Interview: Marri Champié, Author of Silverhorn

Today I’m pleased to bring you a Q&A with Marri Champié, whose new book Silverhorn will be released soon. Enjoy!

About Silverhorn
Silverhorn is a paranormal contemporary fantasy by award winning author Marri Champié. It will be available on November 5, 2018, via Kasva Press. The book lies somewhere between Fantasy/Science Fiction and a modern day Western.

Silverhorn explores themes of magic/mysticism, history and Celtic and Native American traditions and heritage, family dynamics, love, friendship and music. It follows Willa – a young, beautiful rising rock n’ roll star who is also a cowgirl whose family ranch is the Silverhorn, a wild area that has long been off-limits to outsiders. Willa becomes obsessed with finding the truth behind a mysterious legend about what is on the other side of Silverhorn Canyon – is it a Native American legend or something far more ancient? She risks it all to find out. Readers who enjoy cross-genre novels in which science and magic coexist, and those drawn to the Wild West will find it doubly appealing.

Silverhorn weaves myth into truth and truth into myth. For centuries, archeologists contended Mongolians who crossed the land bridge were the first Native Americans. But were they? In 1996 the controversial discovery of nine-thousand-year-old non-mongoloid remains in Kennewick, Washington changed that theory. When the tribes reclaimed the bones and buried the original site of the find, testing of Kennewick man’s identity ended. But the puzzle and speculation over America’s first people continues. Blending Native American myth and Celtic legend, Champié suggests an extraordinary possibility regarding America’s first inhabitants.

Q&A with Author Marri Champié

In light of the idea that you should write what you know, why do you write about shape changers?
We live with shape changers, people and things that aren’t who or what they seem, so shape changers are all around us. Speculative fiction uses settings and futuristic or paranormal scenes to explore things about human nature that are universal—death, love, loyalty, hate, war, family—the things that never change no matter where we are or what the circumstances.

You like to write about things that are connected, either stories, or events or characters. Why?
Because everything is connected. Time is circular. We don’t know if we are later than the terraforming of the Cosmos, or prior to it. We don’t know anything because we only see from our single point in time. If we could step outside of the small point of time we are in, we could see the connections of everything. All stories, all history, all events are connected. We can only imagine it because we can’t see it. I try to help people see it.

What ideas or recurring thoughts do you want your readers to take away from your stories?
Awe of mystery. Doubt about traditional beliefs. Questions about the subjugation of women. Questions about everything, from the world around them, to the very foundations of the Cosmos.

What is one response to your writing that you would hope every reader would have?
To Cry. To Laugh. To Cry. If the audience doesn’t cry, I haven’t done my job well enough. It’s the Greek Muse thing… Melpomene & Thalia—the Sock & Buskin. If you don’t achieve that response in your audience, you have failed as a writer.

What famous person/persons do you admire or would you like to meet?
Thomas Jefferson, Atilla the Hun, & Hypatia of Alexandria.

What issue are you passionate about?
Gender bias. The millennial-old suppression, disrespect, and intimidation of women. They are 50% of the human race. It’s the most egregious, and foul human travesty, far more terrible than racism.

Are there any “messages” that you are trying to convey?
I want people to entertain the idea that, really, nothing we have been taught to believe is reality. Emerson said, “Reality is a sliding door.” I want them to question everything. Nothing is what we think it is. There are many messages in what I write, small ones, but they all point to the big one. Nothing is what it seems. And I want people to be kind. It’s never wrong to be kind. Lean in. Be kind. Resistance is futile.

About the Author
Marri Champié has been nominated for the Pushcart for poetry. She has won the Boise State University President’s Writing Award for fiction & poetry & the Oregon State Poetry Award. Champié works as a wildfire support driver, and lives on a small ranch overlooking the Idaho Prairie. However, she was raised in Hollywood and says her childhood was “filled with fantasy and the creation of unreality.” Silverhorn is her debut novel.