Are you ready to learn the truth? The Shadow Soul (Trailokya Trilogy #1) by K. Williams

The Shadow Soul is the first part of The Trailokya Trilogy, a fantasy series that follows the rise and fall of fabled races and souls at the junction of three worlds: Zion, Earth and Jahannam. K. Williams weaves a tale that will leave you questioning long held convictions about the human legends of Heaven and Hell. Are you ready to enter the gates of Zion and learn the truth?

Description:

The Shadow Soul is the first part of The Trailokya Trilogy, a fantasy series that follows the rise and fall of fabled races and souls at the junction of three worlds: Zion, Earth and Jahannam. K. Williams weaves a tale that will leave you questioning long held convictions about the human legends of Heaven and Hell. Are you ready to enter the gates of Zion and learn the truth?

Captain Maiel is a duta warrior of Zion, a race of giant, winged guardians and chroniclers of the lesser souls. Maiel’s assurances are shaken when she nearly loses a young human girl to the dark forces of Jahannam, the prison realm where the lowest beings reside. To avoid answering to the leaders of her world, Maiel seeks refuge on Earth, but she is pursued by a baron of Jahannam intent on destroying her. Can she be saved before time runs out? Or will she be sacrificed to secure the borders of Zion and to hide the lie her journey uncovers?

With each step further into darkness, long held secrets are revealed and shadows rise from the past to challenge absolutes.

GUEST POST

Why I write Fantasy and what I love about it

Escapism. It’s as simple as that.

You know that feeling you get when you listen to a song that moves your soul? You want to slither your body around the room, close your eyes and just let the tones wash you. The music reaches deep, deep into your guts and marries your emotions to some kind of corporeal scene. There it lies for the minutes that the notes tick off in your neverland, wonderland, tomorrowland. Escape.

For a moment. Escape through fantasy.

Fantasy let’s one’s headspace out into the open. The things a person thinks but fears owning can become manifest. The id is exercised, minimally watched by the twin egos, super and fore. There is no rule that cannot be broken, so long as you’ve set up the borders properly. Otherwise, the provinces might war over control of the kingdom, but even in that you find something compelling and the suspension of belief is prolonged. You escape the limits of reality.

I write fantasy to escape into the realm of dreams. The world in which we live is run by a rigid set of rules. No one wakes up one day with the power of lightning or flight, much to many of our sorrows. This isn’t to say that there are no ‘little miracles’ out there. I tend to still believe in the paranormal if not some all powerful sky god, but maybe I do--he’s possible, just unnecessary as far as reason surmises. It is thrilling to think of the unexplainable, because for a moment those rules may not be as rigid as we believed. 

As an unrepentant Agnostic (not to be confused with Atheists who are quite assured that there is no such thing as God), fantasy allows me to discard of reason and explore ideas and theories that my analytical mind find impossible--except in dreams. Fantasy is, afterall, an exploration of the extraordinary, the boundless and the impractical. One’s faith and knowledge need not compete for the crown. Both can exist without question. I don’t want to believe in either direction so vehemently that I stop asking questions, stop dreaming, stop fantasizing about what if…If scientists of yore had done this, we’d be lucky to have the wheel yet. The most amazing ideas can come to a mind that is free from rigid rules, which can ultimately be negative weight: cages, chains or handcuffs.

I love how fantasy allowed me to take off the handcuffs. Many authors feel bound by decorum, worrying over what someone might think. We serve the reader. What we write might offend and then our books go unread forever if not longer. That’s a horror movie kept inside my heart, reflected through characters in my books in one way or another as they strive to achieve their dreams, concerned that someone will comment in such a way that there is no recovery. 

The social contract that is unspoken between author and audience can supply quite the set of golden handcuffs. If you’re a genre writer, you find that you’re bound by the conventions of your genre. Even Fantasy has these. However, fantasy has parameters of expectation similar to Science Fiction: magic of some sort must happen (advanced technology must happen in the case of sci-fi). Magic in fantasy takes on many forms, whether in the form of mythical beings or the realization of mythical lands, stuffs of legends, and even theologies. It’s limitless potential is intimidating and freeing. 

When I first began writing, I wavered between historical musings and weavings of high fantasy. I struggled for a very long time to work in the format of High Fantasy, but it never quite felt my own. There was always the shadow of those who came before: Tolkien, Brookes… There must be something I can do of my own? So I set my dreamy elvish stories aside, choosing to work first on my skills. There was no justice I could do to any tale without the skill to do it justice. 

Time passed and in the midst of graduate school, I returned to the idea of fantasy. I had penned a script to practice the craft during my self teaching phase with that art (I was in graduate school to have proof I knew screenwriting) which drew on the numerous dreams I had been having since I was a girl. The visions in them were a mixture of culture and my thoughts on the things I knew. Some recurred, some were like snippets in a long movie which I got about 15 minutes from every so often in the night. Looking back, I could probably take them all and line them up in some order. That is what I decided to do in the fall of 2013. 

And I decided to wrap the fantasy in science, as I had a background in that, and I decided to use myths and legends of which my own dreams had made use. Above all, I decided to take off the handcuffs and stop worrying. My readers would come and those who were not right for the text would have to be content with turning from the texts--I too would also have to be content with not pleasing everyone. No writer can. 

I wove my tale, revelling in the words as one revels in the songs that move them. That is why I write and love fantasy.

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About the author:

Born in Saratoga Springs, New York, where she continues to reside, K.Williams embarked on a now twenty year career in writing. After a childhood, which consisted of voracious reading and hours of film watching, it was a natural progression to study and work in the arts.

K attended the State University of New York at Morrisville, majoring in the Biological Sciences, and then continued with English and Historical studies at the University at Albany (home of the New York State Writer’s Institute) gaining her Bachelor’s Degree. While attending UA, K interned with the 13th Moon Feminist Literary Magazine, bridging her interests in social movements and art.

Currently, K has completed the MALS program for Film Studies and Screenwriting at Empire State College (SUNY), and is the 2013-2014 recipient of the Foner Fellowship in Arts and Social Justice. K continues to write and is working on the novels of the Trailokya Trilogy, a work that deals with topics in Domestic Violence and crosses the controversial waters of organized religion and secularism. A sequel to OP-DEC is in the research phase, while the adaptation is being shopped to interested film companies. Excerpts of these and more writings can be found at:

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