Flames
of Nevyana by Edward Willett
Publication
Date: August 1, 2016
Publisher:
Rebelight Publishing
Blue
Fire is both blessing and curse. A gift from the gods, its mystical light and
energy powers and protects the land of Nevyana, but it also divides her people
into three distinct groups. In the wrong hands, it becomes a formidable weapon.
When sacred objects for channelling Blue Fire are stolen, sworn enemies Petra,
Amlinn, and Jin set out to find them, and their paths converge on a collision
course with the truth. Can they bridge the centuries-old divide between their
communities? Or will their search for the truth and the explosive power of Blue
Fire signal the end of Nevyana? Biography Edward Willett is the award-winning
author of more than fifty books of fiction and non-fiction for children, young
adults, and adults. He lives in Regina with his wife, Margaret Anne; their
teenage daughter, Alice; and their Siberian cat, Shadowpaw.
Purchase Links:
Excerpt:
Petra stepped through
the gap in the Curtain with his sword raised.
The moan came again,
close by. There! A flicker of blue from the Temple spire illuminated a long,
pale shape on the ground. He hurried over and pointed his blade at it. “Don’t
move!”
The shape remained
motionless. As Petra’s eyes adjusted to the dark, he realized it was a girl
about his age lying bound and gagged in the wet grass. She wore a short skirt,
colour uncertain in the darkness. The cloth that gagged her and bound her bare
arms and legs was apparently torn from its ragged hem. Silver bracelets
encircled her wrists and ankles. Silver coins hung from the band of cloth
covering her breasts. More coins glinted in her dark hair. A jewel winked from
her exposed naval. Wide eyes stared at him.
A Freefolk girl! Had
the Freefolk somehow opened that hole in the Curtain? Petra drove his sword
into the mud, squished to his knees, reached for the gag and pulled it free.
“Thank you,” she
gasped. “My legs . . . .”
“You’re Freefolk,”
Petra snapped. “Why are you here? Are there more of you?”
“I’m alone. I
followed a thief—”
“Another of your
kind?” Petra scrambled to his feet, reaching for the hilt of his sword.
“No!” Her eyes
rolled, white in the dim light.
Petra tugged his
blade free and stared around into the darkness, heart pounding, expecting
attack at any moment.
The girl twisted her
head toward the dark gap in the Curtain. “Listen to me! He’s inside the Temple!
He’ll be back any minute. He’ll kill you. He’ll kill us both. Cut me free.”
Petra looked down at
her again, hesitating. She was of the Freefolk—heretics and thieves, the lot of
them—but she was also a girl in trouble. And as a Priest-Apprentice of Vekrin,
he had vowed to help the helpless. He swore. Then he shoved his sword back into
the muck, knelt again, pulled the Freefolk girl into a sitting position, drew
his dagger from its sheath, and cut the twisted cloth tied around her ankles. As
he reached for her wrists she screamed, “He’s coming!”
Petra jumped up,
dagger in hand, and spun toward the Curtain. A dark figure burst through the
gap. The intruder held a long staff topped with a glass sphere that suddenly
blazed bright blue. Petra barely had time to recognize the staff as a Firelance
before the intruder pointed it at him and—
Blue Fire flashed.
Agony blazed through
Petra’s body. His muscles snapped rigid. Clutching his useless knife, unable to
release it, unable to move, unable to breathe, he toppled like a felled tree.
The black mud
swallowed him whole.
Guest Post:
Do the characters all come to you at the same time or do some of them come to you as you write?
Characters are the heart and soul of fiction: just as excellent acting can redeem even the ugliest set in a theatrical production, so excellent characters can go a long way toward overcoming deficiencies in an imaginary world. On the other hand, even the most wonderfully constructed world, however interesting it might appear at first glance, will soon will seem as flat as the aforementioned theatrical set without excellent characters to inhabit it.
By the time I’m ready to write a book like Flames of Nevyana, I know who the main characters are going to be: I knew, in this case, that there would be three viewpoint characters, each of whom comes from a different culture within the Kingdom, each of whom follows a different god or goddess and thus has a different take on the world from the others. But that’s not to say I knew everything about those characters before I began. Writing is a very strange business. Words flow out of my fingers through the keyboard to the screen. Each word launches the next word, each sentence the next sentence, each paragraph the next paragraph. As a scene takes shape, characters may literally appear from nowhere. A main character has been called to a meeting; clearly there must be other people at the meeting; next thing you know, there’s someone at the meeting who has a secret which changes everything. Before I began writing the scene of that meeting, I didn’t know that character existed. Suddenly, he or she is important.
This is usually an unconscious process for me, but not always. In my science fiction novel Terra Insegura (DAW Books), sequel to my Aurora Award-winning novel Marseguro, I found myself in the quandary of needing to dramatize an important event taking place on a starship in orbit when all of my established viewpoint characters were down on the planet’s surface. I had no choice but to create a new viewpoint character so readers would have a window into the events in orbit. Having created the character, I had to flesh him out. His backstory informed his characterization, and led directly to what proved to be a pivotal scene later in the novel that I had no idea would exist when I began writing the book. The character I had created merely to solve a technical problem ended up being a major secondary figure in the story, with his own tragic story arc, and also a useful foil for the main character, forcing him to question his own actions and beliefs.
This kind of thing happens all the time, and I’m glad it does. I’ve never written a story yet that adhered perfectly to my synopsis. Instead, my story constantly surprises me, as events and characters pop up on the page. I know they came out of my head and through my fingers, but they’re still a surprise. That’s why I’m never bored when I’m writing—and I hope readers are never bored when they’re reading.
Edward Willett is the award-winning author of
more than fifty books of fiction and non-fiction for children, young adults,
and adults. He lives in Regina with his wife, Margaret Anne; their teenage
daughter, Alice; and their Siberian cat, Shadowpaw.
Giveaway:
·
Two
(2) winners will received a physical copy of The Flames of Nevyana by Edward
Willett (US/Canada)
·
Five (5) winners will
receive a digital copy of The Flames of Nevyana by Edward Willett (INT)
Ends November 4, 2016
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