I Heard the Wolf Call My Name

The Idea

I Heard the Wolf Call My Name sprang from several of my interests: the power of initiation rites to transform an adolescent into an adult; the problems their lack causes in modern Western society; how culture teaches us to see the world. In modern Western cultures, shifters are firmly in the realm of the fantastic but shape-changing is all around us. In Angel Caste, Viv is astonished by the angels’ ability to bed and unbed their wings, that is, grow wings from their backs and absorb them again in just a few seconds, but as Thris points out, humans change their bodies too, although more slowly. And it is true. A baby’s body changes to that of a toddler, a child, an adolescent, an adult and an elder. The changes the body of a pregnant woman undergoes are both quicker and more obvious.

Shifting occurs on a mental/behavioral level too. In The Emerald Serpent, Etaine responds to her former lover’s shock her companion is a shifter with the acid comment: ‘Aren’t we all? Seeming one thing one day and something else the next.’

Initially, I Heard the Wolf Call My Name was Anahera’s story. I even wrote outlines of thirty chapters, something that, as a pantser, I have never done before (an impulse triggered by the exhausting struggle to pull 300,000 words of Angel Caste together in its final chapters). I quickly abandoned the chapter outlines (which even bored me) and reverted to a pantser, introducing Anahera in chapter one, then alternating between her and Jax’s stories for the first ten chapters before they meet.

Jax had already started to interest me more when, one night, suffering from insomnia, I flicked on the TV to see the winning songs from past Eurovision Song Contests and there, before my astonished gaze, was Mans Zelmerlow in 2015, singing Heroes - Jax’s story.

The Music

I played the clip of Mans singing Heroes many times during the writing of I Heard the Wolf Call My Name to both inspire me and keep me on track. So here he is.

The Secondary World

A few years ago we visited the Big Island of Hawaii to see its volcano erupting. The volcano went quiet a few days before our arrival but we took a helicopter flight over it anyway and there, stretched out below me, were verdant valleys with silver ribbon waterfalls that dropped down sheer cliffs, into a beachless sea. And there, of course, were the Kawai Alanui islands, in particular, the biggest and only inhabited island of Iolana.

I have visited New Zealand a number of times and, as well as its spectacular landscape, its First Nation language of Maori is so beautifully lyrical that I used Maori words extensively in the story. All the Kawai Alanui names (excluding Jax) are Maori as are the words that describe the landscape and many of its creatures.

Volcanic islands are the tops of volcanoes and ascending from sea level to their peaks means to journey through different climatic zones and their associated landscapes. The climber who ascends Iolana starts at Wairere: band of tropical vegetation that sits atop the coastal cliffs; then enters Kohatu: a band of black volcanic stone with little vegetation; then Makariri, a band of permanent snow. Then they enter a band of permanent cloud (the Cloud Crown) which creates a moist, tropical landscape. Once they exit this, they look upon Huna, the snow-covered peak of Tihi, the volcanic mountain that forms Ionana.

The Kawai Alanui islands lie in the Fayo Sea between two warring nations and since the last conflict, the islands are in an Exclusion Zone, and so out of bounds to both nations. There are five islands but only the largest, Iolana, is now inhabited. The next largest, Rua, blew up. The Kawai Alanui people are shifters and expert mimics. When exposed to Off-islanders, they mimic their language and non-verbal communication, and quickly develop understanding. This makes them pan-lingual.

The Kawai Alanui are tall, lean and fair-skinned, with auburn hair and green eyes the most common colouring, but other hair and eye-colours also present. Children are cared for by the Ikaika (initiated young adults) who also care for the elderly. Their community is guided by the Kuwaini, a select group of Elders. The Kuwai Alanui delineate their people as: Younger Ahi - birth to around fifteen; Older Ahi – from sixteen to initiation at around nineteen to twenty; Ikaika - those initiated; and Elders – late thirties plus. Dream-travelers - those who experience portentous dreams - also guide the community.

Nakedness, kissing and hugging is normal among both sexes as Younger Ahi. Older Ahi males cover their genitals, and Older female Ahi cover their genitals and breasts, but kissing, hugging, grooming and other forms of bonding continue. All Ahi undergo initiation rites which consist of a solitary journey into the Cloud Crown to find their skin-spirit: an animal that is meaningful to the initiate and that ties them to the islands and their communities. The initiates are granted their islands’ lore via songs on their return. Once initiated, the former Ahi, now Ikaika, can enter into permanent, monogamous sexual relationships with either sex. Ikaika are guardians of the islands and their people.

Deep Fantasy

I Heard the Wolf Call My Name dissolves many of the divisions we unthinkingly take for granted. By making the Kawai Alanui shifters, I wanted to blur the boundaries between humans and other animals and remove gender and sexual divisions. There are no specific male or female roles and no forms of sexuality are deemed abnormal. I wanted to explore the fluidity of what it means to be human too. The Kawai Alanui can exist in birth-form or shift-form and, in the latter, experience the world more as a non-human animal does. The Kawai Alanui see the world very differently from Off-islanders, and these differences are explored and questioned by Jax, who must live in both worlds.

Happy reading.