Are you currently binge watching
anything on Netflix, Hulu (or elsewhere)? What keeps you glued to the screen?
Krissy: Jack Ryan. Niels, Konrad, and
Corban all love it, and my polyglot brain loves it too.
Holly: I just binged Sex Education
Season 2. I’m watching the Magicians weekly. I watch a lot of kids shows — in
that area I like Miraculous. For myself, I love fantasy that isn’t all dark and
deathy.
Do you prefer movies or TV series?
Krissy: It depends what I want out of
it. A lot of tv series, between writing and parenting, don’t stand a chance. I
mean who the hell has time for much tv? My “binge-watching” answer from above
is more like...it has taken me a MONTH to get through Season 1. That’s two episodes
a week, not even. Because of that, movies are simpler.
Holly: I love a good series, but same
as Krissy said — TV isn’t a huge priority. I like 30 minute episodes and I LOVE
a strong mini-series for that reason.
When it comes to reading do you
prefer standalones or series?
Krissy: All but one of my top favorite
books are standalones. But most of the books I own are series. So I think when
I’m looking for a gem, I’m more likely to find that in a standalone, but when I
want full immersion I need the series because it allows more time for
worldbuilding.
Holly: Series. I love the details and
development of characters and worlds, the way the world shifts as you progress
through the books.
Do you prefer to start new book
series when the first book is released or do you want for several books in the
series to be released so you can binge read?
Krissy: I’ve been following Cassandra
Clare since the first release of City of Bones. She hasn’t stopped yet and it’s
been possibly several centuries since she started.
Holly: I tend to follow releases once
I get into a series, but there is a unique joy to finding a series that has
several books already published.
Krissy: I’m a
musician and a polymath, but I devour new materials/skills and then tend to
move on from then. A hobby today is a memory tomorrow.
Holly: I love
throwing ingredients together and seeing how it works out. I love swimming,
yoga, video games (usually RPG and ones with more open worlds). I'm playing
through Lego Marvel Super Heroes 2 with my son.
What's your guilty “nerd” pleasure?
Krissy: Once I dressed my kids up like
Daleks for Steel City Comic Con. Deep in the annals of Daphne Ashbrook’s (8th
Doctor) blog there are pictures of my oldest two holding toilet plungers and
exterminating you.
Holly: I like to analyze patterns in
businesses, shows, books, everything. Things like why is every business
painting their building grey, what business are growing and which are dying? On
the kids show side, I notice that a lot of shows, even books or movies for
teens, sometimes adults, they seem to follow each other, coming out with
similar ideas at the same time. Like the movie Abominable and the Netflix
series Green Eggs and Ham, they both came out really close together and have
themes about a rich guy who wants rare animals in his collection. When you
start looking around you at the way shows and business behave you can see the
way society is being influenced, and the response shows the ideas society
accepts and lets you see where we are headed.
Have you ever peeked at the ending
of a book?
Krissy: I always read the last chapter
first. Half the purpose of reading, for me, is seeing how the author crafted
and built toward resolution.
Holly: Often. Especially if the book
is a slow start — I skip to the end and decide: is this a journey worth seeing
through?
When it comes to your own writing
are you a plotter or a pantster?
Krissy: Sometimes Holly utters the
words, “Can we plot this?” and my soul dies a little more.
Holly: Pantster. All the way. I want to
be a plotter, but in reality it makes me feel confined to the limitations of
the plot and once I break free of it everything gets better and starts to flow.
Blue Note
The Fractured Prism
Book One
Holly Graf and Krissy May
Genre: NA Urban Fantasy
The Fractured Prism
Book One
Holly Graf and Krissy May
Genre: NA Urban Fantasy
Publisher: 252 Publishing
Date of Publication: 6/21/19
ISBN: 978-1-950753-00-0
ASIN: 195075300X
Number of pages: 250
Word Count: 67,444
Cover Artist: Krissy May
Tagline: Everything has a price
Book Description:
Niels Poulsen, self-styled God of Rock and lead singer in a popular punk band, has everything he could want: family, friends, fortune, and fame. When his best friend and fellow band member, Jace, goes missing, Niels will do anything to get him home safe.
Niels discovers that their money and connections won’t help them on their journey. They will rely on an model airplane, a family secret, and a tangled magic that weaves the band into the fabric of other realms so tightly they may never make it home again. Their quest takes them across new worlds, through foreign dangers, and straight into the path of an ancient prophecy that wants Niels for itself.
If Niels and his friends survive long enough to find Jace and negotiate their way home to Manhattan, will it be worth the price? The magic says one of them will have to die…
Excerpt:
As they walked away from the sketchy
people, Niels leaned down close to Hattie’s face. “The liquor stall? Or do you
think it’s a setup? Christ.” He leaned away. “I’m as paranoid as Rhyss now.”
“No you’re not.” She side-hugged him as
they walked. “I’ve got a bad feeling too.”
“They pointed that way,” he gestured,
“so let’s go this way.”
“Good idea.”
They passed several stalls. One had all
kinds of colorful eggs on display. Another had a row of kids dancing in front
with a sign that read: Ontriss Academy of Noc Thui. Another stall had fried
dough smothered in cinnamon.
Niels’ stomach rumbled again.
They should’ve begged Kenzie for some
money before she left, but Niels had the feeling she didn’t have much in the
way of funds. Land pirates were still pirates, after all.
Something just ahead of them started
screeching.
Places to go: not in that direction.
Whatever was up there probably ate people. Niels steered them casually toward a
stall with jewelry, but Hattie was having none of being steered around.
“What is that?” She moved towards the
keening, cutting off a pissy guy with a cart full of vegetables. Some of the
food toppled off the cart.
Niels almost reached for one, but two
thoughts stopped him: One, he had no idea whether they were even edible; two,
Kenzie said they executed thieves, and this didn’t feel like a good day for
that. Dying wasn’t on his agenda.
He let Hattie pull him across the road
on her quest for death-by-screech, until they were in sight of the screeching
thing.
“Is that a
dragon?” Niels asked.
Holy shit.
Not just a
dragon, but...a dragon. It was about the size of a teacup, or a gerbil maybe
because teacups didn’t have tails, and this dragon did. It was covered with
spines and opalescent scales in every pastel color of the rainbow.
Even though it
wasn’t as big as the other dragons they’d seen in Sylem, it made the most god
awful noise to make up for its size. Niels was tempted to screech back at it,
see how it liked that. Or bring his guitar and climb into the higher notes,
with an amp.
When the dragon
saw Niels, it screeched even louder, rattling the side of its cage so violently
Niels thought it might knock itself off the table.
“It wants you,”
Hattie said.
No it didn’t.
Clearly it wanted out so it could attack him. While that technically counted as
wanting him it wasn’t the good thing Hattie’s tone made it out to be.
He stopped
freaking out. What had he just said to himself? He needed to trust that Hattie
was often more right than he was about shit.
He finished
crossing the road with her and didn’t stop her when she asked, “Can we look at
that dragon?”
The stall owner,
a beefy guy who would have been a butcher - or a Mafioso, which amounted to the
same thing - in any decent, clichéd movie, frowned at them. “You spoiled my
dragon.”
He lifted the
latch on the cage door and the little rainbow-tiled monster shot out of the
cage, directly at Niels.
Niels backed
away. He couldn’t die yet. He still had songs to write, Hattie to date, his mom
to annoy…
The dragon
landed on his shoulder, chirped once, and let out a huff of steam that
condensed into beads of water on Niels' neck.
Okay, so not
dying today. Not yet, anyway.
Niels allowed
himself to breathe.
The dragon was
kind of cute if he ignored its claws digging into his shoulder through his
shirt.
“That’s three
hundred Angmol.”
Oh yeah, Niels
could just pull that out of his ass.
“We don’t have
three hundred those things,” Hattie said.
“Or one,” Niels
muttered so only she could hear. She laughed.
About the Authors:
Holly began her career as an accountant. While her sense of humor tends appropriately dry, her love for writing far exceeds the constraints of an office job. She attended four colleges across three states in pursuit of her BS in Accounting, while taking extra courses in philosophy, law, and writing. Between words, she spends her time immersing herself in the magic of life.
Krissy lives in a chaos factory, which is run by a merciless team of miniature humans and their pets. She enjoys music, foreign languages, noise-cancelling headphones, and the smell of fresh-mowed grass. She has a useless degree in Physics and part of another useless degree in Nursing, neither of which helped in the creation of this book.
2 comments:
Your book sounds great and I'm glad I got to learn about it. Thank you!
Sounds like an interesting read - thanks for sharing
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