
Invisible
(Book Two)
Insidious
(Book Three)
Invincible
(Book Four)
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ISBN-13: 9781460399026
Invincible
Copyright © 2016 by Dawn Metcalf
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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