Today, I have the pleasure of welcoming Dy Loveday, another of my Liquid Silver Books pub buddies. When I read Dy's post for the first time, I related instantly. I think every writer has the need to write and it was fascinating to hear about her journey. I hope you'll welcome Dy today and don't forget to take a boo at her awesome book Illusion!
**************
Hi Rosanna and thanks for hosting me on
your blog today.
I’d like to chat about my writing journey:
how it started, some of the barriers and what helped me on the path to publication.
Around 10 years ago, I was buying books
from the LSB website and secretly fantasizing about being one of their
authors. The memory lurked in my
subconscious and after having kids and settling into full time work, I decided
that it was either now or never.
Once I packed in the day job, I realized
that writing decent prose and dialogue wasn’t going to be easy. Firstly, writing a novel is nothing like
writing policy for government (I can hear readers scoffing from here, but believe me
I was that naive). And then there was
all the research required in making the story as realistic and believable as
possible.
The backstory of my fantasy romance, Illusion, is based in Mesopotamia. Digging up records of Carthage and sorting
Roman propaganda from fact was a long, drawn out affair. At times I wanted to toss the computer out the
window and go back to my regular day job (much better paid by the way). I spent hundreds of hours researching child
sacrifice and questioning the accuracy of the source. Most of the scholars ended up disagreeing
with one another, and I’ll happily let the reader decide whether the
Carthaginians sacrificed their children to their god, Molokh. You might conclude the ancients had the terrible
misfortune of losing hundreds of aristocratic kids of a specific age and the
Romans were just nasty rumourmongers.
Hell, stranger things have happened, right?
Illusion
was written in free form or as many authors say, by
the ‘seat of my pants.’ It took 9 months
to write and 18 months to revise. Nowadays
I tend to plot my stories so I have a handle on where they are going, because
there is nothing worse in my mind than endless revisions after a story is
finished.
For anyone wanting to write or anyone who
has a dream, I encourage you to push through the barriers. Ignore the naysayers who tell you that you’ll
never make it: because if you’re persistent enough, stubborn enough, you can turn your dream into a reality. Someone once told me to write from the heart
and I find if I’m doing that, I’m truly happy.
Illusion is a near-future story of a girl addicted to spells in a
post-apocalyptic setting of mages and warlocks.
She falls in love with an off-world warlock and must discover the truth
of her past in order to find love and redemption. There are several dark themes running through
the narrative. Although I love romance I
do enjoy writing and reading about the darker side of life and Illusion is no exception.
Feel free to visit my website www.dyloveday.com,
Twitter https:/twitter.com/DyLoveday or
Facebook www.facebook.com/dylovedayauthor
to catch up on current projects.
Excerpt:
Trembling inside, she moved to the
window and watched lightning split the sky. Thunder boomed overhead, echoing
down the river and bouncing off the cliffs. It was time to make a decision.
Maya wavered for a moment. She understood what Resh wanted. But did she want
the same thing?
Hearing a hiss, she turned to see
Resh dump a handful of St John’s wort and apple seeds into the crucible. Magic
vibrated in the room, pooling low in her stomach. A crack appeared in the
crucible, but he didn't appear concerned. If possible, his hands moved faster.
Resh drew three concentric circles
and corresponding lines on the floor in black charcoal. It looked like a wheel
with broken spokes. He marked twisting serpent creatures in the second circle,
and astrological symbols in the outer ring. The serpents began to move, just
slightly, but enough to make her step back.
"Can I help?" she asked,
hoping he wouldn’t say ‘yes’.
He glanced up. "Given your
artistic skills? No, I think I'll rely on my meager slashing."
His hands quivered slightly as he
placed the cinnabar on dolomite in the middle of the formula. Chanting in a
low, deep tone he used tongs to pick up the crucible and placed it on the
crystal. As soon as the two surfaces met, splashes of olive and scarlet liquid
pooled onto the wooden floor.
He stared at her, eyes intent. His
lips were slightly open and full and she wondered what they would taste like.
Heat coiled and spread through her body, and she resisted the impulse to
squirm. He had a beautiful body. He definitely wanted her, she could tell by
his eyes and the way he avoided touching her. But he also wanted something
else, and she couldn't quite work out if he protected her, or just used her for
his own benefit.
"When do we leave?" she
asked, instead of doing something else; something she’d regret. His lips were gorgeous.
The veins in his arms bulged in a darkening web, the magical roadmap of life.
“Within the hour.”
“An hour. I had no idea it would be so soon.”
He stared at her with
incomprehension and then his face cleared.
“The tincture is near completion and when Jupiter reaches mid-sky, we
leave. The Khereb are on our heels.”
Sweat dripped from his face and his
hands shook with strain. The ritual wore
on him, but any sympathy she might have felt disappeared with his abrupt
words. He sounded exactly like the
creepy mage from the House of Horus.
He wiped the perspiration off with a
piece of linen, tossing it and a bloody eyeball into the circle. At the center of the formula an obsidian
cloud coalesced and reached out as if attracted to him. It whirled and revolved upon itself, and in
the middle of the dark mass, an eye appeared.
The eyelid opened and the pupil focused on Resh and then swivelled to
Maya.
***
You
can find a copy of Illusion at:
OmniLit: https://www.omnilit.com/product-illusion-986100-140.html
Stubborness can definitely be a useful quality in the writing industry and in life in general. Congrats on the book, Dy.
ReplyDeletegreat excerpt, Dy!
ReplyDeleteAgree Allie. Just have to convince my partner of that one.
ReplyDeleteThanks for hosting me Rosanna. Love your blog.
Well said Dy, and I enjoyed the excerpt!
ReplyDeleteI just love fantasy novels! Esp. with witches! This look right up my alley!
ReplyDeleteThanks Dy and Rosanna!
I like the sound of this story very much. I do understand
ReplyDeleteabout being stubborn too. Congratulations you made your dream live.
Thx everyone. A bit of dogged determination does wonders for tuning dreams into reality. Happy fantasizing folks:)
ReplyDelete