Hello!
I know a lot of you showed interest when I was reading Neptune's Tears and wanted to find out more about the book. I had the good luck to be offered a place in the blog tour for this book and I hope that this furthers your interest in what looks to be a very interesting series with a great idea behind it.
Susan has kindly taken some time from her schedule to write a guest post, exclusively for this blog. Hopefully you'll learn something new and be encouraged to give Neptune's Tears a try.
Enjoy!
A Guest Post from Susan Waggoner
Titles are important to me. As a reader, I like books with alluring titles and books that follow the old-fashioned tradition of giving chapters titles as well. To me, these are little messages from the author, the place where he or she steps away from the narrative and sends a note directly to the reader. As a writer, titles act as a kind of compass, pointing the way through the unknown wilderness of the story.
The day I started writing Zee’s story, I knew exactly how it should begin. I had a strong mental image of this young, competent girl swinging self-confidently into A&E, eager to use her empath skills to help others. Of course, I had to invent some patients for her, and all of a sudden Ellie Hart appeared on the page. Like Zee, she arrived as a fully formed character, someone who was a kindred spirit for Zee but who was much older and wiser.
Before I knew it, the story of Mrs. Hart’s diamonds - famously called Neptune’s Tears - unfolded and I realised that the diamonds embodied a major theme of the book. Namely that the things we do in life can have unpredictable and even unfavourable consequences, but that doesn’t mean we should fear the future or stop exploring its possibilities. This theme surfaces in Zee’s own life several times and will continue to guide and inspire her as the story continues in Starlight’s Edge.
I also enjoyed giving each chapter a title, a habit leftover from being a big Nancy Drew fan when I was young. It gives each chapter an individual identity and helps me to keep my focus while I write. I hope each one is as an invitation to the reader, something that says “Come on, let’s see what happens next!”
For every writer, the fun part of writing a book is seeing the cover for the first time. We are lucky to have so many talented designers in publishing and I am always awed and delighted at the work they produce. Aside from loving the starlit, luminous blue background of the Neptune’s Tears cover, the aspect I like the most is the skyline silhouette. This is because, although the skyline is clearly borrowed from the future, I can also see bits and pieces of the London I know and love, a city of which one never tires.
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Thank you so much to Susan for providing this guest post, and also to Piccadilly Press.
If this has made you interested, why don't you...
AND
follow the rest of the blog tour!
