Saturday, February 9, 2013

The Next Big Thing

Thank you, Jessica Fortunato for tagging me for The Next Big Thing. Jessica is the author of The Sin Collector books and her latest release is Steam, a 5-star original short story/science fiction/romance just in time for Valentine's Day.

So what is The Next Big Thing? Answering the following questions and tagging five more writers!

1. Diantha Jones
2. Bella Harte
3. Vanessa Wu
4. T.L. Rese
5. Michelle Muto

1) What is the [working] title of your next book?
The Dragon Carnivale.

2) Where did the idea come from for the book?
The idea for this installment grew out of one of my favorite characters in the series, Sevondi, a muannai and a powerful dragonwitch.

3) What genre does your book fall under?
It’s a fantasy fairy tale series and a spin off of the14th century French fairy tale, Melusine. There are faeries and half-faeries, and the enchanted world bleeds into the mortal world.

4) What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?
I'm pretty sure I am going to date myself here. I would love a young-someone-like Wynona Ryder for the main character Melia. Wynona Ryder is a beautiful, intelligent, irreverent actress.
Amanda Seyfried for the beautiful bad Plantine. She would be AWESEOME. Yes, all caps.
A young-someone-like the statuesque, auburn-haired, Aussie Nicole Kidman for Melusine. I can just see her looking down her perfect nose at her middle sister.
No one but Kathy Bates for Flora.
Waffling between Sir Anthony Hopkins and Sir Michael Caine for Uncle Raffles.


But if Peter Jackson would just direct the movie, he could do for Kathy and Anthony or Michael, what he did for Elijah Wood, Sam Astin, and all the other hobbits. He could make Ms. Bates the perfect Spring Faerie and either of the fellows the perfect head librarian/wood elf.
And what about a young-someone-like Javier Bardem for Ryder?
And no one, but no one, but Jada Pinkett Smith for Sevondi!!!

5) What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
After the death of Elenda and the fall of the Stronghold of Calashai, energies in the enchanted world are shifting and new alliances are forming; the battle between Dark and Light has begun. Before Melia can deal with her feelings for Ryder, she must warn the halfbloods in the mortal world that Umbra is coming for them; and face the powerful Dragonwitch and her bacchanalian Dragon Carnivale.

Oops! Two sentences. Sirens. Here come the blog-meme police.

6) Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
My series is totally indie.

7) How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?
I will tell you when I am done.

8)What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
I am so heavily influenced by Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. The first manuscript for the first book in Queen of the Realm of Faerie was a totally Tolkienesque, cast of characters, omniscient POV, quest fantasy, but it needed a lot of work. It was my first completed novel and was rejected by five agents. The next attempt was a Charlaine Harris-Sookie Stackhouse-like-first person POV-attempt with Melusine as the main character. That didn’t even make it past my husband and beta reader, although I had a lot of fun writing it. Finally, after reading The Greyfriar (Vampire Empire, Book 1), I settled on the multi-but-predominantly-Melia POV epic fantasy. Even though multi-POVs are out of fashion, it felt like the best way to tell the story. So ... can you compare Queen of the Realm of Faerie to The Lord of the Rings? The Sookie Stackhouse series? Or the Greyfriar books? I don’t know, but they directly fed my muse.

9) Who or what inspired you to write this book?
The entire series was inspired by my maternal grandmother. Whenever I went to visit her, I felt like I was entering another world full of enchantment and rife with black magic.

10) What else about the book might pique the reader’s interest?
In the end, I think of it as a contemporary The Lord of the Rings with faeries, half-faeries and female leads. The Lord of the Rings is a love story enfolded in an epic quest fantasy, and that is ultimately how I view Queen of the Realm of Faerie. Contemporary, but traditional. Faerie Tale, but epic. And I hope that when it is all said and done that the love story between Melia and Ryder will hold a candle to the inspiring love between Aragorn and Arwen.