Zoe Dickens

Zoe Dickens asked Gail Carriger:

Where did you come up with supernatural beings like Alexia being a soulless?

Gail Carriger After deciding on a setting, I started idly toying with the idea of how a person would become undead. After all, if vampires and werewolves are bouncing about, what’s to keep them from turning everyone? There must be biological procreation controls in place. Taking into account what I knew of Victorian scientific theory, I hypothesized that an excess soul found in only a few people might account for bite–survival rates. This led me to investigate the measuring of the soul – which an American scientist actually tried to do in the late 1800s. This, in turn, lead to the idea that if some people had too much soul there should be others who had too little, or none at all. And these people could act as nullifiers to supernatural abilities. Thus Alexia was born.
You can read more about it here: http://www.gailcarriger.com/about/int...

More Answered Questions

Drew

Drew asked Gail Carriger:

I'm curious about the larger repercussions of your Parasol universe, especially as time shifts toward modern times. Would WWI and WWII be different affairs with possibly different outcomes? Was Finishing School revived for the WWs? Would the Empire last longer and/or be more integrated and progressive? Does the USA ever become less anti-supernatural? Is Marine Biology a current-times part of the Parasol universe?

k-bookee

k-bookee asked Gail Carriger:

This question contains spoilers… (view spoiler)

gem!

gem! asked Gail Carriger:

So, before I go on, I just wanted to say I got my signed copy of Soulless in the mail, and I fangirled like nothing else XD The dialogue within your books is what really makes them special. The conversations characters have with each other seem so ingenuous and spontaneous, I often wonder how you can craft a scene in such an extraordinary fashion. How do you do it?

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