Flesh Endures: Inception, Influences and Themes

I’ve always been drawn to the dark and gothic in life, art, literature and film. I find the shadows, the gentle cool of shade and moon-shadow, altogether more pleasing than heat and bright sunlight. Beauty on the edge of ruin more enticing than beauty itself.

It’s more interesting to me to write about damaged characters with doubtful morals, but with the possibility of redemption.

I discovered these themes in novels like Dracula and Frankenstein. I was obsessed briefly with the Pan Books of Horror. But best of all were books by Anne Rice, Tanith Lee and others, which often featured women at the centre of their plots. I was fascinated by the challenges and restrictions of characters who attained immortality.

But I didn’t want to write a classic vampire or flawed-monster novel. Was there anything new to be said? My thoughts ranged beyond those tropes.

In Flesh Endures, Karolan, Lord Rakka, is an alchemist who has discovered the secret of immortality. But during transmutation he attracted the attention of a greedy, disincarnate spirit: the Fetch. Now Karolan and his familiar are bound together, each sustained by something of the other’s essence. The greedy, amoral Fetch will do anything to become fully human.

At the beginning of the book, Karolan is jaded and world-weary. He longs for a partner, but after his transformation his intimate touch brings death to any human lover.

I love history, research and world-building, so I set Flesh Endures during the Black Death in medieval England and Europe. There’s plenty of opportunity for Karolan to further his alchemical experiments, while the Fetch indulges its appetite for suffering, death and destruction.

Everything changes when Karolan saves the life of a brutalised young woman. At first Garnetta is horribly injured, grieving for her dead family and powerless. But she takes revenge on the soldiers who hurt her, and the churchmen who condemn her as a witch. Garnetta is a little like Joan of Arc or Boudicca, but unlike either, she cheats death and triumphs by bringing disaster and ruin on those who deserve it.

I was rooting for Garnetta all the way. She’s every wronged woman who triumphs. And in Karolan Rakka there’s a new hero to join the ranks of the classic undead.