Born in California, raised in Nebraska, Maya’s fascination with speculative fiction dates from the night her dad let her stay up late to watch The Day the Earth Stood Still. Mom was furious. Dad was unrepentant. Maya slept with a nite-lite until she was fifteen and developed a passion for things that came from outer space or went bump in the night.
Maya started her writing career sketching science fiction comic books in the last row of her third grade classroom. Since then her short fiction has been published in Analog, Amazing Stories, Century, Realms of Fantasy, Interzone, and Jim Baen’s Universe; in 1999, her short story The White Dog (Interzone #142) was a finalist for the British Science Fiction Award. Her debut novel, THE MERI, was a Locus Magazine 1992 Best First Novel nominee. Since, she has published five more speculative fiction novels, the latest of which, MR. TWILIGHT (Del Rey) was co-written with Michael Reaves. She also worked with Michael on BATMAN: FEAR ITSELF, a joint release from Del Rey and DC Comics. Her alternate history story “O, Pioneer” was nominated for this year’s Sideways Award for alternate history.
Maya lives in San Jose where she writes, performs, and records original and parody filk music with her husband Jeff. The couple has been honored with Pegasus Awards for Best Parody and Best Performer. To top it off, they've also produced three musical children: Alex, Avery, and Amanda.
Maya and her family are members of the Bahá'í Faith. Her song lyrics and stories often take on themes related to faith and spirituality.

Kaath's books are mostly about faith, as are many of her short stories. Her first three novels, especially (the first of which was rereleased as a trade paperback last year by Sense of Wonder Press), use a fictional world to look at the period of time after a new revelation from God throws society into turmoil. The fourth, which is a sort of alternate history fantasy, explores what happens when religious ideologies collide.

__________________
InterfaithForums.com-Where your ideas and beliefs count.

Welcome to the Interview Zone Kaath. We are very happy to have you here and learn about your exciting life and beliefs.

One of your books covers a new revelation from God throws society into turmoil. Can you tell us about the revelation and the turmoil?

__________________
InterfaithForums.com-Where your ideas and beliefs count.

Thanks! I'm happy to be here. Some great discussions going on out there.

About my books -- actually, it's an entire trilogy. The books were published by Baen in the mid-'90s and are being rereleased as trade paperbacks by Sense of Wonder Press.

The first book (THE MERI) was based on a dream I had. The protagonist of the first book is a 15 year old girl named Mereddyd-a-Lagan who wants to be what no woman is allowed to be -- a Divine or Osraed. She's an orphan who's allowed to study Divine Magic (magic and faith are pretty much entwined in this world) because her guardian is a rather unorthodox Osraed (mage) who argues that there are no scriptural impediments to her studying.

In the course of the book, Mereddyd faces the prejudice of people who believe she's a witch or a heretic or both, and faces her own internal issues, such as a desire for vengeance against the people who killed her parents. And she has to battle these things as she pursues her calling and does the unthinkable -- she goes on pilgrimage to the Sea where aspirants to the station of Osraed must go when they've completed their schooling.

It's literally a case of many are called but few are chosen. The young prentices go to the shore and hope to be visited by the Meri -- a spirit being who is the conduit of God's grace and knowledge. The Meri has been choosing very few Osraed of late and the orthodoxy isn't sure what they'll do if She chooses a girl. The book has a surprise ending, so I'm not going to say more than that.

The next two books in the series (TAMINY and THE CRYSTAL ROSE) look at the fallout of Mereddyd's Pilgrimage. One of the new Osraed returns with the instruction to allow any girls who wish to study in the School (Halig-liath) and this creates great turmoil as the existing Osraed choose sides. Some hold that the revelation must be tainted in some way -- that God certainly couldn't mean for women to become Osraed. Others simply choose to obey.

Eventually, the king sees the upheaval as an opportunity to make political hay and tries to co-opt the "new religion" for his own purposes. There is a horrific split between the orthodoxy and the believers in the new message and the result is the rise of fanaticism, the meddling of politicos, and harsher and harsher attempts by the secular government to control the beliefs of the people.

It's also a character study -- telling the "small" stories of the people who are thrust onto this stage. Be they believers, unbelievers or skeptics.

__________________
Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff
www.mysticfig.com

"Love is the light that guideth in darkness, the living link that uniteth God with man, that assureth the progress of every illumined soul." -- Abdu'l-Bahá

Thank you, Kaath. Can you tell us something about this "new religion"?

__________________
InterfaithForums.com-Where your ideas and beliefs count.

If I can do it without giving up the ending of the first book (which of course I'd love people to read).

The new religion is really the Old Religion with a different face. Besides admitting women to a level of divine study (and types of magic) they weren't allowed to do before, it also changed the way revelation was given. The new message, rather than being couched in metaphors and parables is more direct. And it prepares the people of Caraid-land for relations with people beyond the Gyldan-Baenn -- the mountains that mark the inland boundary of their peninsula country.

What I'm really looking at, of course, is what I see, as a Baha'i, as the course of religion in the real world. What I was aiming at was to get people who might never pick up a non-fiction book about religion to look at the IDEA of what happens when God sends a new revelation. Most religious people are familiar with this idea in relation to their particular Revelator--Moses, Christ, Krishna, Buddha, etc--but I wanted to take the event out of a real world context to allow readers to get a different angle on it.

In the real word, for example, a Jew accepts the idea of Moses' revelation, but Christ's revelation looks different, though when asked what was the greatest commandment, Christ quotes Moses. A Hindu accepts Krishna, but not Buddha even though Buddha taught His disciples from the Hindu scriptures.

There's also an idea at the heart of the books that we've been talking about in one of the forums: what happens as people start playing "telephone" with the revelation -- interpreting it, translating it into new languages, interpreting it anew, trying to apply it to their particular circumstances.

I think some ideas are easier to contemplate if they're divorced from the emotional context of history. I find fiction allows us to consider different viewpoints that we normally wouldn't consider.

As a writer, the fictional stage allows me to really get into the meat of what people are thinking and follow their thoughts. To reason out, for example, what elements go into the violent turn these situations take. I also wanted very much to look at all the expectations and desires that people place on the Revelator. All the different agendas all the different needs and wants.

Some people look at the Messenger and the Message and see salvation. Others see a chance for personal gain, or an enemy to be fought. I tried to get all of that into the books as I explored how this "new religion" polarized the world around it. I think that polarization is what Christ means when He says, "I have come not to bring peace, but a sword."

__________________
Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff
www.mysticfig.com

"Love is the light that guideth in darkness, the living link that uniteth God with man, that assureth the progress of every illumined soul." -- Abdu'l-Bahá

Another point that occurs to me is that in my books I suggest something that I believe is true of the real world: That God has a plan that people -- because they don't have the perspective of being a truly omniscient Narrator who is standing outside of time and history -- only get glimpses of. A sort of blind men and the elephant tale worked out in the real.

In the Mer Cycle, God's messenger, tjhe Meri, speaks to the young would-be Osraed of Caraid-land. What the people don't recognize is that every 100 years or so, the Meri changes Her aspect in some way. The orthodoxy sees this as a testing period and circles the wagons to get through it. But it's really the renewal of the revelation.

I wrote it that way because I was looking at a pattern I see in life. We've been on this planet for millennia, and yet we imagine that in all that time God has spoken to us once or maybe twice. But what if He's spoken to us on a fairly regular basis throughout all that time and we've only caught isolated glimpses of it? And we take each revelation as an isolated event because we're not very good at escaping the context of our own lives?

I see religious history in terms of our spiritual education. I see Krishna as a divine Teacher, and Buddha, and Christ, and Muhammad, and Baha'u'llah and others who are obscured by time. But I don't see them as being in competition or being random or being the Messengers of different gods. I see them as Teachers sent by the same God to different peoples at different points in history to make people aware of the God who created the Universe they live in. To reconnect them with Him.

I love that story -- the story of the new revelation -- in any and all of its occurrences. Whenever I read the histories of these Beings -- the Avatars, or Prophets, or whatever you want to call them -- I feel as if I'm on a treasure hunt or an archaeological dig, unearthing all these connections.

Coming into the Baha'i Faith as I did, it was very much like that -- I saw what I took as a little random artifact and started to uncover it only to discover this immense pattern buried in the substrate of history.

What a rush!

__________________
Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff
www.mysticfig.com

"Love is the light that guideth in darkness, the living link that uniteth God with man, that assureth the progress of every illumined soul." -- Abdu'l-Bahá

Regarding polarization and the "sword," are you saying we need to tear something apart before we can put it back together again?

__________________
InterfaithForums.com-Where your ideas and beliefs count.

Thanks for being with us Kaath and sharing your books and self : ) I love your web-site and enjoyed the pictures.

You say the first book was inspired by a dream you had. It sounds like a very vivid dream. How close is the dream you had to the book you wrote?

__________________
May your awareness be perfection

I don't think all people do, but I think there are a number of impulses in human nature that make us repeat that pattern -- wanting to tear down this new, threatening thing. One is the simple fact that change is hard. Once we've come to think of something a particular way -- our understanding of a prophecy or a verse of scripture or a historical event, say -- it's difficult for us to give it up, especially it seems, if we detect that there might be a chance our understanding is wrong in some way. There's nothing like the feeling of the carpet slipping beneath our feet to make us dig in.

Also, I think that people distrust what they don't understand -- what seems "other" or "outside" the norm.

Once fear enters the scene, though, then rational thought and objectivity usually fly. And fear usually gives birth to anger and the anger escalates. So many people, confronted with a new revelation react out of fear of change and anger at finding themselves in that position. They lash out at the boat-rockers and the sword of division is raised.

I don't think Christ was stating that the sword is a good thing, I think He was just acknowledging that this is what happens. At the heart of all revealed religion is unity -- God asks us to love, to forgive, to be as one.

That's why I kind of get a kick out of it when people draw a distinction between those New Age "Eastern" religions (Hinduism and Buddhism) that teach love and oneness and "Western" religions (allegedly Judaism and Christianity) that teach something else, presumably. All of these religions teach love and oneness, but the audiences filtered the message.

Something I've become aware of is that differences in religion are often cultural. Christianity in the Middle East looks more like Islam in some ways than it does like Western Christianity and this has been true for a long time. Long enough that Crusaders mistook Armenian Christians for Muslims.

__________________
Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff
www.mysticfig.com

"Love is the light that guideth in darkness, the living link that uniteth God with man, that assureth the progress of every illumined soul." -- Abdu'l-Bahá

I just wanted to note that when I talk about the carpet slipping as an old way of looking at the world is "threatened" by a new way of looking at it, I'm speaking out of personal experience.

I was raised a Christian by parents to whom their faith was very real and who lived joyful Christian lives. My earliest experiences in a Christian church were formed by the little pioneer Presbyterian church we went to in Bellevue, Nebraska. It was a wonderful life. But a couple of things happened that started me asking questions. The minister retired and a new minister came and though he was a nice man, he wasn't as charismatic as the old minister (a delightful Irishman) and the whole atmosphere of the church changed. Then my mom, who was a girl scout leader (as well as a Sunday school teacher and the choir director) made the mistake of having a girl scout meeting in the basement of our church when the school room we usually used wasn't available. After the meeting when the moms came to pick up their daughters my mother was set upon by a handful of Catholic women who were furious because she had caused their daughters to commit a venial sin by entering a "heathen" church. Now they would have to confess this sin.

"But Mom," I protested, "don't we worship the same God?"
"I thought so," she said.
I couldn't believe it. I asked my best friend, who was Catholic, about this. She explained the difference between a venial and mortal sin, but verified that my Mom had indeed led those little girls to sin.

That set me off on a quest, really, to figure out how this happened. How could there be 24,000 sects of the same religion, some of which felt they were in competition to the others. I started asking questions and not getting answers from my clergymen and by the time I was 17 I was engaged in a serious quest to find Christ.

When I was in college, I overheard one friend tell another than Christ had returned with a new name just as promised in the Book of Revelation and that this new name was Baha'u'llah. This was my introduction to the Baha'i Faith. Well, let me tell you--I tore my friend up one side and down the other. My mother had been a Bible scholar and she'd drilled scriptures into my head. I had a litany of reasons why what he said was ridiculous: "All eyes shall see him, signs and wonders, clouds of glory, etc." My friend said, "The Jews thought they had all the prophecies right, too, you know."

I thought about what he said and a part of me went "oops." The prospect of all my ideas about Christ's return being off the mark scared me. Then it made me angry. and it was in a fever of fury that I decided I had to find out everything I could about this Baha'u'llah so I could lay His claims safely to rest.

Long story short, I became a Baha'i shortly after starting this furious study. My mother argued with me about it for about six months, calling the minister to counsel me. Then she accepted Baha'u'llah as well.

So I still vividly remember the fear brought on by my whole world rocking.

__________________
Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff
www.mysticfig.com

"Love is the light that guideth in darkness, the living link that uniteth God with man, that assureth the progress of every illumined soul." -- Abdu'l-Bahá