FIVE CATS AND FIVE MOVEMENTS -- INFLUENCES

The Five Cats and Five Movements eBook is finally published and available in epub and pdf formats. The paperback version is at the printers and should be available next week. It’s been a long eight-year journey that I hope readers will appreciate. Numerous authors inspired me while writing the book. Books by six of the most influential are worth acknowledging.

“The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allen Poe was the short story that sort of jump-started Five Cats and Five Movements. I’d long admired how Poe built tension and suspense in this tale while conveying the main character’s psychological descent. The story was the perfect guidebook for the story’s first movement – Madness.

The Learning Tree by Gordon Parks and The Color Purple by Alice Walker are two novels about coming of age and mental growth that were also very inspirational, even though they don’t contain any paranormal or supernatural characters. The Color Purple was especially impactful in regard to an example of someone’s long struggle to overcoming psychological torment over the course of decades.

Miriam Lichtheim’s Ancient Egyptian Literature books also contain several coming-of-age tales that were very influential, the most prominent being “The Contentions of Heru and Set.” That tale was the first “boy fights his uncle for the throne of his deceased father” story, preceding Hamlet by many millennia. The Egyptian contest takes place over thirty years, beginning in Heru’s infanthood, which provided another blueprint for my tale of a long-waged battle for justice beginning in the protagonist’s childhood.

The Odyssey is a Greek myth that has captivated me since I was a young boy. It loomed large in my memory as I wrote the “Daring” and “Fortitude” movements of the story. They also include a protagonist’s long journey through foreign lands on a secret mission, as well as his encounter with supernatural creatures.

Neil Gaiman’s American Gods encouraged me to create my own world where ancient mythological beings exist in modern, gritty, urban settings, though Five Cats and Five Movements imagines them in a Pan-African environment.

Read the prologue to Five Cats and Five Movements at https://www.hemmaat.com/five-cats-excerpt. Check out the website and leave your email address for updates and free stories to be released soon.