Music. magic. and undead creatures; The Black Fire Concerto has really got it all. Read on to see how metal music paved the way for author Mike Allen’s newest novel.
MIKE ALLEN:
Whatever could have possessed me to write The Black Fire Concerto, a post-apocalyptic secondary world body horror novel in which a pair of heroines who cast spells through their music face off against hordes of undead monstrosities?
My heroines, warrior-sorceress Olyssa and her teenage apprentice Erzelle, draw inspiration from the likes of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, Elric and Moonglum, Roland the Gunslinger and his sidekicks, and more. They are musicians traveling through a world overrun with ghouls.
Many scenes from the book, if a painter chose to illustrate them, could serve as death metal album covers. (Hint, hint, to any horror-loving artists out there.)
I’m not a musician, but music with a dash of darkness has been central to my life since my middle school explorations of my parents’ collection of symphonies by classical composers. Much of it did little for me — I tend to find soft, gentle music boring and irritating rather than relaxing. But some conveyed power, momentum, menace, like Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King” from the “Peer Gynt” suite. I especially fell head over heels for Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring” — I loved its energy and its rebellious atonality (the very qualities that caused the audience to riot at its 1913 premiere.)
Source: The Big Idea: Mike Allen | Whatever
