Today, I'm thrilled to be featuring urban fantasy
author Petra Landon, who goes into exquisite detail about her new saga The
Chosen, characterisation, book cover, publishing, travel and a lot more.
Petra has also provided an excerpt from the first
book in the saga, The Prophecy.
Synopsis:
A
powerful wizard threatens the Chosen from beyond the grave. Can they unravel
The Prophecy in time to save their world?
Chosen
have walked the earth for time immemorial. Tasia is a very special Chosen.
Warned to keep her distance from her brethren, she makes a fateful decision one
night to assist an injured Shape-shifter. Suddenly, Tasia finds herself in the
cross-hairs of Shifter mercenaries encroaching on San Francisco. Forced out of
the shadows, Tasia has little choice but to ally herself with the local Shifter
Pack led by a formidable and dangerous Alpha Protector. In the cut-throat world
of a Shifter Pack, Tasia must fight to protect her secrets while struggling to
negotiate with the enigmatic Alpha who holds his violent Pack together with a
ruthless hand on its reins.
Grave
danger threatens their world as a powerful wizard exploits an old prophecy to
divide the Chosen. When the Pack is asked to investigate the twenty-five-year-old
mystery, Tasia is drawn deeper into a past that risks raising the suspicions of
the very Chosen she hides from. As danger closes in on her, Tasia must decide
who to trust with the deadly secrets she guards.
Author's Note: The Prophecy is the first
book of Saga of the Chosen, an urban fantasy series sprinkled with action,
adventure, an unfolding mystery and a dose of romance. The book is set in
contemporary San Francisco in the fantastical and intrigue-ridden world of
Chosen where factions of Wizards, Shape-shifters, Vampires and others vie for
power and influence over their kind.
Exclusive Interview
with Nadaness In Motion
Introducing Petra
Q: Who are your favourite classic authors and/or books? Has
any of them been influential in your writing?
PL: I grew up on the classics but they
have never influenced my writing. Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is the classic romance that most romances try
to emulate, even today – there’s a throwaway reference to it in The Prophecy too. Other classics I like include To Kill a Mockingbird, Ivanhoe, Children of the New Forest, Jane
Eyre, A Tale of Two Cities (which
I thought as a child was seriously too gory to allow children to read), The Scarlet Pimpernel, almost anything
by Mark Twain, Heidi, stories by Hans
Christian Andersen, O’Henry and De Maupassant, to name a few.
I grew up reading Enid
Blyton and I find her stories timeless. For me, Alistair Maclean epitomizes
action and adventure as does Agatha Christie when it comes to mystery. I also
love Mary Stewart’s romantic suspense stories set in exotic locales. One of the
main characters in The Prophecy is
named after the male protagonist in Nine
Coaches Waiting, a Mary Stewart’s story set in France near the Switzerland
border. When I was devouring her books in high school, I didn’t know that one
day I would travel and see the places she talked about in such wonderful detail
in her books.
Q: The places you mention in your blog posts and tweets
like Greece, have you been to any of them? Have you used any of them as
inspiration in your writing?
PL: Books have always played a huge part
in my life – reading them, that is. I’ve been a voracious reader since I was a
child, my Dad having encouraged me to follow in his footsteps. My love for
reading is also what inculcated the travel bug in me. Mary Stewart, an author I
read in high school wrote wonderful suspense thrillers set in exotic locales
and since then, I’ve always wanted to travel. I love to travel and count myself
very privileged to have visited many countries around the world. My blog Books Feed My Soul is about all things
that inspire me to write and create – reading, travel, music etc. I post the
pictures from the blog on Twitter and yes, the pictures are all mine. I have
travelled to about twenty-five countries and my bucket list is still growing.
I find traveling very
inspiring. I love experiencing the different cultures, peoples and food as well
as the natural beauty inherent in so many locales around the world. The Prophecy features some of my
favorite places in the US and Canada and I hope to add more international color
as the story progresses to include Chosen diaspora from around the world.
Q: Apart from being an author, do you have a full-time job?
(Has it helped you in your writing in anyway?) What do you do when you're not
writing?
PL: I have a full-time and demanding job.
I like what I do but it doesn’t influence my writing in any way. I’ve a
background in the Sciences and Mathematics, so perhaps I bring an analytical
way of looking at plots and characterisation. You might occasionally note very
geeky descriptions in my books when it comes to gadgets and technology in
general, but I try and tone it down when I can J I’m a little bit of a dreamer. I’ve read all my life
as a means to escape to a fantasy world. My career is too much real world and
not enough fantasy for me J
Apart from reading, I
love to travel. I listen to music from around the world and love the outdoors.
I’ve been dancing since I was a child and I'm fascinated by languages. I take
dance classes when I can and occasionally work on rudimentary skills in other
languages. My husband is a mega foodie and a fabulous cook, something I’ve
grown to appreciate over time J When we have the time, we love to cook together to
recreate dishes from the different cuisines that we have tasted during our
travels.
Q: When reading, what do you look for in a book?
PL: I don’t generally choose a book based
on what genre it falls under. Any book that can successfully draw me into the
fantasy world that exists only between its pages is a good one. I like stories
that are a mix of suspense, romance and adventure with some elements of fantasy
mixed in. I’m also open to stories that build the world and characters slowly
up to the crescendo as long as the writer does it well in a way that holds my
attention. Some authors possess the talent and ability to write very well, weaving
a story that has been told many times before but doing it so well that a reader
looks at it with fresh eyes. And then there are others who are wonderful
story-tellers. Their well-crafted stories and wonderful characterisations more
than make up for any deficiencies in their writing style. In such cases,
sometimes the reader has to engage their own imagination to envision the world
as the writer intended.
Q: What genres are readers unlikely to see you writing?
(least favourite genres)?
PL: I consider myself primarily a
story-teller, so I doubt I will ever write non-fiction.
The Prophecy from the Outside
Tell us about your cover and who designed it.
PL: When I first made the decision to
publish, I knew absolutely nothing about designing a book cover but I had very
strong ideas about what I like and don’t like in a book cover. I’ve been a
bookworm all my life and although a book cover doesn’t generally nudge me into
buying a book, it does draw my attention to one. Especially, when it comes to
books by new authors I have not read before. One of the firms I worked for had
used 99designs to run a contest to design their website and I decided to check
them out.
Before
running a contest for a book cover, I had to create a design document to let
potential designers know what I was looking for. I was seriously hampered by
the fact that though I had strong views about it, I didn’t know how to
articulate my thoughts to potential designers. I looked at dozens of such
documents from fantasy and indie authors who had been looking for book covers
on 99designs before coming up with my own. It was a fairly long and drawn out
process for me. My
design document and the final four designs in the contest are here for anyone interested in checking
them out.
The contest itself was
easy to run, although quite nerve-wracking for me. I picked the four designs
that I had liked at first glance as my four finalists. Biserka, whose design I
picked as the winner, has been fantastic through this entire process. I count
myself very fortunate to have her by my side. I
ran the contest for my cover six months before I published. I had not
anticipated many aspects of a book cover since this was my first time.
Biserka anticipated my needs and continues to work with me, responding promptly
to all my requests and changes to the original design. Biserka may be
contacted here.
Q: You mentioned that this is a Saga not a trilogy or
Quartet, so how many parts do you have planned? And how much have you written
so far – even as drafts?
Petra
Landon: When the idea for the story first
came to me, I envisioned the story as a trilogy. I’m not giving much of the
story away by saying that the prophecy in the tale centers around three
siblings. The idea was that each book would tell one sibling’s story and how
that tied in to the larger tale of the Chosen. Most of the world and main
characters were very clear in my head before I started to put it down on paper.
But once I started writing The Prophecy,
I realised that my inexperience had led me to underestimate an important aspect
of the story. The world building in the story is
quite detailed and very essential to why the characters react the way they do
to various events that affect their world. The Prophecy is a little over 400 pages
and that is already at the upper end of what I had envisioned for Book 1.
As a reader, I love long
books myself but now that I’m on the other side, I realise that the writer must work extra hard to hold the reader’s
interest and keep the story taut in such cases. That is why I’ve
been very careful to not call Saga of the
Chosen a trilogy because I’m not sure yet how many books the story will
take to tell it the way I had originally envisioned it.
In the future, I also
plan to write stories with some of the secondary characters from Saga of the Chosen and shorter
standalone stories set in this universe.
To answer your second
question, I have 80% of Book 2 (The
Rainmaker) written as a draft. I’m toying with the idea of releasing some
of it as short standalone addendums to keep The
Rainmaker to a more reasonable length.
Going Deeper into The
Saga
Q: What or who are the "Chosen" in
your book series?
PL: The Chosen in my books are Magicks – beings with power who have
lived amidst humans since the beginning of time. I do plan one day to explore
the origins of the Chosen and how they came to live amongst the humans. Many of
them possess great power and as we all know, with great power comes great
responsibility. Unfortunately, the Chosen continue to be divided by rifts and
factionalism, some centuries old. They agree on one law – that no Chosen can
ever allow the secret of their existence to be revealed to the humans. They
call this their Supreme Edict and their leaders enforce this under the penalty
of death. There have been many attempts to foster greater co-operation between
them, the last attempt twenty years ago before the story of Saga of the Chosen begins. A Council of
Chosen was formed with four seats to represent the four main Chosen factions.
The Council has helped open communications between the leaders of factions but
not much has changed at the grass roots level. The story explores what happens
when one of their own - a powerful wizard - threatens to exploit the schisms between
the Chosen for her own ambitions. When the Chosen slowly awaken to the danger
that threatens their kind, can they forget centuries of animosity to come
together to face this threat or will she succeed in driving a deeper wedge
between them?
Although set in a fantasy
world, it is a story that we see play out in the real world so often. Quite
depressingly so, in my opinion. I’ve always found it fascinating how different
people react to the same life-changing event. Some are willing to let go of
their life-long beliefs to come together for a common good while others tend to
cling to their dogma stubbornly.
Q: You have many species in your novel, did you have them
in mind from the start or did you add some as the story progressed?
PL: The fantasy world was very clear and
vivid in my imagination when I started writing the story, down to the last
detail. The world and the characters that populate it are very integral to this
story since the different factions of Chosen and their historic inter-dependence
and conflicting ties and loyalties to each other play a crucial role in how
this particular tale plays out. Some are willing to join hands with their
enemies to work towards the betterment of their brethren while others are
bamboozled into allowing their greed to override their better judgement. As the
story progresses, some factions paper over their internal differences to
present a united front while others are torn apart by the differing
philosophies within the group, leading to the weaker members being vulnerable
as a high-stakes grab for power and influence over the Chosen world commences.
There are four main
factions within the Chosen, each with a distinct history and set of beliefs. The
wizards are arrogant and look down on other Chosen, except the Ancients whom
they idolise and try to emulate. The vampires, considered an abomination by
many Chosen, are obsessed with social hierarchy and isolate themselves from the
mainstream. The Shifters share much with their beast forms at an elemental
level – territorial, aggressive and loners except when it comes to their Packs.
They have little magic but their physical abilities make them a force to reckon
with. The Ancients are believed to be the descendants of the first Chosen to
walk the earth and possess the most diverse set of powers.
The
story begins with an incident in San Francisco when Tasia, a Chosen with
secrets that force her to hide from her kind, finds herself in the cross-hairs
of rogue Chosen encroaching on the city. When the local Shifter Pack, vampire
nest and wizards get involved in the messy but mysterious affair, Tasia is forced
to accept the Pack’s hospitality. Now, she must fight to guard her deadly
secrets, navigate the politics in the Pack and negotiate with the Alpha Protector
who is the only one standing between her and the wolves circling her. When the
Pack gets involved in investigating an old prophecy, she’s drawn into the past.
Tasia must decide whether to help unravel the threat or guard her own secrets. In essence, the larger story of the
Chosen interweaves through Tasia’s journey as she goes from a Chosen more at
ease in the human world to someone at the center of this investigation that
might well change the course of Chosen history.
Q: Tell us about some of the lessons you've learned from being
a self-published author.
PL: There are many things I have learnt
about publishing in general. I would categorise them into two broad groups –
aspects of being an indie author and aspects of publishing a book. As an indie author, you have to manage all aspects of
publishing a book – book cover, editing, formatting for Kindle and paperback,
learning how to use and maximise Amazon as a platform, writing book
descriptions, query letters to potential reviewers and so much more. And I
don’t include here the actual art of crafting a story to build a world with
interesting characters that might hold a reader’s interest. As an
author too, you are expected to build a platform to draw readers in. This
includes a website, social media presence, blogging about your work, presence
on Goodreads etc and so much more.
I’m introverted by
nature. My presence on social media was extremely limited before I published. Since
then, I’ve made an effort to reach out and engage with others. It is not an
easy endeavor for someone like me. But I will admit that the toughest aspect by
far when it comes to publishing has been putting my book before an audience.
I’m constantly learning on the job and trying to read up on the experiences of
other self-published writers who have been successful at this. This aspect of
publishing is something I had never taken into account. And it has been very
challenging for me.
Q: Your Saga falls under paranormal and urban fantasy, what
genre(s) would you like to experiment with in the future?
PL: My books tend to be a mix of
adventure, mystery and romance in a fantasy setting. Over the years, these are
the stories I’ve liked the most as a reader, so whatever I write in the future
will fit into this broad category.
My next book, The Mercenary, will not be urban fantasy. Rather, it is a romantic
tale of swashbuckling adventure and danger, set in a distant galaxy where an
ongoing and deadly war has made the lives of its inhabitants very complicated
and dangerous. The story is set in motion when two people from very different
backgrounds, races and circumstances meet accidentally on a space station in
neutral space. He’s a mercenary who follows the traditions of his people - a race
of nomadic warriors who only fight for hire, fiercely independent and
formidable in battle. She’s a rebel fighting against the powerful Empire that
has enslaved her world and now finds herself a prisoner in desperate
circumstances, alone and friendless on a faraway space station. In a twist of
fate, these two are drawn to each other, despite everything that tries to tear
them apart. The echoes of this unlikely alliance will change the balance of
power in their slice of space forever.
I’m also a huge fan of
Georgette Heyer and would like one day to attempt a Regency Romance in her
style. I consider such stories to fall within the fantasy genre too, albeit
with more rules than the fantasy worlds I tend to create J
Last But Not Least: Writing
Advice
Q: What advice can you give to aspiring authors?
PL: Follow your dreams and never allow
anything to hold you back. I never thought that I would ever write, let alone
publish. If writing is what makes you happy, you should give it your all.
Excerpt from The
Prophecy by Petra Landon
Streaks of light from the
breaking dawn had just appeared in the sky when the young man dashed up the
stairs to the fourth floor at inhuman speed to burst precipitously into the
Pack Room. He glanced around the room to zero in on a tall man who stood in
conversation with an older white-haired gentleman whose noble features denoted
his native American ancestry.
“Hawk’s downstairs, Alpha”
he announced, the quiet words successfully bringing all discussion in the room
to an abrupt halt.
A young girl with dark hair
sitting forlornly in a chair to the side, perked up at the announcement. Hope
blossomed in her beautiful face, successfully banishing the tiredness and
anxiety that made her appear older than her age.
The Alpha Protector directed
his oddly cold eyes at the young man by the door, his eyebrow arched in
inquiry.
“He’s on his way up. Needed
a few minutes to get decent” the young Shifter added with a grin.
At the Shifter’s words, the
Alpha glanced at Duncan. The big Shifter, whose habitual impassiveness usually
rivalled the Alpha’s, met his gaze with an expression of unmistakable relief.
“I’ll take my leave now,
Alpha” Atsá said softly, drawing his Alpha’s attention back to him. “I am happy
that Hawk has returned to us” he added, his wise gaze meeting the Alpha’s
unusual eyes, the color of old gold.
The Alpha nodded
respectfully to the older white-haired Shifter. When he had made the decision
to sound the alarm for Hawk and rouse his Shifters to go hunting for their Pack
mate, he’d made it a point to personally inform Atsá. He knew how much emphasis
the powerful Were-Alpha placed on tradition and he’d thought it only right to
inform him personally of Hawk’s disappearance. Plus, there had been no keeping
the information from the wolves. So, it’d been imperative that Atsá hear the
news from his Alpha before he learnt it from any of the others.
As the older Shifter moved
towards the door, Hawk came barreling through it. He stopped abruptly as he
caught sight of Atsá, directing a short nod at the Were-Alpha after an
infinitesimal pause. Atsá inclined his head in dignified acknowledgement before
making his way out of the room.
Hawk glanced at the Alpha
Protector.
“Alph, you’ll never guess
what happened to me” he announced impetuously as the young girl rushed forward
to throw her arms around him.
“Hawk” she whispered, her
voice indicating a mixture of fear and relief. “I was so worried.”
An affectionate smile lit up
Hawk’s attractive face as he returned her hug. “I’m indestructible, Sara mia” he stated with cocky
self-confidence. “You shouldn’t worry about me.”
“Beware, little stripling!
That kind of cockiness has been known to bring better men than you onto their
knees” drawled a gorgeous green-eyed woman, her voice rife with amusement.
“I’m no mere man,
Elisabetta” Hawk countered lightly. “I’m a Shifter.”
One of the male Shifters in
the room laughed aloud with genuine mirth.
Hawk responded with a grin
before extricating himself gently from the young girl. As she walked away from
him back to the seat she’d vacated, Hawk turned his attention back to his
Alpha.
“Alph” he began.
“Close the door, Hawk” the
Alpha directed imperiously.
Reminded of protocol, Hawk
hurried to close the heavy door to the Pack Room. The room was now shielded
from the rest of the Lair.
“What happened to you,
Hawk?” Duncan inquired.
“Alph had me chasing down
some reports of non-Pack Shifters in the city. I caught up with them this
afternoon in an abandoned warehouse in Oakland. There were three of them. They
ambushed me and we fought. I killed one and the others locked me up in a cage.”
“Hawk, my man, don’t tell me
that you couldn’t break though one tiny cage” queried a red-haired man with the
hint of an Irish brogue in his voice.
“The bars were reinforced with
silver” Hawk’s response was blunt. “They burnt my skin when I touched them.”
A charged silence descended
on the room full of Shifters. Silver was like kryptonite to Shape-shifters. It
sapped their power and strength and was even known to kill on prolonged
contact.
“How’d you get free?” the
Alpha’s voice was sober.
“A young girl helped free
me.”
“Human?” Duncan inquired,
his voice sharp.
“No” Hawk shook his head.
“She’s Chosen. I was in my wolf form in the cage and she knew what I was.”
“She was frightened of me
and of being discovered in the house” Hawk continued. “Yet she helped me get
out of there. I spent the remainder of the night at her place, conserving my
strength to fly back before dawn. I did snoop around a bit before I left - wanted
to find out who she was. There was correspondence addressed to her from an
address I recognised.” He paused dramatically. “The Registry!”
“A wizard came to your aid”
Duncan exclaimed while the Alpha remained stonily silent.
“Yes. And she might be in trouble
because of it. Alph, when those Shifters discover that I’m missing, they might
guess who helped me escape. Her being there tonight was not a coincidence. For
all we know, that might lead them directly to her” Hawk said urgently to his
Alpha.
“It might be a trap, Hawk”
Duncan pointed out mildly. “She could be working with those Shifters.”
“But what if she isn’t?”
Hawk encountered impassionedly. “She could be in danger.”
The Alpha gazed at Hawk, his
expression grim. He knew very well what Hawk was asking for – some kind of
protection for the girl. She'd come to the aid of one of his Shifters, helping
to extricate Hawk from a sticky situation. The girl deserved to be safeguarded
from any consequences that might arise from her singular kindness to a stranger.
“I want to meet her. Bring
her to me and I’ll see what I can do” he stated noncommittally.
Magora: The Golden Maple Tree is the second instalment in the middle grade-to-young adult Magora series by artist, painter and author Marc Remus. It can be easily read as a standalone, but reading this instalment has prompted me to immediately pick up the first book Magora: The Gallery of Wonders.
Marc Remus has been a full-time painter for 20 years, which has prompted him to come up with Magora.
