Here's an excerpt from Chapter 1:
ÆRENDEN’S RENAISSANCE had been one of beauty, full of art and discovery, friendship and kindness. Many in the kingdom spoke of it as if they had lived through each colorful moment and some had. It had only been decades since the renaissance had ended. War had a way of making years feel like an eternity.
In the height of that era, music had swelled within the castle’s great hall, bouncing from the windows, muffled by tapestries, echoing with joy. Bodies had danced and swayed. Laughter had resounded from the ceiling. Founders’ juice had flowed from carafes, drained from cups, and loosened lips. Meaghan imagined gossip had served as currency in this place, traded without regard for truth or belief in its details. Throughout Ærenden’s history, storytelling had blended with everyday life, entertainment valued the same as rare powers. When the revelers had left the castle’s parties, they would have paid no more heed to the tales they had heard than they did the king’s joking antics—the bets he had wagered with his Guardians or the contests he had arranged to see who among his people did not mind displaying their foolishness.
Queen Adelina’s father had been jubilant, by all accounts. Her mother had subjected him to frequent eye rolls, while hiding her own mirth behind an elegant hand.
Life had been carefree within these rose quartz walls, until the Zeiihbu War had become something more than distant skirmishes on the border. In its final years, everyone had lost someone they loved, battles had replaced jokes in conversation, and the people’s loyalties had become divided. Some wanted to annihilate the Zeiihbuans. Some wanted to assimilate them. And no one wanted to share Founders’ juice with those who had opposing views.
The parties stopped. The king died, the queen soon after, and their daughter closed the doors to the hall, and to her grief, using the space only for formal ceremonies.
After the war, Queen Adelina had wed King Édaire, affectionately known as Ed to those who had loved him, and they had conceived a child.
Meaghan had never had the chance to know her parents, beyond the fractured memories of toddlerhood. Ed had been murdered in this room, Adelina in their apartment, and Meaghan had been spirited to Earth soon after.
Now she walked the length of her grandfather’s beloved great hall, each footfall masked by graceful steps she had not realized she could muster. She kept her eyes focused on one point at the front of the room—a single throne representing so much history and pain.
Two amethyst-encrusted finials on top of the throne glistened in the noonday sun. Golden flowers curled around the throne’s arms and legs, symbols of growth and her family’s connection to the past. Their beauty would have brought a smile to her face, if she had not known her father had bled to death on the floor below them.
Or if she had not remembered the smaller throne that had filled the empty space on the left side of the dais before Garon destroyed it. Her father had used it in his duties as king. Her mother had ruled from the larger one.
Interview with Kristen Taber
Welcome Kristen, thanks for being my guest at The Brooklyn Scribbler. Please share some insight on your five-part YA series, Æerenden and the final installment, The Shadow Guard.
The Ærenden series starts on Earth and transitions to Ærenden, a kingdom on a world parallel to ours yet wholly different. Where we have medicine and science, they have magic---Healers, people who control electricity and the weather, Telekines, and Firestarters. Each person has a personal power, including Meaghan, a young woman raised on Earth but born within the kingdom she remembers only in nightmares. The series follows Meaghan and Nick—her personal guard and love-interest—as they fight to take back the kingdom from the man who assassinated the former king and queen. Along the way, what seems to be a straightforward black-and-white war turns into a complex puzzle of gray areas. Nick and Meaghan must navigate the secrets left behind by the royal family to uncover the truth and save the kingdom.
The final installment in the series, The Shadow Guard, brings Nick and Meaghan to a land outside of the kingdom thought to be uninhabited. What they discover leaves Meaghan with a choice that could turn her from a long-awaited hero into a villain with the power to destroy everything.
When you first began writing, when did you know that only a series of novels would allow you to fully realize the journey on which your characters were about to embark?
In the beginning, I thought the whole story would only consume about 300 pages, and it would be a neat and tidy standalone. Halfway through writing The Child Returns (book 1), I realized my characters had a greater story to tell. I hashed out a basic outline for five books at that point (not including background stories, historical stories, and potential spinoffs that currently reside in my head). Eventually those expected 300 pages turned into over 2,000 published pages.
Is there any secondary character in the novel who could have “run away” with the story and turned attention from your lead characters?
Yes, and she still may get her own book if the muses keep pestering. In The Shadow Guard, a shapeshifter named Faughn becomes integral to the storyline and assists Meaghan in her final battle with her nemesis. Faughn grew up in a harsh desert region with enemies constantly on the fringes of her awareness. One enemy killed her mother and kidnapped her brother. Despite her hardships—and because of them—she’s become a warrior who is capable of fighting and handling herself in precarious situations. She also knows how to trust, love, and have fun when time allows. Her self-confidence and composure as a result of growing up in a combat environment is a contrast to Meaghan, who has been thrown into a situation beyond her control and struggles to come to terms with it and become the hero required of her. After writing Meaghan’s type of character for nearly ten years, Faughn intrigued me. I wanted to learn more about her and the inner-psyche she doesn’t show, that I know has to have stemmed from the trauma in her life. So many times, I had to fight the urge to deviate, to show Faughn’s building relationship with her love interest or her reactions with her brother-in-law or father, but I managed to curb that impulse. She did, however, earn a place of honor on the cover.
Any writing quirks? E.g. requiring music to read, favorite place, etc.
I have to have background noise, usually music or coffee shop chatter. For music, I bounce between classic rock, blues, metal, classical, and film scores, depending on my mood. When I need the coffee shop murmur but can’t get out of the house, I use a website called Coffitivity that recreates café noises. I wrote almost all of The Shadow Guard using that site or listening to the Lord of the Rings trilogy soundtrack.
If your novels ever became films, who would play your lead characters and why?
Oh goodness. Fans always ask me this, and I have so much trouble deciding. Meaghan has always been most difficult for me. I love the idea of an unknown playing her, like Emma Watson was before she starred in Harry Potter, so I don’t like to picture current Hollywood stars in the role. If I had to choose, Auli'i Cravalho looks similar to how I picture her so maybe I’d go for her. For Nick, I picture a blonde Logan Lerman. And Faughn? Totally Yara Shahidi.
Thanks again, Kristen!
Learn more about Kristen Taber
Amazon Paperback - https://amzn.to/2pEgYI0
B&N Paperback - http://bit.ly/2pDNcTB
2 comments:
HI.
Hi, Jackie! Nice to see you here. Thanks for coming by :)
Post a Comment