» Elaine Corvidae Biography

A Different Perspective

Elaine Corvidae was born in 1967, and when she was 8 years old, she decided that she wanted to be a writer and through her teens, she developed her first werewolf characters, based on several sources, from the movie "Ladyhawke" to the illustrations of Robert Gould and as a means to escape the frustrations of life. 

Corvidae already worked as an office assistant, an archaelogist and still keeps a part-time job as a raptor rehabilitation assistant. In 1996, after much writing, she released her first e-book called "Wolfkin". 

Her stories are carefully crafted. Corvidae does a lot of research on historical and religious backgrounds, and to describe her werewolf characters better, she even studied wolf behavior and body language, so that her character's attitudes would be more "realistic".

Another example of her care in conceiving her stories is that for the "Wolfkin" story, she created another race of non-humans, the Aclytes, to counterpart with the werewolf one.

Basing on the conflicts that have been common throughout human history, on humans fighting amongst themselves due to cultural, racial and religious differences, especially anti-semitism and racism in Southern US, she created this race, that is ostracized and oppressed by the human society and which has as many rights as ancient Roman slaves had.

Corvidae also changed some details of the werewolf legend to a more realistic approach, when she realized that the traditional werewolf legends weren't very accurate when they described the mind of the werewolf, as always they are described as keeping a human mind.

So she decided that her characters needed to have a different kind of consciousness when in the shape of wolves, they needed to see and rationalize things in a different way. The result is that Corvidae's characters have as much of the human element in their attitudes as the wolf element.

Against The Current

But she doesn't only write about werewolves. Her "Winter's Orphan" story is about a half-dark fae called Mina Cole, who discovers that due to her father's nature, she has the powers of winter and night.

And at the same time that she has to learn how to deal with her powers, she has also to escape the light faes who want to destroy all those with her powers and still keep her job in a textile mill. For this book, she earned several awards, including the Dream Realm Award in 2002.

This book shows other differences from the general fantasy stories: the story is placed in the 19th century, the heroine is a blue collar worker and the hero is a venerable 53 years old man that relies on a wheelchair for moving.

There's "Tyrant Moon", a novel placed in the Bronze Age that tells the story of a warrior tribeswoman, who with the help of a mage called Thraxis, tries to stop a rogue wizard from destroying her people. Its sequel, "Heretic Sun" is about Thraxis and his wife Arrow (his warrior companion in the last story), who get back to his homeland to fight against the Black Council and on the way several shocking truths are revealed about his life.

Then there's "The Ghost Eater" a story placed in a quasi post-conquest North America, that is about an undead Cherokee shaman who's member of one of the last three free native people.

Her Method Of Working

If you want more informations:

Onecrow.net - Elaine Corvidae's official site

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