Fascinating Authors

Q: What excites you most about your book’s topic? Why did you choose it?

Author: Bloodline: Alliance is a book that started off as one thing, and became so much bigger than I could have imagined. It just kept writing itself in ways I had never planned. I had one goal when I wrote it – one purpose – and that was to speak out against an issue of prejudice and injustice that was weighing on my mind and stripping my sleep from me. But the book’s issues just grew and grew, until it spilled out into its sequel – Bloodline: Covenant. Everyone seems to find something important in it, and everyone is different in what they find. People are genuinely moved by this book, and this is a book in a genre that is rarely taken seriously. How it touches lives is beyond even what I had planned.

I would love to say that I chose those topics, and chose the book, but the truth is, the book chose me. That’s the only way I can describe it.

Q: How long did the book take you from start to finish?

Author: For me, the writing is usually the quick part. Bloodline took me 28 days. But it’s the editing, the tweaking, that takes the longest, and in this case it took me many months. And probably every time I dragged it out to try one more publisher and one more agent, I tweaked one more thing. In fact, just before it went to print – seven years after I wrote it – I was still tweaking. That’s because I’m obsessive when it comes to finding just the right words, and I never really feel like a book is finished. I have to reach a moment when I choose to never read that book again, or I will always find something I could have done better.

Q: What aspect of writing the book did you find particularly challenging?

Author: To be honest, I found this book extremely easy and enjoyable to write. It was its sequel that ground five years of my life to a halt. The sequel had itself in mind – it seemed to have known, right from the first line of the first book, what it wanted to be – and I kept fighting it by not listening very well. In the end, it won. And I’m glad it did.

Q: What surprised you the most about the book writing process?

Author: This was the first book I ever wrote where my subconscious did an enormous amount of the work for me, and set me up with characters and pathways I simply didn’t choose. When I got to the sequel, I realised that my subconscious was way ahead of me. I had a very rigid plan for this book, having done a lot of plotting before I even started, and yet even the very first character who appeared – in the very first paragraph! – wasn’t factored in at all. That very first voice of the book, and the first line of the book, is a character called Wolf (who is actually a wolf). I went with my instinct on this, and slowly discovered who Wolf was, and later realised that the whole book would have fallen apart if not for him. Thank you sub-conscious brain.

Q: Did you have any favorite experiences when writing your book?

Author: I wrote the book to kind of detox from the poison of a conversation I had with a very racist man. So for me, the whole experience was an off-loading as well as an incredible discovery into what has now become my voice. I realised that within the genre I had written in and loved my whole life, was the power to make a change that I had craved for many years. I had an enormous anger for the injustices and darkness I saw around me, and I wanted to make a difference. Fantasy novels became my chance to make a difference, and despite growing up with fantasy that said something, I had never truly realised its potential for myself before then.

Q: What do you hope your readers will gain from reading your book?

Author: Firstly, I sincerely hope they discover a gripping, page-turning mystery and adventure, that will have them gasping for breath. I see people scrounging for good novels and good reads these days. I do it myself. We cling to the ones that finally capture us, and we grieve when they are over because it could be months, even years, before a book totally absorbs us like that again. I really want to give them a book to love and always be glad they read.

As well as that, I genuinely want my readers to be swept away by the emotions and the experiences of the book, in a way that makes them emerge from the other side different somehow. Even if it just makes them think a little, or feel a little, then I consider my job done.

Q: What projects are you currently working on?

Author: I have a sequel I need to finish for another book that is out. And I desperately want to write another novel that is unconnected to anything published. The sequel to Bloodline: Alliance possessed so much of me the last few years, that I haven’t written anything fresh since I started it. And I need to prove to myself I can still do it. I didn’t so much write the sequel to Bloodline: Alliance as edit it into being. And I’ve forgotten what it feels like to just scribble out a book in a short space and time and feel the exhilaration of writing: The End.

Q: Is writing your sole career? If not, what else do you do?

Author: Yes, it’s my sole career, but it’s not my full time job. I used to write full time, writing anything from articles to scripts. But now my four-year-old takes up most of my time and thoughts, and leaves me with the dregs of the evening to scratch out some words.

Q: Did you do any research for your books, or did you write from experience?

Author: I have a love-hate relationship with research. I absolutely love learning new things, but I hate stopping a novel to find out something. And I don’t like having to sit with masses of books before I can write one of my own. So I usually write about things I do know, rather than things I don’t. But that’s slowly changing as I’m running out of things I know.

Q: How did you come up with your title?

Author: I don’t want to answer that because it gives all the credit to someone else. Actually, it was my husband who came up with it. I told him what the book was about, and I told him the title had to have power in it, and be only one word. And he instantly came up with “Bloodline”. He does that. He really should be in advertising because he comes up with titles and slogans within seconds. Later, after trying desperately to come up with a title for the sequel and only hearing “Bloodline” pop into my head, I realised that my subconscious was shouting at me telling me it was one book with one title in two parts. So Bloodline: Alliance was born. I don’t have to give my husband credit for that one – thankfully.

Q: What books have influenced you the most?

Author: Growing up, it was fairytales. I loved them passionately, though I couldn’t have told you why until I was in primary school and picked up a book called, “The Tower of Geburah” by John White. Picking up that book was like picking up a piece of me. I suddenly found this genre where I fit, and it had a name. It was called ‘fantasy’.

Sadly, I believed that fantasy was just for children, and one day I would have to grow up and move on to something more mature. That was until I was in high school and someone handed me “The Belgariad” by David Eddings. And it was like suddenly being given full permission to be totally and happily myself for as long as I wanted – that’s the only way I can describe it. Reading this series, I realised that adults read fantasy too, and that I would never have to abandon this genre that I loved. After that, I started writing fantasy novels with gusto and without shame – because adults were allowed to read and love them too. So it fully opened the door to who I would later become.

Q: Who was your publisher and why did you choose them?

Author: Littleman. Lovely Littleman. Why did I choose them? Because they are unbelievably passionate about my books, to the point where members of the team willingly spent long, long hours outside of business hours, getting my books ready for the market. My editor, for example, gave up two weeks of her holidays to sit in my house and do the final editing, just because she loves the books so much and wanted them to come out. Many times I fell into a heap and thought it was all too hard – and I had some very big obstacles in my way – but they picked me off the floor and told me that they believed in me, and I wasn’t allowed to quit. I don’t think I’ll find any bigger fans than the crew at Littleman. So thanks, guys!

Thank you for taking the time to be part of this interview!

To learn more about the book and Author, Please visit – http://www.lrsaul.com/