Win-A-Book Wednesday: Journey of Awakening

Shawna Thomas

Since she could remember, one of Shawna Thomas’s favorite places has been the library. She always has one book to read and another for backup. Some of her earliest adventures took place in Narnia and Middle Earth. The fact that she started scripting plays for her sister’s Barbies and rewriting the ends to some of her beloved stories that didn’t have a happily ever after confirms she was destined to be a writer.

In 2005, she turned the hobby into a profession and started seriously working on the craft of writing. Since then, she’s published several books under a super secret pen name, and five full length novels through Carina Press.

When she’s not writing or editing, you’ll find her playing in the garden, weeding the flower and vegetable garden or picking fruit from her 8 fruit trees. She also spends a good deal of time in the kitchen where she loves to develop new dishes, especially desserts, to feed her husband and their seven children.

I first met these characters in a dream but unlike most dreams, this one grew more and more real as time progressed until I had to write it down.

Journey of Awakening represents the beginnings of Sara's journey but also mine as a writer. It is the first book I ever wrote, the first taste I had of characters who would not stop chattering in my ear and the first time I really knew what it meant to be a writer.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Fantasy Week - Epic fantasy: Does it have to be so long?

Do you need 1000 pages to tell an epic fantasy story?

I’ve heard this question a lot lately. Honestly more likely framed as why is epic fantasy so long?

I cut my reading teeth on authors like JRR Tolkien, George RR Martin, CS Lewis. 

(Notice how they all have initials. Honestly that’s why I should have gone SL Thomas.)

Game of Thrones - Clash of Kings at 1006 pages? I honestly won’t bat an eyelash. Bring it on.

But the question remains. Why are these books so long? In today’s fast-paced society, people don’t have patience for a thousand-page book. Novellas and shorts are popular for a reason. Get to the happily ever after in six hundred pages or less, please.

I get that.

So shouldn’t epic fantasy follow the same pattern?

I honestly think it would be a tragedy.

From Merriam Webster -  Epic: extending beyond the usual or ordinary especially in size or scope.

Epic fantasy gives you vistas. Vistas need words. It gives you the history of kings back a hundred generations. It gives you mythologies. It gives ruins of civilizations that lived before the one your heroine is currently fighting for. It tells you not only the color of the king’s hair, but what’s on his banner and why. It gives you not only the names of the characters, but their fathers and grandfathers. Why. What. When. Where.

Good epic fantasy doesn’t just take you to a world; it builds a world from the ground up: Currency, politics, food, geography, history. Nothing is left to chance. Once you enter Martin’s seven kingdoms or Tolkien’s Middle Earth, you will have felt you could navigate the culture, sit at dinner with the commoners or even royalty and not miss a beat or wonder where the spoons are.

So couldn’t you condense this a wee bit... you know to attract more readers. Because not many readers want to dive so deep into a world.

Yes. And no.

I admit, in today's world, not many readers want to pick up a tome. So can we hold on to the tenants of what makes epic fantasy epic without drowning in minutiae? 

It's a fine line. 

My Triune Stones series began as a single book. A single book that is now four books. Journey of Dominion, which will release on May 20^th, is the second in the series.  

And while the series is firmly epic fantasy, when rewriting it for publication, I recognized the need for action. I deleted many musings, many descriptions of beautiful scenery because they just didn’t move the plot forward.  

Even epic fantasy authors must adapt and change with the times. That said, by their very nature, our stories will still be too slow paced for some readers. But if you have patience, the story will weave around your imagination, drawing you into a land where magic happens, where villains desire power, heroes are ordinary people, just like you, who do extraordinary things that not only affect them, but the entire world. There may be dragons, fairies, airydh, magic rings, magic stones, elves, white walkers, secret glens and woven through it all, a sense that it has all been there for time beyond time.  Unless, of course, our hero fails. 

Journey of Dominion - a legend’s fall. 

May 20th, 2013

Don't forget to check out the other awesome posts for Fantasy week! 

Dreams

I recently saw a post on Facebook about the importance of having dreams. I couldn’t agree more. For me becoming a writer was as dream, publishing my books a part of that dream. Publishing could have just stayed a dream unless I took steps to make that dream come true.

To make a dream come true, you need to set goals--take steps forward. Sometimes they’re baby steps and other times they’re giant leaps of faith, but it’s constantly moving, actively working toward that dream. Pursuing a dream requires you to evaluate your priorities in life. It sharpens your focus and, ultimately, I believe, allows you to live life to the fullest.

Publishing Journey of Awakening is a dream come true for me. This is the first novel I ever completed. These are the characters who own my heart.  As hard as I worked on this manuscript, I’m still awed that Carina wanted to publish it. I still have to pinch myself when I see it on websites and know it’s available to readers instead of tucked away on my hard drive.

I hope that my children can see me living and pursuing my dream and learn to do the same, whatever their dreams are because having a dream, working toward it and watching it come true. That is magic.

Sara, the heroine in Journey of Awakening, also has a dream. Raised by her grandfather on a small island, she prepared her entire life for one purpose. For her it was simple, her dream is to complete the task set for her and her pursuit of it is single-minded. But when the dream becomes a reality, it is almost more than she can handle.

Here’s an excerpt from Journey of Awakening.

She followed Jith’s gaze. The golden sand rose away from the water’s touch, forming a hill that protected their little house and its gardens from the worst of the ocean’s fury. A shadow of melancholy tempered her excitement. She would miss the island. It was the only home she could remember. But she knew every tree, had followed or made every path through the dense interior forests. Each waterway, every animal’s den had long since been mapped. She was a warrior of Shi’ia, trained by one of the greatest commanders of all time, Willam of Ardal, and now she was full-grown. An adult by anyone’s standards. An island hideaway was not the place for her. She was ready. Ready for change, ready to use the skills her grandfather had taught her, ready to begin her life. She placed a hand on her chest and traced the hard contours of her pendant. Ready to discover the world outside their little island.

Winner of a 2011 RT Reader’s Choice award for her debut book, Altered Destiny, Shawna Thomas has been making up stories ever since finishing GONE WITH THE WIND. Once she put her own ending in writing, there was no looking back.

A wife and a mother of seven, Shawna lives in California where she gardens, writes, and drinks a lot of coffee. Visit her on her blog, twitter or Facebook. 

Journey of Awakening is available at Carina, Barnes and Noble, and Amazon.