Emily Ward
About the Author:
Emily Ward is the author of Passages, Finding Fiona, and The Protectors series. One of her first stories featured a young girl whose doll came to life. The rest is history. She spent years writing mainly fanfiction (thank you, J.K. Rowling!), but has since ventured into originality. When it comes to fiction, she writes mainly young adult, contemporary, and fantasy. She also writes nonfiction, ranging from stories of her travels to thoughts on the Bible. Aside from writing, she loves reading, traveling, learning about God, sociology, religion, and Reeses sticks. Currently, she lives in Salem, Oregon with her husband Chris and their cats. Visit her website at http://emilyannward.com.
Interview with Emily Ward
Emily Ward is author of Promising Light and its three prequel novellas, Finding Fiona, and other novel(s), novella(s) and short story’s.
Holly: Hi, Emily! Can you tell us a little about yourself?
Emily Ward: Sure! My name's Emily, I'm married, and my husband and I have two great cats. Right now, we live in Oregon Hawaii Colorado
Holly: Do you remember how you first started writing when you were young?
Emily Ward: Yes, I do! I'm not sure how old I was, but I'm pretty sure my first story (on my own, not for school or anything) was about a doll that came to life, and the little girl who owned the doll. I wrote it in one of those black and white composition notebooks and showed it to my mom and my brother. I'm sure they were nice and supportive, but oddly the only response I really remember is my brother telling me that when someone new started speaking, I had to start a new paragraph. My mom probably still has that notebook somewhere. I wrote a lot of stories after that, most of them inspired by movies I'd seen or books I'd read. Diamond thieves, twins with secret powers, things like that.
Holly: Can you tell us a little bit about the first novel in your Protector series, Promising light?
Emily Ward: Promising Light is a fantasy novel about Grace, a young noble. She's in a secret relationship with another noble, Dar, but he leaves her soon after a mysterious man warns Grace about him and his family. She's soon kidnapped by Dar's family, and her questions are answered when she realizes they're shape changers. She's pulled into a struggle between the shape changers and a group of nobleman who call themselves the Protectors. The shape changers think she can break a curse set on their family, but Grace isn't sure whether to trust them. She wants to help, but she'd have to leave behind everything she's ever known. Not the snappiest description, but that's what the blurb is for! ;)
Holly: Your fantasy novel, Promising Light actually has three prequel novellas. Can you tell us a little bit about them and how they connect to the novel?
Emily Ward: Yes, definitely. The first, Shifting Light, takes place ten years before Promising Light; Fire and Light varies from eight to five years; and the last one, The End of Light, is two years earlier. They mainly focus on the beginning of the curse that has made the shape changers (also called Avialies) unable to have children, and how the Avialies react to it, particularly a group of teenagers and young adults. It involves some minor characters in Promising Light, such as Sashe, as well as major characters, such as Dar and Sierra. Shifting Light and Fire and Light are more YA Romance, but The End of Light has some very big events that affect the way things in Promising Light happen. I'm hoping that people who enjoy Promising Light will be able to learn a bit more about the characters through the novellas. But people who haven't read Promising Light would enjoy them, too, and will hopefully want to read on to see what happens!
Holly: Can you read Promising Light with out reading the novellas or would you recommend the novellas first to readers?
Emily Ward: No, you can read Promising Light first. In fact, if you read it first, you figure everything out about the shape changers and the Protectors at the same pace as Grace, the main character. If you read the novellas first, you'd know what Grace was looking for. At the same time, if you read Promising Light first, you'll know the outcome of some of the big conflicts in the novellas. I think it will be mostly up to personal preference. But I do recommend that the novellas are read in order, whether you're reading them before or after Promising Light.
Holly: You have another novel called Finding Fiona. Can you tell us a little bit about this novel and your inspiration for it?
Emily Ward: Yes, Finding Fiona YA scifi. It might be more of a novella at 45K words or 175 pages, but some people consider it too long for a novella. Anyways, Fiona loses her memory after a brutal attack. She has bits and pieces of her memory, but not enough to know what happened to her. Four months pass before she meets someone who claims to be from her past, then she finds out that the world actually thinks she's dead. This launches her journey to figure out what happened and how she escaped the men who killed her parents. The very basic ingredients actually came from a prompt: girl loses memory, someone finds her and says he's lucky he found her first because others are looking for her. And I took it and ran with it. I had to figure out what had happened to her and what she would do with that information. It was really fun to write.
Holly: Can we expect more works from you this year; are you perhaps in the works of anything at the moment?
Emily Ward: Yes, you should see Promising Light's sequel by the end of the year. I don't want to make any promises about when, but I'm about halfway through it right now and I hope it'll be up in the summer. Depending on how this book ends, there could be a third book in the series.
I'm also working on a fantasy novel called The Illusionist. Here's a rough blurb: Elliana has a secret. She can trick people's senses: make them see someone who's not there, taste food that doesn't exist, even feel things that are only in her head. She's determined to keep this secret and tries to live a normal life. Well, except for trying to dethrone an unjust king. She and the rest of the Council are trying to place someone new on the throne through the tournament that crowns the king every seven years, but they have to work through years of the king's blackmail, flattery, extortion, and bribes. When she realizes her powers could help them win, she has to choose who to help: the boy who's like her brother or the boy she's fallen in love with.
It's a very similar genre to Promising Light: fantasy romance that has a good/evil struggle but isn't on a "save the world" level. I've put it on hold for a bit for The Protectors series, but I've had a lot of fun with it so far and can't wait to finish it.
Holly: You have three collection novels, which I assume is the same as an anthology, short stories that have a common theme all by you? Did you set out to write the collections or did they just come together on there own?
Emily Ward: Passages and Beyond Home have stories and each are written by me. Love, Me (which should be released just a day after this interview posts!) is actually an anthology, so there are six other authors who have stories in the collection, too! As for my collections, they just came together on their own. Passages is seven different young adult stories I wrote, and I realized they'd make a good collection because they deal with similar subjects: romance, family, friends. Each one is pretty short, too, hardly over 3000 words. Beyond Home has three longer stories that deal mostly with people in their 20s (I think it's called "new adult"?). Each of the stories have travel involved: sisters going to the Grand Canyon after their dad dies; a woman reminiscing about a road trip she took with an ex; and a man going on a spontaneous trip to Hawaii with a runaway bride. It's funny how some themes reappear in my writing.
Holly: Where can we purchase your works at?
Emily Ward: My books are available pretty much everywhere: Amazon (my Author Central profile is http://amazon.com/author/emilyannward), Barnes and Noble, the iBookstore, and smaller retailers like Kobo, Sony, Diesel ebooks, and Smashwords (http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/emilyward). I sell the paperback of Finding Fiona on my website, too, and Promising Light's paperback will be for sale there once it's available.
Holly: Do you have anything you would like to say to your readers?
Emily Ward: Thank you guys so much for reading! I appreciate every sale, every review, every read. It's amazing to think that people out there are actually reading and enjoying my books. So thank you!
Books by Emily Ward
The Protectors Series
#1: Promising Light
Prequel Novellas
#2: Frie and Light
#3: The End of Light
Single Title
Finding Fiona
Death of the Sun
Melanie's Secrets
Agape
The Prodigal Daughter
The Jensens
You Remember
Invisible Walls
Find Emily at: Website | Blog | Twitter | Facebook
Emily Ward has offered to giveaway two (2) eBook copies of Promising Light (The Protectors, #1)!
"Grace began a secret courtship with Dar for the thrill of doing something against her father, the king’s general. She hadn’t planned on falling in love with him. When Dar suddenly leaves her, she searches for answers, reluctant to let him go. Everyone seems determined to keep the truth from her—until she’s kidnapped by Dar’s family. They’re shape changers who claim she can break a curse set on them ten years ago by the Protectors, a group of noblemen determined to stifle magic in the name of safety.
Torn between two worlds, Grace isn’t sure who to trust. If the curse endures, Dar’s family could die out forever. But to help them, she’ll have to leave behind everything she knows."
All you have to do to enter for a chance to win is fill out the Rafflecopter form below.
**Just sign in via Facebook or with your name and email, and click 'DO IT!' --Green Button-- read the instructions/directions of the entry well please, complete it and then click 'Enter'.
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