The Big Idea: Clay Harmon

Posted on July 25, 2022    Posted by Athena Scalzi      2 Comments

Power dynamics in relationships always have the capacity for drama… but what happens when some of that power is magical? Author Clay Harmon is thinking about this in his Big Idea for Flames of Mira.

CLAY HARMON:

Can members of a relationship exist on equal footing when power imbalances exist between both parties? This is one of the questions Flames of Mira seeks to explore. Ig, our main character, is bound to several chemical elements (think the periodic table) which lets him dodge the blades of his enemies, break through walls of rock, and coat his arms in lava. But despite all his power, he’s bound to obey the magically-enforced orders of the people he works for.

While the power he wields makes for some dazzling fight scenes, I found myself more interested in Ig’s powerlessness at the hands of those he’s bound to and the dynamics this can create. It was an opportunity to explore various relationships someone in Ig’s position might find himself in, whether they be healthy or extremely toxic, and it brought into focus a theme of power dynamics and how a skewed power balance in a relationship can cause it to become toxic in nature.

Constructing and responsibly navigating the relationships I wanted to include in Flames of Mira was a delicate process that was important to get right, given how damaging unhealthy power dynamics can become. The first question I asked myself while writing Ig was how his behavior might change as a participant in a power-skewed relationship over the course of several years.

He employs various strategies to deal with this, whether he’s falling into a tenuous coexistence or becoming friends with the people he serves, with only the occasional, painful reminder of the power imbalance that exists between them. Over time, this leads to a mental health crisis as he starts to wonder if he’s become friendly with these people so he can cope with the futility of escaping. The power he has—the ability to control the elements—makes him uncomfortable, and he starts to believe that over time, his mere existence damages the healthy relationships in his life.

As the story progressed, it created another opportunity to explore power imbalances but within romantic relationships. What happens when you become codependent in a relationship where your partner holds all the power? In this situation, Ig develops an impaired sense of power and feels that his purpose in life is to help his partner achieve their goals, thinking that his own wants and desires aren’t important.

This relationship is so dysfunctional that it results in Ig’s warped rationalizations for his partner’s actions, such as tricking himself into thinking he’s in love or believing he can change their nature. He comes to have an overblown idea of the influence he’s capable of exerting, to the point he thinks he is solely responsible for his partner’s wellbeing and happiness.

This exploration of the inherent toxicity in Flames of Mira’s romantic subplot served as an opportunity to write the reversal of the popular enemies-to-lovers trope, which pushed me outside my comfort zone as a writer since I hadn’t read many books with a lovers-to-enemies story to use as guideposts. This trope fit perfectly within the magic system that binds Ig to those he serves and lent itself to one of Flames of Mira’s central themes.

Ig hopes that the people he serves will change, thinks that he’s the only one who really understands them while refusing to acknowledge the actions they regularly take that reveal their true nature. He believes them when they tell him they’ll stop taking advantage of the power imbalance in the relationship.

Over the course of years Ig has found himself entangled within multiple power-skewed relationships, to the point it will become paramount for him to realize that equality among other participants in these relationships is impossible. Once he does, he will finally experience hope of breaking free.

Flames of Mira: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Indiebound|Powell’s

Read an excerpt. Visit the author’s site. Follow him on Twitter.