Get to know us
Author of original idea and Shalantam Multiverse
Singular Chthon
Beta, editor, helper
Olivia
Singular Chthon: I call myself Singular Chthon. In the beginning it was imagined as temporary nickname.
After I was getting used to it, and taking into account genre in which I write, I saw it suits me. Singularity has a few meanings in different fields, and in my case almost all of them are appropriate. In the matter of “chthon’’, I use the word in a figurative sense and I consider that this second meaning (except the original “deities or spirits of the underground”) has the right to exist, because any language lives when it changes by people. If the language doesn’t change over time, it will stagnate, exposed to external influences.
To the idea of Shalantam I came by chance, and it was my kind of experiment and searching for myself. But as it sometimes happens, experiments get out of control. Imagined world turned out to be a lot bigger and more conceived than it was planned. My life is so that through creativity I am much easier to communicate with people, so sometimes I seem self-obsessed, but I’m not. However, to better understand the real me better, read my stories. In addition to my universe I like to learn languages, make handicrafts and draw. All materials to Shalantam are also drawn by me.
I met my friend and best assistant when she started read my blog with thoughts and one fanfic. Then I decided to temporarily leave the fandom activity and put the Shalantam in one of the first old versions, which my friend also really liked. It usually happens that already existing friends support your work, and we have exactly the opposite situation. We became friends because of my creative work. I am immensely grateful for her support, and perhaps without her the Shalantam would not be as it is today.
Shalantam is much more than the original and central story of the universe, there are many spin-offs and storylines. Shalantam is everything, the beginning of the foundations, perhaps like Brahman in Vedism. Although despite the mention of pre-world, there is no guarantee what was in the beginning, if it was. Most likely, there was no beginning and no end. There is only endlessness or never-ending, because it appears in the title of the first book. Other related stories are Patalam and Ava.
It’s hard for me to separate these stories from each other and probably it doesn’t make sense. Because every story is one of a lot of my parts at different times in my life, and if I consider my stories to be from very different worlds, then I lose myself. All my parts are important and necessary, every my “ego" in the past invested to the future that I am using now, even if it is a very small investing”.
Olivia: My name is Olivia. I named myself after that olive branch which became a sign of the end of Noah's global flood and the beginning of a new world. And also after the character of Norse mythology named Liv, who's supposed to become one of the first people inhabiting a new world after Ragnarok.
If I were a fictional character, I would be a main character's best friend. In some another universe I would be the one to help you organise an expedition to there other side of a world, find a pass to another one, unravel secrets of the multiverse and your past. In this universe though my powers are much less. Here I would hardly be able to help with changing the world, but I can help with finishing a story about a world you created.
I'm not very good at creating my own universes yet, but I love traveling through other people's. That's how I found Shalantam and it became one of the most precious universes for me.
I like to believe that all imaginary worlds become real — in other universes somewhere, one way or another. I like to dream that in some different life Chthon and I will really get to walk by the snowy expanses of Atlantis, following a flying whale; to listen to the songs of siiri in the gardens of Allila; to explore the abandoned ruins of the ancient civilisations of Amaranth, and many other things. But I do not need to dream of getting into Shalantam, because Shalantam is the never-ending journey through all that is real and all that is imaginary, and it is happening to me right now.
I love watching the birth of a new universe. And if I can help it happen somehow, that's one of the greatest joys for me. This is one of the reasons why it was a great happiness for me to help Chthon with beta-reading of Shalantam.
