The River Against the Sea (The Saltwater Chronicles Book 1) Fantasy Adventure by Z. Lindsey Book Tour with Guest Post & Giveaway
CARGO OF BONES
Z. Lindsey
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GENRE: Fantasy
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BLURB:
|
Devil bureaucrat
Essie Darkenchyl and her friends barely survived the jungle, but now they're
going straight to Hell--AKA her hometown! |
EXCERPT
“I had a bit of an incident,” Essie said, stepping into his
office.
“Not surprising,” the duende said.
“There was an attempt on my life. I’ve filed the required
paperwork with the security agents, but I need a less inferior pen for
protection.”
“Uh . . .”
“I’m not scared, in case you’re wondering,” Essie said,
glancing around the room to see what books she recognized on his shelves. She
was unaware that she did this when lying. “But I am investigating the attacker,
which may expose me to more danger. And more importantly than what happened to
me, I need to deflesh and repatriate the remains of an Aordés body. I can’t do
that with a pen that’s exploded.”
The duende frowned and adjusted his glasses.
“Pens are not weapons,” the duende said in a low hiss, his
nostrils flared. “Or for . . . flaying, or whatever you want it for. They’re
for signing shipping contracts, approving payroll, and weighing cargo.”
“Yeah, I need it for that, too, but—”
“And I told you, pens do not explode, even one as, to use
your word, ‘inferior,’ as the one I loaned you—”
Essie smiled, unbuttoned the leather quill pouch on her
belt, and removed the corpse of the inferior loaner pen. She dropped it onto
the desk. All the barbs were burned off. When it hit the wood, it should have
wiggled with the chance to do some signing. Instead, it hissed, shot off a few
blue sparks, and produced a single smoke ring before expiring.
“Whoa,” the duende said.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Author Interview
1.) If
you hadn’t become an author, what would you have done instead?
I’m not a pro author, so
the thing I would have done instead is what I am doing: I’m an adult English as
a Second Language teacher. I absolutely love it. I personally feel like working
with adults is way more relaxing than kids; my job is basically having coffee
and a conversation with cool people.
I’m an indie author
because I love writing. It’s a huge passion of mine and has been for a long
time. And I would love to make money off of it one day, but as your writing
readers may know, that beautiful cover art ain’t free, and neither are the ads
… So right now I’m not worrying too much about how much money my books
make.
To me that takes off a lot
of pressure. I can tell stories I want to tell without thinking about markets.
I can think about my readers, who are some cool people, without having to worry
about scaling up and all that. I want to make money, of course, and I put a
good amount of time into editing my works and finding artists that could
present the characters the way I imagined.
But if I did actually make
enough money as a writer to make it my full-time gig, I’d probably start to
resent it. Writing is cool, but it’s not really a very social activity, and I’d
miss my conversations over coffee.
2.) Do
you have future projects or plans regarding bookish stuffs? If ever, can you
give me one?
Yes, I’m working on this
silly romantic fantasy I like to think of as City of Devils meets A
Muppet Christmas Carol. It’s got the weirdest worldbuilding I’ve ever done,
and it has a romance that’s kind of based on my biker parents. It’s
action-packed, it’s funny, it’s stupidly violent sometimes, and it’s got a
classic enemies-to-lovers core.
3.) Do
you do lots of research for your book?
As a fantasy writer I
try not to do much research, instead building off of things I already know. I
think that helps avoid cultural stereotyping and cliches. If you get inspired
by something you already know a lot about, I think you’re going to do a better
job writing about it than if you read something in a book while looking for
ideas. If you study a culture because you find the people interesting, you’ll
incorporate their philosophies and iconography into your works in a smoother
way than if you study a culture because you want your elves to act like
them.
I do use Google plenty
to look up little details about sailing ships and colonial-era trade patterns,
but these are things I have a passing knowledge of to begin with. Then there
are the weird things that come up when you’re writing, like, “Was an arrow in
the lung always fatal in the Middle Ages?”
But what I didn’t do
was, say, the landscape and fauna of this book is similar to Peru, so let me
read about Andean culture. I mostly took the things I already knew about that
region and found ways to apply them to the story. If I didn’t know the way ancient
Andean people might have responded to something, I made a creative choice
instead of looking it up. That helped make sure my characters aren’t
stereotypes of indigenous Andean people but dynamic fictional beings that made
similar cultural adaptations while living at the base of similar
mountains.
That might mean if you
want to write great fantasy, you have to read about ancient societies for the
fun of it. Not for research for your book, but just because. But honestly,
there’s not a whole heck of a lot of difference between reading Game of Thrones
and reading a well-written biography of, say, Isabel of Spain.
4.)
What’s the hardest thing about writing?
For me, I sometimes
struggle to fill in ‘white rooms.’ That’s the name for when a scene seems to be
all dialog without sufficient descriptions of the surroundings. One of the
reasons I like writing humorous stuff is because you can stick something silly in
a conversation if you’re struggling with this problem. There was a conversation
between siblings that dragged in my recent book and I added a joke about them
being interrupted constantly by mundane requests, which made their chat more
and more heated until they both just freaked at the last person to enter the
room. The joke also showcased the characters’ similar tempers; they are
siblings, after all. But I do notice that my early drafts tend to look a
little like play scripts, and I've got to pad them out with description. To
address this, I actually started writing shorter chapters because I know that
I'll probably need to add a few hundred words of descriptions to my
conversations.
5.)
What’s the easiest thing about writing?
Writing’s a joy for me.
It honestly is. I rarely run into what folks call writer’s block because I’ve
formed a strong habit of using writing as a defense mechanism from real-world
issues like work, our upcoming big move from a small town to the city, or the
general collapse of society. If you, too, manage to use writing to
disassociate, you’ll find it’s never too hard to get words out. On the other
hand, you won’t do other things you’re supposed to do, but you’ll be
writing, and that’s what matters.
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AUTHOR Bio and Links:
Zac Lindsey is an anthropologist and a linguist who focuses on the
Maya people of Quintana Roo. Since childhood, he's had a not-so-secret love of
weird, silly, and well-structured fantasy. When other people's parents were
reading them picture books, his mom was reading him Terry Brooks. He typically
writes hopeful and character-driven fantasy.
Today, he lives in Quintana Roo, Mexico with his wife, daughter,
and various stray cats.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/z.lindsey_fiction/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61550498257222
Amazon link to the first book: https://www.amazon.com/River-Against-Sea-Z-Lindsey-ebook/dp/B0CH3TW3YD/ref=sr_1_1
B&N link to the first book (for paperback):
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-river-against-the-sea-z-lindsey/1144077772
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GIVEAWAY
Z.
Lindsey will award a randomly drawn winner a $25 Amazon/BN gift card + a
digital copy of the book via Rafflecopter.
Thank you for featuring CARGO OF BONES today.
ReplyDeleteThis looks like a very enjoyable read. Thanks for sharing and hosting this tour.
ReplyDeleteI like the blurb and excerpt. Sounds like a good story.
ReplyDeleteLooks like a very interesting book.
ReplyDelete