This week's featured author is Shireen Nimnich. Shireen writes young adult fantasy, and is here this week to talk about her series, Shadows of Myst. But, before we learn more about how this series came to be, let's get to know Shireen a little better.
"Shireen Nemnich born 1964 in Kansas. She presently calls the picturesque Williamsburg, Virginia her home, which she shares with her teenage daughter and two cats. She's been a nurse working with geriatrics since 1992. She is a retired "wizard" for the internet mud game, Genesis the original Lpmud, which she still plays and interacts on when time permits.
Shireen's writing genres - Fantasy, Paranormal Romance, Romance and Science Fiction.
Favorite fictional authors - Christine Feehan and Lisa Kleypas.
Favorite non-fictional authors - Dr. Wayne Dyer, Michael Bernard Beckwith and Abraham-Hicks.
One of her favorite sayings - Life is what we make it... so I'm making mine with chocolate!
February 2011 she released her first novel The Royal Assassin from the series, Shadows of Myst, which takes place in the fictional realm Valantis. She is working diligently on releasing several other books in the Shadows of Myst series along with working on her vampire series, which is to be announced at a later date."
More about Shadows of Myst
Shadows of Myst is a series dedicated to Mystics and Nightelves who live within the confines of the magical land that the Goddess Mysteria of Shadows created with her consort Darkness. Each story takes you deeper into this rich and mysterious land of Myst that only a Mystic and Nightelf can truly understand.
Mystics must wear veils to protect the innocent of their bewitching eyes. It is said however to look into the eyes of perfection is what truly bewitches. But Mystics long have known it is their shadows that one succumbs to. One must be strong in magic to not feel the call of the shadows.
Nightelves born with the magic of darkness lived upon the surface but a war long since forgotten by many brought them to live under the surface to serve Mystics. A servitude that some despise and some who have had the memory of war stamped in their soul are grateful to serve.
Corruption has long since been infiltrating Myst. Will the two races that are bound together by more than Myst and magic survive this insidious parasite? When the final blade is drawn and the final spell cast will there be anything left? Will it even matter? Only the shadows of Myst know.
You can connect with Shireen on: Twitter, Facebook, The Royal Assassin on Facebook, and her Website.
The Royal Assassin is available now from Amazon.
You can also enter to win a Kindle eBook of The Royal Assassin below!
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This week Shireen Nemnich is offering up a Kindle ebook copy of her debut novel, The Royal Assassin!
Entry is easy! Just leave a comment on any of the posts this week, or follow Shireen on Facebook or Twitter.
Don't forget to check off what you've done on the Rafflecopter buttons to make sure your entry is counted.
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We are going underground this week to the world of Valantis, home to Mystics and Nightelves. Shireen Nemnich's YA fantasy novel, The Royal Assassin, is the first book in the Shadows of Myst series. Read on to find out more.
"Reis, the Royal Assassin to the Royal House of Darkness and Shadow had waited for Essence, the Heir of the Chalice to grow up and become his wife only for her to be taken away by Phantom another Heir of the Chalice to be his consort.
Reis petitioned the Royal House but the Royal Advocate stood on the side of Phantom and Reis lost her. He was given compensation however in the form of being allowed to train one of their children to be an assassin for the Royal House and or a consort if he so chooses.
Reis has no idea when he grudgingly visits Phantom and Essence to give his congratulations and inspect their children he would be blessed with a vision of the goddess Mysteria. He is shocked yet relieved when Mysteria whispers for him to claim their daughter Shadowen to train and be his consort.
Reis now must wait for her to grow up and come into her magic so his claim will be sanctioned in the Royal House. But he has no idea how furious Phantom is or the lengths he will go through to keep Reis from his new consort. Once Reis fully comprehends the obsession Phantom has for his daughter, the true Heir of the Chalice, he vows not only to train her but also to protect and cherish her for eternity as his consort."
The Royal Assassin is available now from Amazon.
Or enter for a chance to win a Kindle eBook of The Royal Assassin below!
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Melynda Fleury's courageous battle with diabetes and close call to losing her eyesight has inspired this fabulous event. Wayman Publishing is sponsoring a Blogfest and Book Fair giveaway the week of Labor Day in her honor. All entrants in the giveaway will have unlimited access to download Wayman Publishing's top ten books from September 2nd-4th. The direct link will be available on September 1st.
As an added bonus, Mommy Blog Designs, a blog designer with a well known reputation for great service and beautiful designs throughout the blogosphere, has offered up one of her Premade Design with full package ($269 value) for FREE to one very lucky winner.
One more incentive to participate, $200 Paypal cash will also be awarded to one lucky winner!
The Giveaway runs from 8/28 through 9/5.
Wayman Publishing and all the other wonderful hosts who have helped put this event together (voiceBoks, Linkie's Contest Linkies, Mommy Blog Designs, and Terri's Little Haven) thanks everyone for there help and participation in making this event a success.
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Excited to leave for college, a talented musician, a top student, focused and driven...Rachel seems to have a life to envy. In her eyes, life is just as it should be. But when an estranged friend dies under strange circumstances Rachel is forced to face the possibility that her small town life might not be as perfect as she thought. The secrets that begin to crop up bring danger with them, something the unsuspecting Rachel may not be ready for.
Blurry is a story about a young woman who must come to grips with the idea that the world is not black and white as she wishes it could be. People she loves and trusts have secrets, dangerous ones.
This was a clean book, which is becoming more and more rare even in YA. There was some kissing between Rachel and Layne, but Moorer kept it at that. The language was also clean, and even thought there is some violence, Moorer didn't feel the need to go into gory detail or get carried away with twisted motives.
The mystery in Blurry was solid, with no glaring holes. The mystery was on the lighter side. It is not overly complicated, either. As an adult reading it, I did find the twist a bit predictable, and I thought the ending was somewhat over-explained, but this may not be a problem with younger readers. Even though the main characters are 17 and 18, because of the items I just mentioned, I think this book would be most appealing to the 12-13 age group.
Despite the cleanliness (which I appreciate) and the well-formed mystery, I did have a few issues with this book. I had a hard time with the dialog, which often felt formal and a bit stilted. When reading, I pictured adults speaking, not teens. The number of characters was also distracting at times. I think it would have flowed better if I could have focused on a few integral characters instead of having to keep track of so many. For young readers, this will probably be especially distracting.
Two things I had a particularly hard time with was the level of emotion and the issue of show vs. tell. As far as the emotion went, there wasn't enough. Rachel faces some pretty serious events in this book, things that would have people crying and on the verge of losing it completely, yet she seemed to handle it with a sense of detachment. I had a hard time connecting with her emotionally because of this. I wanted to see her get angry or breakdown, hate the people who were causing so much pain, but she stayed so even tempered throughout. At one point a bomb explodes and I expected her and the others to really freak out at this point. Rachel only seems a little off balanced for a few moments and then moves on. The best part of YA fiction is the constant emotional turmoil teens experience. Everything is life or death in their eyes. But in this book, even when Rachel actually was facing death, the emotion felt short.
The Show vs. Tell I mentioned contributed to this problem. Throughout the book, rather than letting me experience the story along with Rachel - letting me inside her head and emotions - Rachel instead "told" me what happened. I think this line (*Spoiler Alert*) is an example of the emotion and the show vs. tell issue. "Looking at the casket, she couldn't believe her oldest friend was dead." This is the depth of emotion shown at a funeral for one of Rachel's best friends. I am told that Rachel is shocked rather than shown through her tears, emotions, posture, internal thoughts, or even facial expressions. But where is her anger or sadness at this loss? This could have been a much more emotional moment than it was.
Overall, Blurry, is an interesting read. It is a clean, light mystery, but the lack of emotion and depth of characters made it difficult for me to get into.
Would I recommend this book? Only as a casual read.
Who would I recommend this book to? Only to young teens who won't mind the uncomplicated mystery and characters, and straightforward writing. This isn't a mystery that adults will become wrapped up in, and older teens will be looking for more emotion and deeper characters.
For me, one of the most interesting aspects of this book were the changes that the main character goes through. In the beginning Rachel is a very naive young woman. It's hard to blame her - she grew up in a small town with a loving family and good friends. Her quiet upbringing shows in her skewed view of not only her home town, but life in general.
To Rachel, the world is easy to understand. Choices are made after careful consideration and weighing the options. She does what she thinks is right and expects everyone else to do the same. When she realizes that isn't the case, it's quite shocking to her.
I wouldn't want to give away details, but it was interesting to see Rachel morph throughout the book as she is put in difficult situations and learns truths about people she thought she knew everything about.
If you'd like a sneak peek of Blurry, keep reading for an excerpt.
~*~
Chapter 10
Josh sat in the Auto Shop Thursday night surfing the Internet and drinking a beer. He knew he shouldn’t drink while he was taking antibiotics for a sinus infection, but he needed something to take the edge off. The fumes in the shop kept his sinuses clogged, and he had to keep squirting nasal decongestant up his nose to keep breathing. His doctor recommended the decongestant to help manage his symptoms until they cleared up. He hated it, especially since it started stinging his nose and sinuses today. That was odd. He had been using it since Tuesday and had no problems with it until today. He shoved the bottle in his pocket. He thought about calling the doctor the next morning to ask about something that didn’t burn so badly. He should probably go home and go to bed, but he had too much to do.
Josh stayed late to do more work on his car, which he couldn’t seem to keep fixed. Every time he replaced one part, another one went bad. It was like an evil imp was coming to his house every night and breaking all of the parts under his hood, one by one. Rachel had been giving him rides to school every day that week, but this morning she dropped a bomb on him. Layne was coming to Woodland for a visit this Saturday to meet her parents and her friends. She thought it would be a good idea for them to get to know one another.
He took a last swig from the beer and threw it in the trash can. He’d done some checking on the Internet regarding Layne and called a few of his racing buddies upstate. His efforts came up empty until he got a call from some girl in Westwind Mountain an hour ago. She didn’t want to tell her name or where she was from, but she told him something that made him wonder what kind of life Layne had in Westwind Mountain. It jolted him so much that he didn’t want to wait until he got home – he decided to check up on it right away. Pulling up the county records, he typed in a name and scrolled down a short list until he came to what he was looking for.
“I can’t believe it,” he mumbled, rubbing his eyes. His head felt funny and his vision seemed blurry. That was odd – the beer was hitting him harder than usual. Then again, the antibiotic could amplify the affects of alcohol. Trying to shake it off, he focused on the screen. Even in his dazed state, he couldn’t deny what was right in front of him. He hit the print button and wondered how he was going to break this to Rachel. Should he go straight to her house now, or wait until the morning? Certainly, he couldn’t call her with this. She wouldn’t believe it unless she saw it with her own eyes.
He paused a moment when he thought he heard footsteps. Glancing around, he didn’t see anybody, so he turned his attention back to the computer and clicked on the linked files, printing more pages. He shook his head. Danny lied to him. He either had a bad case of amnesia, or he was dumber than Josh thought. There was no way something like this quietly went away. He should have known it would come up sooner or later.
Shutting down the machine, he swiveled the chair to grab the pages off the printer. They weren’t there.
“I bet you wish you saved that weblink and E-mailed it to Rachel right now,” a voice said behind him. Looking up, he saw a tall person in a dark, hooded sweatshirt standing behind him with a wrench in his hand. He didn’t recognize the person, but then again he couldn’t see clearly. He was terribly dizzy.
“What?” Josh mumbled, trying to stand but failing.
The person bent over. “Tell me Josh, how are you feeling?”
Josh looked up and tried to focus on the person. “What’s going on?” he asked before he was knocked out of the chair and hit the concrete floor.
~*~
Today you get the opportunity to get to know more about Sherri Fulmer Moorer as a writer, as well as more about her YA novel, Blurry. Read on to find out more.
1. What was your inspiration for "Blurry?" Dreams I had while my husband and I were building our home in 2007. I had recurring dreams of being in high school while the house was under construction. After the house was complete and we moved in, I kept having them for a while, so I pulled them together, added some fictional elements that had been stirring in my head for a potential novel, and created "Blurry." And the funny thing is that the dreams stopped after I finished the rough draft of this book!
2. Your main character changes throughout the novel. Can you describe how she grows without giving away too much? She has to learn to accept people that have different moral convictions than she does. Her world is very black and white, and the events of this novel show her that most of the world lives in shades of grey. She has to learn how to deal with that and incorporate it into what she knows and believes.
3. Can you tell us about the difference in the male characters in the book and how they impact the stories? There have always been a lot of men in my life, ever since childhood. I'd say the biggest things I learned were from having a big brother. Those stereotypes of "tough men" just aren't true. They do have feelings and we may say they aren't as complicated as women, but they can be complicated in their own way. Guys can beat the crap out of each other one minute, but threaten them and they'll unite to turn against you in a heartbeat! The men in "Blurry" are a reflection of men I've actually known. They do care and have strong protective instincts. Those instincts might be misplaced at times (as is reflected in the relationship with Rachel, Layne and Joshua), but they do mean well. Honestly, woman say we can't live without them and we can't shoot them, but the truth is that I do love them! Men may confuse us, but they're good.
4. How much research did you do for "Blurry," especially for the police involvement aspect? A lot. I was working with a department that had a law enforcement division at the time I wrote "Blurry" and I talked to them some. I also did online research, and I do like to watch shows like "Dateline" frequently.
5. Your main character is a musician. Do you have an interest in music as well? Yes, I was in band all 4 years in high school and 2 years in college. I even met my husband in the marching band at the University of South Carolina. I played the piccolo in marching band and the flute in concert band. Unfortunately, I was a mediocre musician and gave that up in college. I'm a writer now, obviously!
6. "Blurry" is set in a small town. How does this effect the story? I set it in a small town on purpose. In fact, all of my books have been set in small towns. I believe confining the setting to a small town makes it easier to control the setting and to show the connections with relationships amongst characters and how the lifestyle of the place influences the characters better. I live in a small city and even there things can get so impersonal with so many degrees of seperation amongst people. Small towns are easier for me to manage.
7. What kind of town/city did you grow up in? I still live in the town where I was born. In fact, my husband and I built on my great-grandparent's homeplace, which is two houses from my parents, and next door to my in-laws. My brother and sister-in-law live in the woods behind all of us, and my first cousins live about half a mile away. I live in a surburb of Columbia, SC. The area had a "small town" feel to it as I was growing up, but it's grown due to urban sprawl in the area. I have mixed feelings about this. It's great to have things nearby and available, but I also miss the local feel of the place that seems to be disappearing.
8. Who are your favorite authors? J.R.R. Tolkein and C.S. Lewis are my absolute favorites. I also love the work of P.D. James. She's a great writer, and I can only hope to be a fraction of as good a storyteller as she is! I also like sci-fi and like Kim Robinson Stanley and Ben Bova.
9. Do you have any interesting habits or rituals when you write? I have a full time job, so I'm not able to set aside "blocks" of writing time like some writers do. I write whenever I can, which is mostly lunch hours, nights and weekends. One thing is that I tend to carry my laptop EVERYWHERE when I'm working on a book so I can write whenever I have a chance. My family and co-workers don't even think it's weird any more, especially since I started publishing my work as ebooks. When a "newbie" asks why I'm on a personal laptop on my lunch hour they just say, "She's working on a book, it's okay." They think it's cool, and I appreciate that they accept and support me as a writer. And I'll be honest - sometimes I can get a bit "out of it" and "loopy" when I'm working on a novel. My husband, family and colleagues are very patient and understanding of this as well. I'm lucky to have a great support system and a lot of good people around me!
10. Can you tell us about any other books or projects you are working on? I have a sci-fi apocolyptic novel titled "Splinter" due to be released through Whiskey Creek Press in 2013. This story takes place in the year 3001 after a solar flare hits Earth while the magnectic field is reversing, and parallel universes start opening and revealing secrets of how the destruction took really took place. That was truly the most research I've ever done for a novel. I didn't realize how much work writing sci-fi is, but I did enjoy it. Now I'm working on another adult mystery novel titled "Move," which is about a young woman that unknowlingly makes a deal with a djinn (genie) that doesn't go as either of them planned. I'm really enjoying my work on this novel, but then again we should enjoy everything we write. That's the point, after all - is to enjoy the process of creating the story and sharing it with readers who enjoy escaping to those worlds we create!
