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Underground Truth –
Researching the Supernatural in a Paranormal Romance

by D.M. Atkins

If the “supernatural” is just an extension, a real part of the natural world, how would one investigate it? It’s an odd question, but it is the one that forms the basis of the extensive research I do when writing. Several reviewers have commented on various aspects of the research my co-author and I did for our new work, Faewolf (by D.M. Atkins and Chris Taylor). Taylor and I have written over a dozen novels together (some under other names and some not yet out) and one of the marks of our work is to try to be as “real” as possible within the setting of the story. Whether the book is about two men in the gay BDSM scene of New York City or a magical wolf who falls in love with a Lakota college student, our approach is to create a kind of realism both in the setting and in the characters who live there.

When we begin a new story, Taylor and I usually start with the people who will be our protagonists. Much of our work is romantic, so that usually means creating two people who will share that role. In Faewolf, Taylor already had an idea for Kiya White Cloud, a young Native American man from a Lakota tradition. Much of the research that created him involved understanding the current conditions at Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota as well as the spiritual beliefs, stories and language of the Lakota Sioux tribe. An important aspect of this was to treat these spiritual beliefs as fact. If we begin with the premise that all religions have a basis in some kind of truth, that opens up a world of possibilities that most label “supernatural,” but which we try to approach as natural (if undocumented) phenomena.

For our second protagonist, Brian (or Saoi, as his clan calls him), I had originally thought to create a werewolf. I usually begin my process at the interlibrary loan website. I checked out every nonfiction book on wolves in the system (except children’s books). That meant culling through more than thirty books on the topic. I look for patterns, both consistencies and gaps. The more I read about wolves, the more I realized I didn’t want Brian to be a werewolf, which is still a human being. I wanted a wolf that could shapeshift into a man. Now we slip over from biology books to belief systems again. I have, in the past, done research on Celtic belief systems. I decided to take from the stories of Sidhe, essentially elves, who sometimes shifted into animals. The Faewolves are based on the idea of a Sidhe female who became a wolf and birthed a race of wolves with elven powers.

Now we go back over to biology and history – the near extermination in the last century of wolves in North America, especially in the United States. If the Irish ancestors of the modern Faewolves had come to America, they would experience that as a war with humans. Unlike their regular wolf cousins, they have an oral history that would remember the hunts as mass executions of their kind by humans. They would be extremely distrustful, and maybe even hate humans. In Faewolf, we learn that all Faewolves are Oath Bound (a sacred magical promise) not to tell humans about the existence of their kind.

So the next problem in the story was to figure out how a Faewolf and our Lakota youth would even meet, let along get involved with each other. Wolf diversity was damaged by large scale hunting (slaughter), a biological problem in our real world. How would that affect the Faewolves? What if they were dying out and no one among them knew why? Saoi, a strangely scholarly Faewolf, decides to turn to biology to help him figure out the mystery. He leaves his Faewolf clan, creates an identity as a man named Brian Fenwick, and goes to college to become a scientist who can hopefully bring back an answer the shamans of his clan have not been able to discover. So Brian and Kiya find themselves attending the same college.

Once again we are able to blend real world research with spiritual beliefs. I attended the University of California at Santa Cruz and know a lot about local myths and spiritual aspects of the redwood forests there. I also downloaded maps, dorm descriptions, course schedules, program descriptions and even the campus LGBT newsletter to make the day to day life of Brian and Kiya as real as possible. I then took a trip back to Santa Cruz, where my partner and I took photographs, talked to people and studied the very real settings of the story. In the book, Kiya attends a Wednesday night coffee club at the LGBT center, a real event on the UCSC campus. The buildings where Brian has his office and Kiya has his apartment are all real places. Even the llama ranch near Brian’s cabin is a real place.

As much as possible, we aim to create a setting where the magic becomes part of the real world. When Kiya, far from his home in South Dakota and used to spending time in the outdoors, seeks solace from homesickness, he goes to the woods that are so much a part of Santa Cruz. And, when upset over his ex-boyfriend stalking him, and he finds a wolf in the woods, Kiya’s reaction is based on his own beliefs. Lakota tradition is full of stories of wolves as protectors and guides. Instead of being afraid of the wolf, Kiya views the wolf as sent to guide him. Here we are able to blend running themes of the real beliefs of the Lakota Sioux with our magical elements.

Another major aspect that is critical to every story we tell is psychology. How does a real person given a specific background react to specific situations? For Kiya, that meant we actually wrote a lot of his back story so that we knew what his formative experiences have been. Kiya’s profile and his reactions are based on a lot of research into domestic violence as well as the existing research into the formations of identity among lesbian, bisexual and gay people. I have a background in anthropology and am a published non-fiction author on these topics. Kiya is a young man, spending his first year away from home and eager to find someone to love. He is attracted to older and more dominant men, but he has yet to learn how to tell the difference between dominant and abusive. Kiya’s first boyfriend had been abusive and he made another mistake in the choice of Ted, who he recently broke up with. We bring those ideas into making Kiya as much a real person as we can.

Brian required a combination of psychology and biology to create. In addition to the stack of books on wolves, I also began researching what is known of canine behavior and body language. I wanted Saoi to be more wolf than human. He has a mind at least comparable to a highly intelligent human but he also has much of the biology and social conditioning of a wolf. I tried to make sure that every aspect of his body language showed his origins. For example, when they first meet, Kiya is put off by the fact that Brian rarely looks him in the eyes, something a wolf would avoid. I was lucky enough to have a friend who is a specialist in dog training who was also able to read the book and make suggestions as to where I could improve the realism here.

I think most people would assume that a book about a paranormal world would be something that one can’t research. Obviously I disagree. In fact, I find much of my inspiration for the storytelling aspects in research about the real world. It isn’t just that I am “fact checking” (though that is important) but that I find actual inspiration in the research. I became so fascinated with wolves, I was drawn to tell a story that would allow me to bring their perspective to the reader. Even one of the villains in the story is based on that research. In one book, an interview with real life wolf haters, people who actively hate and seek to kill wolves, inspired Hunter. I found myself asking, if this man who hates wolves found out about the existence of Faewolves, what would he do? He would hate them as much or more than he did normal wolves. That logic question became the inspiration for one of the primary antagonists of the story.

For book two, of what we expect to be a series of books involving Faewolves, Kiya is taking Brian with him to visit his family in South Dakota. We have spent months researching the stories of major figures such as Coyote and Raven, as well as real life conditions at Pine Ridge, modern accounts of Sun Dance rituals and social life among today’s Lakota Sioux. Book two weaves together these elements as Kiya has to face aspects of his past and make choices about his future with Brian.

I read as much, if not more, non-fiction than fiction, and it is a constant source for story-telling. I approach research for paranormal as if I am investigating an “underground truth” behind all things mystical as well as the physical. The headlines of newspapers, biographies, the religious beliefs of real people, history and science – all of it inspires story after story ideas. Some authors approach research as a chore, but I see it as a treasure trove of information and inspiration to bring magical stories to life.

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D.M. Atkins is an author of both non-fiction and fiction. Atkins’ latest novel is Faewolf, co-authored with Chris Taylor, is an erotic fantasy from Circlet Press. An anthropologist, Atkins has edited several anthologies on LGBT topics, including Looking Queer, Lesbian Sex Scandals and Bisexual Women in the 21^st Century and is the former editor of both Locus and Shadows Of… magazines. In recent years, Atkins has been a popular fan fiction author, under a pseudonym, and has won awards for online erotic fiction. Atkins lives in the Bay Area with two husbands, a girlfriend, their son, Atkins’ mother, three cats and a dog.