Candace Lynn Talmage, author of Stoneslayer

Not long afterward, my mom appeared, her eyes red-rimmed. “Mrs. Smith died at three this morning.” I gulped and could think of nothing to say. That dream, which I never talked about until just recently, opened me to the
wider realities beyond the rational-material. I realized the novel I was thinking about constantly would include those wider realities, such as psychic or intuitive abilities.

Pursuing those wider realities, I spent decades researching arcane topics in order to write my novel. That ignited within me a passion for alternative healing and spirituality, while in the so-called real world, I was a business journalist.

I even participated briefly in one of the last of the great newspaper wars in Dallas, Texas. I wrote for the Dallas Times Herald, covering advertising, marketing, media, and retailing. I often managed to scoop the crosstown rag even though four different business reporters covered the same beats I did. Quite the career experience.
When the patient is ready, the healer appears. In 1986, I met my life partner (eventually my wife). I experienced storyhealing through the Sunan method.

FAP: The story weaves together paranormal elements with political intrigue, family secrets, and a demonic foe. How do you balance the fantasy elements of your narrative with the very human, emotional challenges your characters face? 

Talmadge: It’s not that hard to do. I have already lived parts of this story, and the parts that I did not personally experience come to me intuitively from the other characters who did live those parts. Some people call it channeled information, but don’t make that out to be some big deal.

There’s a common misperception that somehow the rational-material are ordinary life and somehow separate from the so-called paranormal. I have found the exact opposite to be my personal truth. In my life, the intuitive/nonrational mixes with waking consciousness. That does not make me insane. It makes me whole. I live out of my entire self—the emotional and spiritual along with the mental and physical. My fiction seamlessly blends all parts of the whole self. Sometimes the action focuses on a physical reality. At other times the nonphysical steps forward. It’s all part of the tale.

FAP:  How does this character reflect or challenge the broader themes of power and control in the story?

Talmadge: If you mean the demon, the irony is that demons have no personal power. They possess souls (who may or may not be in a human physical body) in order to feed off of the energy of the souls’ emotions.
The demon in Stoneslayer knows that stone like the one Helen received from her mother are a source of endless power. That’s why the demon uses people to try to get Helen’s stone.

Helen represents the rest of us, who lack personal power only because we have judged against ourselves and thrown parts of our native power (or energy/consciousness) outside of our energy fields so we cannot use it or
benefit from it.

As a result, we feel powerless and helpless. The experiences Helen had in her physical reality of Azgard reflect back to her the very power-robbing self-judgments that she was not aware of consciously. That happens to all souls in whatever reality the inhabit. Taking back our native power is part of the journey to wholeness.

FAP: Helen Andros navigates Azgard's political elite, balancing external hostility and tense family dynamics. How does the clash between political necessity and personal agency influence her choices, particularly regarding her potential marriage?

Talmadge: Helen forfeited upfront in the clash between political necessity and personal agency. She could simply have told her father that she did not love the man proposed as her husband, and that would have been enough for him. He would have refused to sign a marriage contract for her, based on his mother’s unhappiness married to his father.

Helen used her fear of revealing her proposed husband’s dangerous secret as her way of denying the real cause behind why she did not stick up for her own interests. And that was her own lack of self-esteem and self-love. Helen did not feel she was of much value, so what she really wanted was unimportant to anyone, herself included.

FAP: A key theme in Stoneslayer seems to be the idea of hidden threats and the uncovering of dangerous secrets. How does secrecy and revelation play a role in Helen's development throughout the book, and how does this theme connect to larger societal structures and dynamics in the world you’ve created?

Talmadge: People keep all manner of secrets out of fear—primarily fear of judgment. Secrets revealed dump Helen into a world she does not know or understand, and she has to swim or sink. She goes under more than a few times, but her cussed determination helps her through her fears.

The judgment that one race is superior to another, plus another judgment that one gender is better and should have more privileges than the other, are the foundations of the social and power structure of Azgard.

Collectively, this was utterly unsustainable in the long run. Individually, it blighted many lives, including Helen’s.
The longer I live, the more and more this country, the United States, comes to resemble Azgard. Sharply divided by race, rank, religion, gender, and income, with a small minority of privileged males holding most of the
nation’s wealth and all of its power.

The situation is uncanny and unnerving, but today we are about to experience the same spiritual lessons Azgard went through so many eons ago. Will we learn and survive or will we destroy ourselves as Azgard did?
The jury is out on that one.

FAP: Helen’s relationship with her newfound father, whom she neither knows nor trusts, is one of emotional and narrative complexity.

Could you talk more about the dynamics between them? A: Helen and her father clashed because neither one knew or trusted the other and both were hurting from many raw, unresolved emotional and
spiritual wounds.

They also crossed swords because they were so alike. Helen’s mother was correct when she called her daughter a virtual duplicate of Helen’s father.  Helen’s father was intense and intimidating to most of his peers. But Helen, once she got know him better and started to trust him, was one of the few people who could stand up to him. And she did a few times.

Their relationship began with lashing out at each other when they both really wanted to throttle Helen’s mother for her secretive behavior. They also had unresolved issues from past lives that affected them in Helen’s lifetime. Tragically, no sooner had they developed a closer relationship than they were separated. It was a pattern they lived through many lifetimes.