Yay to my first blog tour! This book blog tour is about Ordained by Devon Ashley. Be sure to visit Devon's page HERE to enter to win a signed book, e-books, or some bookmarks! There is also a list of others who joined the tour and some of them have giveaways as well.
Normally, the school creates the hunters - not the monsters.
Abby Sorrensten likes to play rough. Ripping the horns off the foreheads of demons, manipulating lightning and setting things on fire with the flick of your wrist can give you a serious rush. So she probably wasn’t the best choice for the Order’s experimental training program. Thirteen years of isolation, lack of affection and a bruised and broken body from horrendous training sessions creates more than just an exceptional fighter. It creates an evil within - an evil responsible for several deaths the night she left.
Two hundred years later Abby resurfaces as the very thing the Order trained her to kill: a vampire. A mythical demon has set his sights on the school and only the ordained hunter has the powers to face it. Unbeknownst to the Order, Abby’s their precious ordained one and their only chance for survival. As much as she would love to leave them hanging, she’s not willing to risk the life of Emily, a fellow friend and hunter also fed up with the organization.
But for Abby, locking herself away in a fortress with angry descendents of those she killed causes suspicions and tensions to run high. Abby must learn the demon’s weaknesses for battle before the Order learns hers.
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Ordained is described as an Urban Fantasy novel which is suitable for young adults with the main characters being in their 20s. There is some romance but not much since the couple in the story is already married. Devon assures everyone the romance will be picking up in Catacombs which will be out in 2013. This is also a book of many POV's which I love but many not so you have been warned.
Since I have already read the book, you can find my review HERE, I am doing my first author interview with Devon! Yay!
Out of everything in the world, why writing? I think most people with crazy-active imaginations want to get some of their thoughts down on paper, or I guess nowadays, on a word doc or blog. :) Even as a little girl I knew my dreams were weirder than my friends, and they loved to hear the stories I dreamed about each night. It wasn't until junior high that I started using my dreams for creative writing assignments...and my teachers still use them. Seriously, my 7th grade English teacher showed them to me once, and I cringed when I saw the bubbly handwriting and read the story. I was like, "OMG! You show this? This is horrible!" She laughed at me, and replied, "Not for a thirteen year old, it isn't." Anyways, I dabbled here and there with writing over the years, starting off with screenplays. Ordained placed in one of the screenplay competitions and one of the judges told me she loved my story and suggested I turn it into a novel. Years later I finally did...and now the novel has won a writing competition for Best Fantasy too. :)
Can you describe that first moment when you realized that this is what you wanted to do? I don't think that happened until I completed Ordained...which took me about two years to seriously sit down and complete. It's my first book, so I'll admit it's the weirdest to me. With each book you write, your story, your words, your flow...everything just comes together better. I by no means think Ordained is bad (it did win Best Fantasy in the 2011 Reader Views competetion), but I can tell with each book I write, the next one is always better to me, and there's less work for my betas and editors to tackle. Also, I've learned that I like writing different types of novels. My Immortal Archives are New Adult Urban Fantasy, my Falling novels are Edgy, Mature YA Romance with a Paranormal twist, and my upcoming Dust Trilogy is YA Fantasy about a pixie unlawfully imprisoned by the faeries for slave labor, with a little forbidden romance thrown in. :) And I have a feeling my genres won't stop there, cause now that I've started writing, I find it really hard to focus on anything else! I love it!
How did you come up with Ordained? I'm sure you've heard this before, but I dreamed up the main characters Abby and Noel back in the nineties. I don't know, maybe I watched an episode of Buffy before I went to bed. :) The other characters and the baseline story I created later when I decided to start writing screenplays. I guess the good thing about taking ten years to write these novels, is that I've had a long time for the series to ferment in my head. In order for the big secret to come about the way I want in the final book, I know exactly where and when smaller secrets need to be revealed so the whole series flows. You'll get a hint of what that big secret is in the third book Catacombs, which I'm writing right now. <evil laugh>
How long does it take you to write a complete novel? That first one aside, LOL, usually six to eight weeks for a single point of view first draft, which I typically edit as I go so I can send sections at a time to my beta readers. The Immortal Archives takes about thee months since I've got four main characters, each with a point of view to write. Though I will admit I like the story to ferment in my head for a few months before I start writing. Then it seems to just flow right through me when I sit down to write it.
Any advise for aspiring authors? Always work on your writing and pay attention to the things your betas/editors tell you so you don't keep making the same mistakes. And don't be afraid to self-publish. I know people that have spent years and been given hundreds of rejections trying to obtain an agent. I can't help but think, "Do you really want the agent 265th on your list to represent you? Sounds like you're desperate at this point." If your book is amazing and people love it, but you can't find the right agent to represent you, self-publish, then hit up some publishers once it's released. If it's all that, they're gonna notice the rave reviews and rating status. And once you can get the attention of a publisher, most agents will line up to negotiate your deal (if you want one at that point). And FYI...there are several indies out there that have been able to quit their job and focus on writing because they get enough in royalties each month. This is not an unattainable dream.
Thank you for reading! Don't forget to check out the other blogs!
