Interview with fantasy author Brien Feathers

Fantasy author Brien Feathers is here today to chat about her new dark urban fantasy, Silver to the Heart, Book 1.

During her virtual book tour, Brien will be awarding a $30 Amazon or Barnes and Noble (winner’s choice) gift card to a lucky randomly drawn winner. To be entered for a chance to win, use the form below. To increase your chances of winning, feel free to visit her other tour stops and enter there, too!

Bio:
Brien Feathers is a fantasy author living in the land of permanent frost, horses, and Mongols. She likes reading, writing (of course), riding (horses and husbands), drinking dark beer, and checking things off a to-do list.

Although she claims to love everyone equally, she really loves her youngest son the most. He has autism superpowers that allow him to speak all types of rare languages including drumbeats, elevator dings, and police sirens.

Miss Feathers loves grey days, orange cats, and all creatures human or otherwise. And she hopes you will love her world (fantasy) and people (characters) as well.

Please tell us about your current release.
The Light of Adua series is about vampires, called Elders, who wield magic to protect the earth from supernatural threats. The story is told through multiple point of view characters, and in Silver to the Heart, Book 1, the two main characters are Ana and Drake.

Ana lives in New Orleans pretending to draw and sell art— she’s broke. She has disturbing nightmares about the world ending but can’t afford a therapist. One day, she goes to a bar within walking distance from her apartment and sees a boy she likes— Drake.

Turns out, Ana is a lot less disturbed than she thought, because those aren’t nightmares but visions, and the boy she likes is First Lieutenant of Elder Council, on a mission to protect her… and he is stalking her.

What inspired you to write this book?
It started with a scene: Drake came to Ana hurt, she was human but he was not… Then things just kept happening such as an appearance of a werewolf, a teleporter, and a samurai vampire (he’s my favorite).

 

Excerpt from Silver to the Heart:

Upstairs, Ana saw Drake on the floor in the same spot he’d been standing. He’d collapsed after she ran away from him. The creepy man was over Drake, pulling him by a collar like a damn dog.

“Hey!” Ana yelled and the creep stared at her and hissed with a mouth full of fangs, looking disgusting. Revolted, Ana raised the dagger, and seeing her weapon the man disappeared—vanished into thin air. Growling, Kostya appeared. Ana had to jump out of the way as he sprinted down the hall and leaped out of the window, like a maniac. Never mind, Ana thought and went to Drake.

Still in the white shirt and blue jeans he had worn to Katie’s reception, Drake was partially awake with his eyes only half-open. He didn’t have the azure jacket because he’d left that with her. Stuck together with dried blood, his hair was a darker shade of red, and dirty like a mop, his clothes had gotten raggedy. He just lay there, not moving, not being a monster but a boy she loved.

She stood over him, then knelt beside him. There was blood on his shirt that hadn’t dried yet. His face was full of bruises, old and new. What was clearly a burn stretched from the black of his head down his neck and disappeared under the collar of his shirt. It continued down his back, she had no doubt. And he has a damn collar on, like a dog. Ana wiped her face, thinking there was something wrong with her eyes, but she was just crying.

“Drake,” Ana called. “Please get up. Let’s go home.” She didn’t have a home, not really, but it’d be wherever they went together.

Drake opened his eyes. They were clear and not black, but the golden color of them had drained to piss pale yellow. He mouthed something to her, no perfect pitch, no twang, no sound.

 

What exciting story are you working on next?
Currently, I’m working on finishing Book 5, which should come out this September, and Books 6 and 7, before the end of the year. After I’m done with the Adua series, more dark fantasy is yet to come but wait for it… it’s historical.

When did you first consider yourself a writer?
Well, I’ve been a working screenwriter for over a decade now, so when I sold my first script, I called myself a writer, I suppose. But now that I’m writing what I want, I’m calling myself an author.

Some of the characters for the Adua series, such as the Guardian of Light from the fallen realm have lived in my head for years, and now they are finally free to live their lives out on the pages and tell their stories.

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 write full-time but I’m also a stay-at-home mom who moonlights as the bookkeeper for my family’s business. I try to read for at least an hour a day, so my morning starts with reading at 5 a.m., then I answer emails and catch up on all things indie author related. I live in Mongolia, so I have about a twelve-hour time difference from the United States and things tend to pile up overnight.

Then I write till the kids wake up around nine. My seven-year-old son has autism and he’s non-verbal; we’re on a protocol and that takes a lot of time. Once the kids wake up, my day is booked till 8 p.m. but I try to get in some writing when they’re in school unless I have a family business thing I need to do.

Being Mongolian, we have horses, and my husband is in the countryside tending to them a lot. If he’s home, I try to hang out with him for at least a couple of hours and watch a film. If not, I bring my laptop into the kitchen in the evening and write as I keep an eye on the children.

That’s my day, except for Sundays. Sunday I deep clean the house, which consumes my entire day. So, when I say, I write full-time, I mean I force it into my schedule whilst neglecting the children and the husband.

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?
An interesting thing, I have none. Wait, I speak out loud as I write… I’m doing it right now.

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
Okay, it’s going to sound incredibly stupid for a thirty-seven-year-old to be saying it, but here it goes, “When I grow up, I want to be Miss Universe.” Not a doctor, lawyer, or a humanitarian, I just wanted to be pretty (because I wasn’t, y’all). Boys my age used to call me ‘mom’ because I was a foot taller than them and used to wear my mom’s clothes— because we were poor.

A funny thing about being Mongolian, I live in a third-world country still shifting from its post-communist era.

Anything additional you want to share with the readers?
Please check out the Adua series. Book 1 is perma-free across all retailers. It has vampires but a minimal about of smut, rather, I chose to play with the concept of kindness— what it is, and what it isn’t.

Do you remember Drake? He’s a telekinetic vampire, who’s really in love with a dead guardian from a fallen realm and has an alarmingly obsessive relationship with someone who he claims is like a father to him. So, why not read my book and be disturbed? It has foul language, lots of violence, and relationships between characters who are centuries old.

Thank you for having me here, and as I say, “Let’s voyage through the darkness together.”

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