Hey, lovelies!! It gives me great pleasure today to host C.W. Allen and her new book, “Tales of the Forgotten Founders,” here on FAB!! For other stops on her Goddess Fish Promotions Book Tour, please click on the banner above or any of the images in this post.
Be sure to make it to the end of this post to enter to win a $10 Amazon OR Barnes and Noble Gift Card!! Also, come back daily to interact with C.W. Allen and to increase your chances of winning!!
Thanks for stopping by!! Wishing you all lots of good luck in this fabulous giveaway!!
Tales of the Forgotten Founders
The Falinnheim Chronicles
Book Three
by C.W. Allen
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GENRE: Middle Grade Fantasy
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BOOK BLURB:
Zed and Tuesday ought to be living the good life. After all, it’s not every day two kids take down an evil dictator and their mom gets put in charge of an entire dimension. But after moving into Falinnheim’s palace, they learn that life as royalty isn’t as carefree as they’d imagined.
Mysterious hidden passages aren’t the only secrets lurking within the palace walls. When the siblings discover a stash of banned books, they realize everything they’ve been told about Falinnheim’s history might be a lie. And though contact between worlds has been cut off for centuries, returning home might not be as impossible as their parents claim.
Could the adventures of a runaway monk, a reluctant viking, a silent ambassador, and a rebel librarian hold the solutions to both problems? To find the truth, Tuesday and Zed will have to learn the stories of Falinnheim’s forgotten founders.
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EXCERPT ONE:
For some odd reason, Bastian started laughing. “Now you’re just messing with me,” he said, wagging an accusing finger at Tuesday. “London’s imaginary!”
Tuesday stared at him, perplexed. “No?”
“Oh come on,” Bastian insisted, “London’s in a bunch of stories. Peter Pan and Sherlock Holmes both talk about London, and they aren’t real either, you know.”
“Wait, now you know Sherlock Holmes, too? He wasn’t in any of the books you showed us.”
“That’s because he’s not from a book,” Bastian said with a shrug. “Here, see for yourself.” He scooted over to the jumble of papers on the crate shelves and pulled out a dog-eared magazine. He flipped past several black and white illustrations until he found the page he wanted, then handed it to Tuesday.
“The Valley of Fear,” she read aloud, “a new Sherlock Holmes story by A. Conan Doyle.” Her eyes flicked to the page heading. “The Strand magazine. January, 1915.”
“See?” said Bastian smugly. “London’s just a place from stories. Like Oz, or Neverland.” He laughed again. “I mean, it’s not like there’s really a land called India full of talking animals, just because The Jungle Book says so.”
Zed tried to break the news to Bastian without making him feel stupid. “Look, we know the stories are made up, but those are all real places. Well, not all of them—Neverland and Oz are imaginary—but India and London are real.”
“Have you ever been there?” Bastian argued.
“Well, no,” Zed was forced to admit. “But I’ve seen them on maps.”
Bastian just rolled his eyes. “Stop trying to prank me. Next you’ll be saying there really are giant wind storms in a place called Kansas.”
“There are!” Tuesday protested.
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GUEST POST:
World Building Inspirations
I find that, rather than a single source of inspiration that sparks an idea, most of my writing is really bringing together a fruit salad of different elements I find interesting.
The setup and world building for the Falinnheim Chronicles series came from a lot of places. I loved puzzle mysteries like The Westing Game as a kid, so these books are my attempt to give something back to the genre I love. The shape-shifting swords in the anime Bleach inspired Falinnheim’s slipsteel inventions. I had a large and comically-misbehaved dog years ago, so I wanted to incorporate the humor from that experience into Nyx’s character.
Tales of the Forgotten Founders is the series conclusion, so I needed to wrap up all the mysteries and explain how the world got started. Louis Sachar’s novel Holes and Kate Milford’s fictional city of Nagspeake gave me the idea to present this foundation as a story-within-a-story that the readers could dig into alongside the characters. The main plot action is interspersed with chapters from the history book Zed and Tuesday are reading, The Book of the Founders. These are basically self-contained short stories about people from Falinnheim’s past: a reluctant viking, a runaway teenage monk, a rebel librarian, and—surprise!—Zed and Tuesday’s own parents.
I knew even before I wrote the first book in this series that the backstory involved the ancient library of Alexandria, but as I did more research in preparation for this third book I discovered that political leaders fighting for control actually led to the famous library’s downfall, not a fire or a war as I had imagined. That conversation about book banning is incredibly relevant for today’s readers, but it wasn’t a theme I intended to explore until I was halfway through writing Tales of the Forgotten Founders—it emerged organically as I researched the real history of Alexandria. Here’s a fantastic video that sums up the history, if you’re interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvWncVbXfJ0
Bastian, a new character in this book, was a lot of fun to write. Falinnheim and the “other earth”—or the real world, as we know it—each see themselves as the regular, normal, logical way to be. So I thought it would be fun to contrast those perspectives by having Bastian read “fairy tales” about what life is like in our world, which he sees as strange and foreign. Characters in Neil Gaiman’s Stardust experience a similar shift in perspective when Victorian England collides with the magical land of Stormhold—each sees the other as otherworldly.
As you can see, bringing together all these inspirations from history, television, and other writers’ creations makes Tales of the Forgotten Founders a love letter to the stories that capture my imagination. I had a fantastic time in the world of Falinnheim, and I’m so excited to share the conclusion of Zed and Tuesday’s adventures!
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AUTHOR BIO:
C.W. Allen is a Nebraskan by birth, a Texan by experience, a Hoosier by marriage, and a Utahn by geography. She knew she wanted to be a writer the moment she read The Westing Game at age twelve, but took a few detours along the way as a veterinary nurse, an appliance repair secretary, and a homeschool parent. She writes long stories for children and short stories for former children. When she’s not writing, she helps other writers hone their craft as a board member of the League of Utah Writers.
Her debut novel Relatively Normal Secrets is the winner of the Gold Quill Award, being named the best children’s book of the year by a Utah author. The Falinnheim Chronicles series continues with The Secret Benefits of Invisibility (Cinnabar Moth, 2022) and Tales of the Forgotten Founders (Cinnabar Moth, 2023). She also has shorter work published in numerous anthologies. Keep up with her latest projects at cwallenbooks.com.
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CONNECT WITH C.W. ALLEN:
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BookBub Book Page:
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Goodreads Author Page:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2983485.C_W_Allen
Goodreads Book Page:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/62981907-tales-of-the-forgotten-founders
Amazon Author Page:
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BOOK BUY LINKS:
Amazon US Kindle eBook:
Amazon US Paperback:
Amazon US Hardcover:
Amazon CA Kindle eBook:
https://www.amazon.ca/Tales-Forgotten-Founders-C-Allen-ebook/dp/B0BZ6J8FBX
Amazon CA Paperback:
https://www.amazon.ca/Tales-Forgotten-Founders-C-Allen/dp/195397175X
Amazon CA Hardcover:
https://www.amazon.ca/Tales-Forgotten-Founders-C-Allen/dp/1953971768
Barnes and Noble NOOK eBook:
Barnes and Noble Paperback:
Barnes and Noble Hardcover:
Kobo US eBook:
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/tales-of-the-forgotten-founders
Kobo CA eBook:
https://www.kobo.com/ca/en/ebook/tales-of-the-forgotten-founders
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GIVEAWAY INFO:
C.W. Allen will be awarding $10 Amazon OR Barnes and Noble Gift Card (Winner’s Choice!!!) 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 fabulous community outreach projects and awesome giveaways on here**
This contest is sponsored by a third party. Fabulous and Brunette is a registered host of Goddess Fish Promotions. Prizes are given away by the sponsors and not Fabulous and Brunette. The featured author and Goddess Fish Promotions are solely responsible for the giveaway prize.
Thanks for hosting!
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for inviting me to your blog!
ReplyDeleteThe cover looks great. Sounds like a good story.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing, this sounds like a great book
ReplyDeleteThis looks like a great read!
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