Hi, lovelies! It gives me great pleasure today to host Jamie
Marchant and her new book, “The Kronicles of Korthlundia”! For other stops on her Goddess Fish
Promotions Book Tour, please click on the banner above or any of the images in
this post – except the Available at Amazon picture, which takes you directly to
the Amazon Book Sale Page.
Be sure to make it to the
end of this post to enter to win a $25 Amazon or Barnes and Noble Gift Card!! Also, come back daily to interact with Jamie
and to increase your chances of winning!
Thanks for stopping
by! Wishing you lots of luck in this
fabulous giveaway!
The Kronicles of
Korthlundia
by Jamie Marchant
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GENRE: Epic Fantasy
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BLURB:
“Magic, love, hate, torture, heroes, and a story that will never
stop blowing your mind!”
~ Cheree
– For Love of
Books
The
three volumes of The Kronicles of Korthlundia plus The Ghost in Exile: A
Korthlundian Kronicle brought together for one low price. In addition to the
novels, the collection features several bonus short stories, previously
available only to members of my readers’ club.
The Goddess’s Choice--In a world where the
corrupt church hides the truth about magic, the fate of the joined kingdom
falls on the shoulders of two young people from opposite ends of the social
hierarchy.
Crown
Princess Samantha’s life begins to fall apart when she starts seeing strange colors
around her potential suitors. She fears that she’s going insane--or worse that
she’s defying the Goddess’s will. Robrek is a lowly farm boy with incredible
magical powers. He has been biding his time waiting to get revenge on those who
call him a demon.
Thrown
together by chance, they must overcome their differences to fight their common
enemy Duke Argblutal, who, with dark magic, is slowly poisoning the king’s mind
and turning him against his own daughter. Time is running out for those chosen
by the Goddess to prevent the power mad duke from usurping the throne and
plunging the joined kingdoms into civil war.
The Soul Stone-- A match made by the
goddess is threatened by an Ancient Evil.
As
Samantha and Robrek prepare for their marriage and coronation, they are met
with opposition on all sides. Not all believe that the peasant sorcerer is
worthy to be king, and the young couple must perform delicate political
maneuvers to prevent the joined kingdoms from breaking apart.
As
the church splits over opposition to their union, an unseen force is poised to
release an ancient evil that was last defeated a thousand years ago. When the
Soul Stone is broken free of its bonds, all life in its path succumbs to its
power. How much will the new royal couple have to sacrifice to free the joined
kingdoms of its evil?
The Ghost in Exile—A special Kronicle outside
of the series that tells the story of Darhour. The novel takes place at the
same time as The Soul Stone. The Ghost is going to hell. Not even the goddess
can forgive his sins: assassin, oath-breaker, traitor (an affair with the queen
earned him that title). No one can ever learn the princess is his daughter. To
keep this secret, he flees to the land that turned him from a simple stable
groom into an infamous killer.
His
mission now? To find evildoers and take them to hell with him. But when an
impulsive act of heroism saddles him with a damsel who refuses to be
distressed, her resilience forces him to question why he really ran from his
daughter.
The Shattered Throne-- Queen Samantha’s spirit
brightens as the festival of renewal approaches. The Ancient Evil that drained
life from the land has been destroyed, and life is returning to the joined
kingdoms. The birth of her heir gives her even more reason to celebrate. But a
coup orchestrated by the unlikely alliance between a freedom-loving count and a
fanatical church shatters both her plans and the ancient throne itself.
With
her infant daughter missing and death and destruction spreading, Samantha finds
herself faced with an impossible choice: save her daughter or her people.
Already torn between a mother’s love and her duties as a queen, Samantha learns
that an even greater danger threatens: the goddess herself is fading. What
sacrifices will Samantha have to make to stop an evil god from taking Sulis’s
place?
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EXCERPT TWO:
At
bedtime, Alvabane sat at her dressing table brushing her long hair. It had once
been a bright, rich red, but it had dulled with age and was now mostly grey
with only a few strands of color to remind her of what once had been. It seemed
a metaphor for her life—small flashes of color to remind her of her once bright
purpose.
One
of those flashes, Erick, set her nightly goblet of fortified wine next to her
hand. She needed the strong alcohol to dull the pain of her joints so she could
sleep. She turned to thank him, but the words died on her lips as she saw the
reproach in his eyes. Alvabane turned back to her mirror. Tonight was the night
of the new moon. She should have been preparing to perform the rites of the
dark gods, not preparing for bed. “They have forgotten us,” Alvabane said. “The
Soul Stone does not live.”
Erick
made a mewing sound, reminding her what he’d sacrificed to serve her and the
dark gods. She herself had cut his tongue from his mouth when he came to her as
a ten-year-old child. He had surrendered it stoically.
“Do
you think you have sacrificed more than I?” She turned to face him. “I
performed the rites faithfully every new moon for decades. And for what, I ask
you? The power of the Stone remains trapped behind the shield the demon Armunn
created from his own soul. That shield can’t be destroyed. The Soul Stone won’t
live again!
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GUEST POST:
Top 3 Mistakes Writers Make in Creating Fierce Female Lead
Characters
I
grew up in the 1970s, a time when fierce female leads weren’t easy to come by.
Wonder Woman played by Lynda Carter was one of the few, which is why Wonder
Woman remains near and dear to my heart. (I adored the recent Wonder Woman
movie.) Wonder Woman was one of the few that showed this little girl that women
could be powerful, that women didn’t need to be passive and rely on men to save
them. While, fortunately, strong female characters are much more prevalent
today than they were in my childhood, they are no less important. They teach
young girls (or adult women) to take responsibility for their own lives and
happiness, and they teach young boys (or adult men) to respect and treat women
as equals.
There
was a time when I was happy to applaud any female character who wasn’t a
doormat, who acted for herself. But the growing number of strong female leads has
made me more critical. Here are the top #3 mistakes that I believe writers make
in creating fierce female leads. They are all mistakes that I have personally
had to overcome in my own writing.
Mistake #1: Giving the female character no flaws.
All
real people are flawed. All real people make mistakes. Even the best people
have some less than ideal traits, so a character without flaws is nothing but a
caricature. In my own writing I never had a problem writing strong, but flawed,
male characters, but I was scared that any weakness would invalidate my female
characters’ fierceness. I created feminist icons rather than living, breathing
women. Such characters are both uninteresting and unbelievable. Flawless women
can’t serve as role models because no one can identify with them. They are
dismissed as merely make believe because that is all they are.
Mistake #2: Denying the physical differences between women and men.
Whether
we like it or not (and I’ve often resented this fact), the average man is
physically stronger than the average woman, and the strongest men are stronger
than the strongest women. Men are taller, have more muscle mass, and greater
reach. In today’s world, those differences matter little. A gun is a great
equalizer in a fight. But in an epic fantasy world, those differences matter.
With training and conditioning, a woman can become a great warrior. A
well-trained woman can easily best an untrained or lesser trained man in a
fight. But an untrained woman, unless she is very lucky, will lose to even
untrained men because women are smaller and weaker. She will need to use
something other than her fists to save herself. If a writer is going to create
a bad-assed woman who beats up on men, she needs to be sure to explain how the
woman got that way. And if said bad-assed woman comes up against an equally
well trained and experienced man, she’s going to need something in addition to
fighting skills to come off as victor. Likewise, any army that relies on
physical combat is going to be composed of mostly men. A writer can put a few
women in the ranks and certainly have women in positions of leadership and
directing of the battle, but any medieval army that has an equal number of
women as men will lose. Like flawless women, characters that ignore this reality
are dismissed as make believe.
Mistake #3: Treating all traditionally female abilities as weaknesses
to be avoided.
Yes,
cooking and embroidery were once about all women were allowed to do, but that
doesn’t mean that a fierce bad-assed woman can’t also be a great cook or like
to make her own clothes. Yes, women were once often treated as little more than
decorative objects, but that doesn’t mean that after saving the day, a
bad-assed woman can’t clean up well, know what she looks good in, dress to attract
sexual attention, and still maintain her bad-assed credentials.
In
the end, the key to creating fierce female leads is remembering that women are
people, too, with everything good and bad that goes into making us human.
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AUTHOR BIO:
Jamie began writing stories about the man from
Mars when she was six, and she never remembers wanting to be anything other
than a writer. Everyone told her she needed a back up plan, so she pursued a
Ph.D. in American literature, which she received in 1998. She started teaching
writing and literature at Auburn University. One day in the midst of writing a
piece of literary criticism, she realized she’d put her true passion on the
backburner and neglected her muse. The literary article went into the trash,
and she began the book that was to become The Goddess’s Choice, which was
published in April 2012. Her other novels include The Soul Stone, The Ghost in
Exile, The Shattered Throne, and The Bull Riding Witch. In addition, she has
published a novella, Demons in the Big Easy, and a collection of short stories,
Blood Cursed and Other Tales of the Fantastic. Her short fiction has also
appeared in the anthologies Urban Fantasy, Of Dragons & Magic: Tales of the
Lost Worlds, and Waiting for a Kiss. She claims she writes about the fantastic
. . . and the tortured soul. Her poor characters have hard lives. She lives in
Auburn, Alabama, with her husband and five cats, which (or so she’s been told)
officially makes her a cat lady. She
still teaches writing and literature at Auburn University. She is the mother of
a grown son
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CONNECT WITH JAMIE:
Website:
Blog:
Newsletter:
Email:
jamie-marchant@jamie-marchant.com
Facebook:
Twitter:
BookBub Author Page:
Goodreads Author Page:
Goodreads Book Page:
Amazon Author Page:
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AMAZON BOOK BUY
LINK:
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GIVEAWAY INFO:
Jamie will be awarding a $25 Amazon or B/N GC to
a randomly drawn winner via Rafflecopter during the tour.
**This post contains affiliate links and if clicked and a
purchase is made, I may receive a small commission to help support this
blog. This does not cost you anything,
it just helps pay for all those awesome giveaways on here.**
Jamie ~ Good morning! Welcome back! It is so great to have you here again! Congrats on your new book and good luck on the book tour! :)
ReplyDeleteP.S. ~ Fabulous guest post! I really enjoyed your choice and your spin on the topic - it was a great read! :)
Thank you.
DeleteThanks for hosting!
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for taking time to bring to our attention another great read. I appreciate it and thank you also for the giveaway.
ReplyDeleteYour book sounds interesting. I hope that it is a success.
ReplyDeleteHappy Friday, thanks for sharing the great post!
ReplyDeleteSounds like a good book.
ReplyDeleteThanks for hosting me. I'd be happy to answer any questions readers might have. I'll be checking back throughout the day.
ReplyDeleteI like how much thought you put into developing the female characters. I'm sure many authors are inspired by Wonder Woman.
ReplyDeleteFlyergal82 (at -yahoo ?dot !com