Welcome to a new month, readers! Kicking it off with me is author Darby Harn. We’re talking about his new spec fic, A Country of Eternal Light.
During his virtual book tour, Darby will be awarding a $25 Amazon or Barnes and Noble (winner’s choice) gift card. To be entered for a chance to win, use the form below. To increase your chances of winning, feel free to visit his other tour stops and enter there, too.
Bio:
Darby Harn studied at Trinity College, in Dublin, Ireland, as part of the Irish Writing Program. He is the author of the sci-fi superhero novel EVER THE HERO. His short fiction appears in Strange Horizons, Interzone, Shimmer, The Coffin Bell and other venues.
Welcome, Darby. Please tell us about your current release.
A Country of Eternal Light is the story of Mairead, a young woman on a remote Irish island at the end of the world, literally and figuratively. A rogue black hole tears apart the solar system. The Earth has a year left, maybe. Mairead is ready to go now, having recently lost her son. One day on the shore she meets Gavin, an American who has come to scatter his father’s ashes. They form an unlikely connection and find a strange comfort in their confusion.
What inspired you to write this book?
This book came from a few different places. One is my experience of living in Ireland. One is trying to process the death of my father. One is just my fascination with this idea of the concept of the rogue black hole, this all-consuming thing that is too fitting a metaphor for grief. It was really two ideas coming together that evolved into the book as it is now.
Excerpt from A Country of Eternal Light:
There is success in death.
Fish flop in confusion as the sea peels back to the mainland. Dinner tonight. Breakfast tomorrow, if I’m thinking of tomorrow. I leave them in the goopy, gasping muck. I keep walking. I am far now, farther than I can run when the tide returns. Bereft water jostles in pitted rock. Strands of seaweed coil around my feet. I feel your pull.
Here I am.
This buzz in the air. The tide coming back, surely. I look up, expectant. Meteors rip through the blue, faster than any wish can catch. Broken stalks of rainbows on the horizon. Comets like white lies. Three more today, competing with the big one they call Medusa, with all her snake tails.
I wait for my success.
The sea must have run off to the States with everyone else. That buzz again. Louder. Closer. The turboprop from the mainland comes out of nowhere. The plane hasn’t been over in weeks. Most days, high tide swamps the eastern horn of the island, the bit of Inishèan that can accommodate a runway. Right next to the cemetery.
Take offs and landings.
The sea is out. The plane is able to make a landing. He might have medicine, the pilot. Food. He’ll have room, for the trip back to Galway. Someone will get delivered today.
I inch back through the green sludge of exposed seabed. Why am I careful? Why am I in a hurry to see someone else get what they want? The envy will keep me warm, I suppose. I run through the beach grass, out to the low road curving with the island. A dozen or so hopeful passengers run toward the landing strip from the village, tufts of clothes puffing out of their luggage.
Buckled tarmac rattles the plane, but she lands. Props still whirring. He’s not going to be long on the ground, the pilot. I climb the drumlin cushioning the airstrip from the tides. The stranded tourists all clamor for a spot on the plane, as they’ve done every time since the ferry quit and stranded them here three months back. Three months.
Feels like three years.
Eight seats. A hundred people. More, like. I’m not envious. A few people pay their way on, and then the plane takes off again. Men and women fall down on the tarmac, heads in their hands.
Denied, again.
Colm’s little hatchback putts down the road toward the airstrip. What’s he out here for? He honks through the tourists, and pulls in to the car park. Someone gets in. A man. Lord God. There’s someone.
Someone has come to the island.
What exciting story are you working on next?
I am just putting the finishing touches on book three of my Eververse series, which is a literary take on the idea of superheroes. Publisher’s Weekly said of the first book, Ever The Hero, “Harn’s entertaining debut uses super powers as a metaphor to delve into class politics in an alternate America.” Nothing Ever Ends will be out in September or October.
When did you first consider yourself a writer?
Goodness. I remember people telling me very concretely I would never be one. That was thirteen, fourteen. I was always writing. Little stories, comics. I was six or so and knew I wanted to write.
Do you write full-time? If so, what’s your work day like? If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find time to write?
I do write full time. It’s a 12-hour day. Sometimes more. I’m a freelance writer and I write for a variety of different websites on all manner of pop culture subjects like movies, TV, and comics. I write for Screenrant, CBR, Star Wars News Net, and Movie News Net. My days are very full. With any kind of writing, creative or otherwise, you just have to make it work. It will be terrible in the beginning, but embrace that, work, revise, mold, shape, and just write. You’ll be fine.
What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?
I don’t know if you’d call it a quirk, but I keep it all in my head. I don’t outline or do much in the way of notes beyond furiously thumb random bits of dialogue into my phone.
As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
I wanted to be an astronaut. Still do.
Anything additional you want to share with the readers?
If they’re fans of David Mitchell, they might find my book interesting. It’s a similar approach to folding the realistic into the fantastic.
Links:
Website | Twitter | Goodreads | Amazon author page | Kindle
Thanks for being here today.
Thank you so much!
