Anna Kashina grew up in Russia and moved to the United States in 1994 after receiving her Ph.D. in cell biology from the Russian Academy of Sciences. She works as a biomedical researcher and combines career in science with her passion for writing.
Anna is the 2015 double Prism award winner for “The Guild of Assassins” book 2 in the “Majat Code” series, which concludes this June with “Assassin Queen”. Her interests in ballroom dancing, world mythologies and folklore feed her high-level interest in martial arts of the Majat warriors. She lives near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
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So Anna, tell us about using
love interests in a fantasy adventure.
Hi, Clover, and thank you for hosting my post. It is
so great to be back on “Get Lost in a Story”, and to talk about my
ever-favorite subject: love.
My “Majat Code” series, which concluded on June 7 with
book 3, “Assassin Queen”, was originally conceived as an adventure fantasy, but
over the course of three books some of the plot lines took it more into the
direction of fantasy romance. This was not initially intended, but as I wrote,
I realized how great the romantic subplots can be in character development,
while also driving a story along.
Having romantic feelings is very natural, and most
people can relate to them. Because of it, just a sprinkle of romance in a
fantasy story can do a great job in putting us on equal footing with the
characters right off the bat. It is true that many of us experience love
differently, but most of us know what it is, and the power of this feeling can
be very effective.
From the point of character development, love
interests can do several jobs at the same time. They are great in forcing
someone into emotional extremes, so that we can see this person’s true colors.
They also provide very strong motivation, which is essential to move the story
along. Finally, the ways each character deals with the pressure, and the
choices to be made when their loved ones are involved, are often unpredictable—even
to the author. This unpredictability creates surprise twists in the story that
ultimately can provide an extra dimension for the plot.
And yes, the dreaded love triangles. They have been so
overused in literature that they have become almost a taboo. Especially in a
good fantasy story, where people who deal with the epic problems that can
change the course of history turn into raving maniacs and emotional wrecks when
they see a woman of their dreams smile to someone else.
I was well aware of all this when I approached the
inevitable fact that “The Majat Code” books, featuring young and attractive
characters, will have some romance in them. Originally, in “Blades of the Old
Empire”, I planned for Kyth to fall in love with Kara. It was meant as a
straightforward plot point, where their biggest challenge would be to deal with
the fact that he is a prince and she is an oath-bound warrior. And, it did work
this way. Sort of. On Kyth’s side.
To my surprise, despite all Kyth’s advances, despite
the fact that he was good-looking, talented, and pure-hearted, she simply did
not reciprocate his feelings the way I expected. In fact, over the course of
“Blades of the Old Empire” I slowly realized that I could not see their future
together. This turn of events took me completely by surprise. I never thought
until that point that characters can actually take charge of these things,
against the author’s best intentions.
And this brings me to Mai, who originally appeared in
“Blades of the Old Empire” as a secondary--even if very prominent—character. He
was very important to the story, and I did take a lot of effort to develop his
character, but he was never meant to factor into any romantic subplots. Yet,
from the moment he showed up, my other main character, Ellah, developed a
serious crush on him. Watching this unravel, realizing through Ellah’s eyes how
attractive Mai was, I slowly began to fantasize about Mai and Kara. They seemed
like such a good match. She always felt so comfortable in his presence. He
understood her so well. A shame they could never be together because of their
warrior code. Right?
When I started on “The Guild of Assassins”, I never
intended to toss up the originally planned love interests. I was going to fix
Kyth and Kara’s relationship. Mai was central to the plot by now, and I kept
thinking about him and Kara, but I was not going to let it to go anywhere. But
in the first quarter of the book, Mai and Kara got closer than I planned – and
boy, did it seem so right. In fact, the
scene between them worked so well that I wrote more, just for myself. Not to
put into the book. Only to learn what could have been.
Piece by piece, these scenes developing Mai’s and
Kara’s relationship ended up becoming my reason for coming back to the story
every day. I could not wait to write more. The events just kept unraveling,
until I realized that I was fighting the inevitable. I think this was probably
the point in the story where Kara realized it too. There was no turning back.
In the end this love story not only drove the series,
but also tied in to all the preceding events. Everything through the series
just clicked into place. For example, when Kyth and Mai first meet, in a
neutral scene in the king’s palace, I could not help feeling a tension between
them. I did not realize back then where it was coming from, but I even wrote
some scenes that were later deleted, where they almost ended up in a fight. It
took me three books to see that this animosity was driven by their common
feelings for Kara, and it led to a chemistry between Kyth and Mai that drove some
of my favorite parts of the story and eventually resolved so well in “Assassin
Queen”. Thus, the dreaded love triangle found its way into my story against my
best intentions – and fit seamlessly into it.
The just-released “Assassin Queen” is not as
romance-heavy as “The Guild of Assassins”, and I hope it strikes the right
balance that would make it appealing for the fans of both the fantasy and the
romance genres. Each character in this book comes to a satisfactory resolution
– at least for me. I can’t wait to learn my readers’ reactions and see what
they think about the way everything ended up!
You can find out more about Anna and her books at
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