Welcome to The Lichgates Hidden World Blog Tour…

I had the chance of connecting with the very talented S.M. Boyce on Twitter and as she announced her Hidden World Blog Tour, I immediately raised my hand (or sent her a message :D).

First let me introduce you to her book:

Lichgates (Summary from Goodreads): The Grimoire turns its own pages and can answer any question asked of it, and Kara Magari is its next target. She has no idea what she’s getting herself into when she stumbles across the old book while hiking a hidden trail. Once she opens it, she’s thrown into Ourea: a beautiful world full of terrifying things that all want the Grimoire’s secrets. Everyone in this new world is trying to find her, and most want to control her.  Braeden Drakonin grew up in Ourea, and all he’s ever known of life is lying. The Grimoire is his one chance at redemption, and it lands in his lap when Kara Magari comes into his life. He has one question to ask the book – one question that can fix everything in his broken life – and he’s not letting Kara out of his sight until he gets an answer.  There’s no escaping Ourea. There’s no going back now.

Then we have a special message coming directly from S.M. Boyce:

And S.M. has been kind enough to answer the questions I sent her. It is the FIRST interview I publish on this blog (and I really enjoyed it so probably not the last :D)

• When and where did you have the first idea for LICHGATES?

The first idea for Lichgates came almost a decade ago in my aunt’s basement, when my brothers and I were making little wands and spell casters and other fun things out of clay. I actually still have them, somewhere! These toys sparked a constant daydream about what creatures would use them, and that daydream snowballed into 7 years of development and world building — and, ultimately, the complete removal of the original spell casters from the series. Haha. But, as the old writing adage goes, you need to be able to “kill your darling passages” to write successfully.

The Grimoire Trilogy has been a long while in the making, and I’ve put every ounce of creativity I could spare into making it the best it can be. I really hope you enjoy it.

• One sentence of your book which you’d like to share with us:

This one is really hard for me to answer. I hope you know that! One of the hardest from this entire blog tour! Ultimately, though, I have to say I’d go with this one:

“Kara thought of Twin and Adele and Garrett and Braeden and wondered how many of the few people she still had left in the world would survive, since she didn’t quite have the best track record with that sort of thing.”

• What are you the most proud of when it comes to your writing?

I think we writers are inherently self-depreciating. It keeps us modest and constantly striving to improve, so it’s hard for me to be proud of anything more than having a published book. That is an incredible, surreal, tear-jerking feeling.

I guess if I had to pick any one thing, I’d say I’m fairly good at describing the world around the characters. I’ve had many readers compliment my world-building description, and I love immersing myself in the ‘where’. You can check out a few of these reviews here  and here .

• Your most embarrassing writing moment was…

Contradicting myself in one of my first drafts of Lichgates. You know how you can get so into a story that you can’t see beyond the words on the page? I don’t remember the details, but the first reader draft had someone saying they would never do something one sentence…and then they did that without a second thought later on in the book. Oops! I turned red when my beta readers pointed it out, but that’s why we have writing circles!

• Where do you usually write?

I live on the edge of a nature preserve, so I tucked my desk in a corner where I can look out the window. It’s beautiful! And when the wind gets going, there are all sorts of crazy noises. It’s both tense and beautiful. I love my writing spot.

• One piece of advice for writers:

Write for yourself.

You are putting your name on this story, and it ultimately reflects what you think is artistic and beautiful. If you write for others and always bend yourself around others’ input, you will lose the story you originally wrote. It will lose its meaning. So write what makes you happy. You will never be able to please everyone else, so it’s crucial that you are happy with what you put out there.

• Imagine you can go back in time and have a face-to-face with teenie S.M. Boyce: what advice would you give her? (yes I’m all about giving advice today :-))

I would probably tell myself to invest in Google. Short of that, I’d sit back and sigh deeply as I watched myself do stupid things. The mistakes I made make me who I am today, and I’m better off for them. It would be hard to watch, but I know it’s for the better that nothing in my past change. Except maybe a nice investment in Google. Money, I’d like. Haha!

For those who would like to snag their own copy of Lichgates, you can go to any of these sites:

• Amazon USA
• Amazon UK
• Barnes & Noble
• Smashwords
• CreateSpace
• Directly from S.M. Boyce

And as S.M. Boyce explained, she prepared a treat for you 😀  By clicking on the Rafflecopter image, you will access the giveaway for an e-book copy of Lichgates or a set of Grimoire Book Swag…

And of course you can win a Grand Prize  – including Amazon gift cards, signed books… – on her blog (just click the banner below).

Thanks again for stopping by, S.M. Boyce :D!