Atwater-Rhodes is currently gearing up for the release of her new novel, Promises to Keep.
Promises to Keep synopsis from Random House:
The compendium of creations (SingleEarth, the Bruja guilds, the Midnight empire) intertwine in an exciting, unsettling plot featuring happenings both accidental and deliberate that will forever change the alternate landscape inhabited by vampires, Tristes, shapeshifters et al. It all begins with a wrong turn and a crashed party, and from there it’s an epic clash of elements and the promise of more chaos still to come. At the center of the storm is Jay, a young vampire hunter that no one would ever have predicted might be Earth’s best bet to thwart the rise of a vampire-controlled slave empire called Midnight. Teens will find themselves drawn to Jay, who struggles to prove his worth even while he has his own fears that those who have written him off may be right to do so.
Some of her fans may not know this but Atwater-Rhodes also participates in National Novel Writing Month (also known as NaNo), in which writers try to write a 50,000 word novel in just 30 days. That’s actually how her new novel Promises to Keep began. The opening scene is an intentional juxtaposition against Shattered Mirror in which Sarah walks into a vampire party. Promises to Keep opened up in a similar way but with a twist. She says, “I had this character that I just wanted to try – Jay – and he grabbed it by the reins and ran for a while. Unfortunately the way NaNo’s go I got part of the way through the story in the first draft and had no idea what I was doing. Because I had a character, I had this opening scene that I really liked and my character really just wanted to take a nap instead of engaging in any real plot.”
“I had characters who could finally make it happen.”
She accredits a turn in her process of the novel to the member of her writing group who suggested to her that if she was bored of the story she either had to stop writing it or change it and do something unexpected. That’s when Atwater-Rhodes got the idea to revisit and idea she had played around with about a decade ago but hadn’t had the courage to go for. Something had changed since she first came up with the idea. “I had characters who could finally make it happen – who were powerful enough to – who were strong enough to perform the magic that I needed them to perform. I just took the plunge and I wrote the manuscript.”
This needed to happen, says the author. The humans, Bruja Guild, Midnight, and Single Earth are all at the height of their power and so something needed to give. The worlds will collide in what she says will be an unexpected way. She also explains that a lot of readers are going to be concerned about where the story ends and will want more. But she says, “That’s okay with me, I’m looking forward to seeing what happens next.”
Most of her ideas and characters come to form in the most random ways, says Atwater-Rhodes. She tells us that most of her ideas start with a character’s line. “I’ll have a single line from a character or single moment of interaction that just pops into my head. Sometimes it’s something that I saw in the subway or sometimes I’m just driving listening to the radio and it just shows up. And a lot of the ideas don’t pan out and some of them like Jay and Promises to Keep are pretty big stories.”
Jay, she says, came out of nowhere. It started with a 100 word drabble about a lizard that she wrote down. “I had this character contemplating a lizard – that’s the kind of thing Jay does,” she says, “and then he showed up in All Just Glass as a supporting character and was intriguing enough that I needed to take a closer look at him.”
Fans can also expect to see many familiar faces along with some new ones. We’ll be meeting Lady Brina di’Birgetta for the first time, who is the sister of Lord Daryl from Midnight Predator. Caryn Smoke will also be playing a large part in the novel and we’ll meet her fiancé. We’ll also see one of her favorite characters from Demon in My View as well as Jaguar from Midnight Predator and Kendra. And the novel won’t just focus on the action; Atwater-Rhodes teases that there will be a little bit of romance. While she says there will be some interesting pairings, Jay and romance are a strange combination. She explains, “As he puts it – it’s hard to get a date when you can read everyone’s thoughts so everyone’s gross to you and their internal monologue is just so much more interesting than what they’re saying out loud.”
Atwater-Rhodes also says her favorite scene to write in Promises to Keep was between Jay and Xeke, which she attributes to Xeke being an outrageous flirt. “I think they’re both such brash and outlandish characters in such ways that putting them together was just hysterical,” she says. “It was really hard to get them back on task but it was a lot of fun to write.” She also adds that the two characters were just fun to have together.
“‘Promises to Keep’ has kind of left me at a loose end.”
This may be sad for some fans to learn but Promises to Keep will be the last book in the Den of Shadows series, although she’s not sure how her publisher Random House will feel about it if she says that she considers this new novel to be the last in the series that kickstarted her career. Fear not, it won’t be her last novel about the world she created. She explains, “I do have more stories that I’m planning on writing. But like I said the world is very different.”
Currently, Atwater-Rhodes is focusing on a new trilogy called the Maeve’ra Trilogy which she tells us looks back in time at a pivotal moment in the Nyseusigrube history. The first book in the trilogy called Bloodwitch is in the process of being revised. She is also working on some other stories at the same time, which she said is to play around with her world and try to figure out what it looks like now. She says, “Promises to Keep has kind of left me at a loose end, too, trying to figure out what’s next. So I’m playing around trying to figure out what the world does look like now. I’m mainly just experimenting.”
On top of that she is working on a modified Biology textbook for her students at the Special Education program where she works. Another non-writing project she tells us about is online, which she explains continues after Promises to Keep is released and depends highly on reader participation. She also jokes, “And of course I’m also rewriting the fantasy novel or trilogy that I mentioned earlier – no idea what I’ll ever do with it.”
In a final tease, the author says that everything in her world will change after Promises to Keep.
Fans can pre-order ‘Promises to Keep’ at Random House or Amazon.
Photo credit: Carolynne Bailey/Random House
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