Monday, February 20, 2017

Linda M. Crate ~ guest post and her novel ~ Centaurs and Magic



TITLE: Centaurs & Magic
AUTHOR: Linda M. Crate
PAGE COUNT: 500
ISBN: 978-1537665047
IMPRINT: Chimera
KEYWORDS: macabre, gothic, dark fantasy, fantasy, sword and sorcery, magic, dark magic,  horror, murder, mayhem, centaurs, mythical creatures
CATEGORIES: Dark Fantasy/Action & Adventure/Horror




AUTHOR BIO
Linda M. Crate is a Pennsylvanian native born in Pittsburgh yet raised in the rural town of Conneautville. Her poetry, short stories, articles, and reviews have been published in a myriad of magazines both online and in print. Her two chapbooks A Mermaid Crashing Into Dawn (Fowlpox Press - June 2013) and Less Than A Man (The Camel Saloon - January 2014) were published fairly recently. Her fantasy novel Blood & Magic was published in March 2015. The second novel of this series Dragons & Magic was published in October 2015. Her third book of poetry If Tomorrow Never Comes (Scars Publications - August 2016) was recently published. Her poetry collection Sing Your Own Song is forthcoming through Barometric Pressures Series.

ONE LINER
An evil child grows up to become an evil man who harbors a dark secret and an even darker ambition to become king.

SYNOPSIS: 
Evan Arwen Rabastan Louis Artinfallinger the III, son of Yvonigsar Artinfallinger, has a secret. One he wouldn't want anyone in Atriel to know. One that he's killed over and for because if anyone should find out the truth, he knows they'd only use it against him.

In this prequel to Blood & Magic and Dragons & Magic one learns the bloody, secretive past of one of Atriel's worst counsel leaders and his fearless and shameless pursuit to become king. Yet there is a prophecy made of a child who will foil his plans. Will he be able to rid Atriel of said child before the curse made in the prophecy comes true or is he doomed to fail one day in the future?



Guest Post:
This book came into being after my friend asked for more history regarding my magical realm of Atriel. I had intended on going in chronological order, however, this book is the only exception. It's a prequel to the Magic series which centers on Lucille Roddingale a female slayer who has to choose between love and duty and then goes on to further investigate her life and her relationship to the country she loves: Atriel.

Each book centers on many characters to make a cohesive whole, but Lucille is at the heart of each of them. Even in this book where she plays a very "small" part. It's what one of my friends and I refer to as an ensemble piece. It's not just one character - it's many tied together to make a story which is a lot how I perceive life is like if we watched it outside of ourselves.

It was a bit difficult to write as I chose to write this book from the perspective of Evan. It wasn't hard to write because it was a male perspective, but because of the type of person Evan is and was. This book is written from the perspective of a villain.

Centaurs & Magic was also a bit of a challenge in that there were things that had to happen a certain way to make it correlate with the first two books I wrote in the Magic Series and to correlate with the four books that would follow it.

It features some time skips that follow Evan's character from the time of his youth until he becomes the big baddie that we encounter in Blood & Magic where he is still hell bent on becoming king no matter the cost, the prophecy made when he was a young man seemingly forgotten.

This book was also a lot of fun to write because villains are not limited by boundaries of morality like normal people and heroes are. They often say and do what they want and sometimes they have the best lines because they're shameless in their pursuit of destroying people for their own gains. At least, that's how Evan is.

It was very interesting to see the book from the perspective of someone who wasn't good, and wasn't ashamed by it.

When I wrote this, I sometimes asked myself what wouldn't I do or dare to say or even feel and sometimes these conjectures formed themselves into the pages. Mostly, Evan was a bossy little snot who knew exactly how he felt and why he felt that way, breathing down my neck to make sure that I got his perspective exactly right. Yes, he's a real charmer, that one.

I wrote this to give some perspective and history to Atriel, but ironically enough there's more history in the fourth book which is set directly after the events in Dragons & Magic, but I tried to make my friend happy. I hope that my readers will enjoy this novel because while it was a challenge to write, at times, I really do think it was a rewarding pursuit.

I learned a bit more about the ultra-secretive Veronique, the vicious and twisted Evan, Lucille's mother Ronan, and some of my other characters.

Author Links:

Buy Links:


Brought to you by:
Ravenswood Publishing


A reminder to the reader ~ before you leave be sure to take a look at the 
Come back and visit again.
As of 10/4/15





No comments:

Post a Comment

Thank you for taking the time to visit and comment. I appreciate your input.