Lost Prince Blog Tour & Giveaway

Every think you saw a little foreshadowing in one of Julie Kagawa's Iron Fey novels? It's there, and as part of this blog tour Julie's sharing excerpts that give a nod to her newest novel The Lost Prince.

Also, check out The Lost Prince trailer and more at the official Iron Fey page. You can also keep up with series news on Facebook and Twitter by following Julie Kagawa and Harlequin Teen.

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Excerpt from The Iron Knight: Page 299-300

A frantic beeping dragged me out of a comfortable sleep. Groggily, I raised myself up, being careful not to disturb Meghan, and reached for the phone on the end table. The glowing blue numbers on the screen proclaimed it 2:12 a.m., and that Glitch was going to die for waking me up like this.

I pressed the button, put the phone to my ear and growled: “Someone better be dead.”

“Sorry, highness.” Glitch’s voice hissed in my ear, whispering loudly. “But we have a problem. Is the queen still asleep?”

I was instantly awake. “Yes,” I murmured, throwing back the covers and rising from the bed. The Iron Queen was a somewhat heavy sleeper, often exhausted by the demands of ruling a kingdom, and tended to be cranky when woken up in the middle of the night. After getting snarled at several times for a middle-of-the-night emergency, Glitch started directing all midnight problems to me. Between us, we were usually able to handle the situation before the queen knew something was wrong.

“What’s going on?” I asked, shrugging into my clothes while still pressing the phone to my ear with a shoulder. Glitch gave a half angry, half fearful sigh.

“Kierran has run off again.”

“What?”

“His room was empty, and we think he managed to slip over the wall. I have four squads out looking for him, but I thought you should know your son has pulled another vanishing act.”

I groaned and scrubbed a hand across my face. “Get the gliders ready. I’ll be right there.”

Julie's explanation...

This scene from The Iron Knight is the most prescient of things to come. Although it is from a vision itself and may or may not actually come to pass, it shows the nature of a very important character in The Lost Prince and hints at conflicts yet to come. I hope you enjoy it!

Rebel Heart Blog Tour Interview & Giveaway

Last week, I had the amazing opportunity to interview Moira Young, author of the Dust Lands series, by phone along with a couple of other bloggers. Chatting with her and getting some very specific insights into the world of the Dust Lands, the characters and particularly the language of the books was, in a word, awesome. I adore this series and cannot wait to see what happens in Book 3.

Below is the transcript from my conversation with Moira. Check out Mundie Moms, Page Turners Blog and Supernatural Snark to see their interviews.

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Moira Young

Moira Young: Blood Red Road tells the story of Saba, an 18 year old girl living in the Dust Lands, a vast, dry, lawless place.  It starts off with her search for her kidnapped brother and goes on from there.

And it's basically a hero's journey. A western set in the future, I think, I would describe it as, amongst other things.

WPP: Ever since I started reading the series, I've been particularly interested in sort of the dialect and speech patterns and how that's reflected on the page. How did you get to that point?  How did you sort of transcribe your characters?

Moira Young: Well, let me think now.  What's the best way to talk about this?

You will have heard me talking about that early draft, which was in the third person.  I didn't realize what I needed to find was her voice.  And that’s why I was dissatisfied with that early version.  It didn't feel authentic to me, it didn't feel like I was saying what I wanted to say, even though I wasn't quite sure what that was.  I was searching for a way to tell this story about a girl whose brother had been kidnapped at some time in the future.  That was the basis for it.

And I really had to, through my very long first draft, the one that took me so long to write, I started off, you know, in the third person.  And by the time that draft ended up, I was inching towards Saba's voice.  I had gone through periods of having her be eight years old, and she just gabbled.  She would gabble in long, long, long sentences without any commas. I was trying to get into her head, I was trying to hear her.