Debut of the Month - Guest Post by Joannah Miley

This is the third month of Debut of the Month here at Bookish Treaures. This is a monthly feature that will focus on a debut author and their novel that is releasing that month through an interview, review etc. To learn more and apply to be Debut Of The Month for December or beyond please visit my Authors/Publishers page.

This month I have chosen The Immortal Game by Joannah Miley. This is a YA/NA paranormal romance novel that I really enjoyed. Today I have a guest post by Joannah.

 

The Immortal Game by Joannah Miley

Synopsis

When struggling pre-med student Ruby West beats the unconquerable Ash at chess he becomes fixated on her. Which is great if you like smoldering blue eyes, sculpted features, and afternoons of unexpected adventure, but not so great when she discovers he is a Greek god and his father, Zeus, has forbidden the gods from interacting with humans.

Ruby soon realizes her love for Ash threatens the fragile stability that has kept the gods from meddling in the mortal world.

Before long the two find themselves on a quest to rescue a goddess, save the Earth from unending winter, and secure the right to be together forever.

Try it for yourself! Goodreads | Amazon | Amazon UK

The Making of The Immortal Game

A Greek god in love, the wrath of Zeus, a dangerous trip to the Underworld, fifty-headed giants; all these things appear in my novel, The Immortal Game.

Once people read the book, they often ask where I came up with the idea for the story.

I wish I could say the plot came to me in a flash of brilliance and that I wrote it all down in a couple of weeks or months, but the truth is I was quite methodical about it.

When knee surgery put me on crutches for six weeks in the winter of 2009, I took it as an opportunity to finally start that novel I had always dreamed of writing, but I had no idea what to write about.

I made a list of my all-time favorite authors and what I liked the most about their books and their writing:

·         Stephen King, who is known as the master of horror, is in my opinion really the master of character. His stories are so compelling because he makes the reader care about the characters from page one.

·         Jane Austen’s sweet romances have strong female characters set in a time when women had almost no direct power.

·         Kurt Vonnegut uses satire to show his optimism for the human race.

The list made me realize that I like great characters and that I believe in the power of humans to do good in the world.

To help me figure out my plot I made a list of some of my favorite movies:

·         Romancing the Stone

·         Ghost

·         The Princess Bride

·         Ever After

·         Titanic

·         Labyrinth (the Jim Henson classic)

I put the two lists together and decided to write a story that had romance, adventure, a strong female character, and spoke to the best of human nature.

But I still needed to figure out who the characters would be and what they would be doing. Again, I dug into what I found most interesting: fantasy, science fiction, and paranormal; everything from Harry Potter to The Hunger Games to Twilight.

I love how Harry Potter and Twilight show detailed and mysterious worlds existing side by side with our own; wizards and vampires walking among muggles and humans, and how The Hunger Games shows us what happens when people lose sight of their humanity.

I chose to draw inspiration from Greek mythology because it has always fascinated me. I knew immediately that my main character would be a human who falls in love with a god and creates a conflict on Olympus. But which god would she fall in love with? There were some obvious choices:

·         Apollo, the poet and musician

·         Hermes, ever playful

·         Dionysus, the god of wine and parties

 

But, all those gods felt too easy.

Which god would be the most interesting to fall in love with, or even the hardest to fall in love with? The answer to that question was obvious. It had to be Ares, the god of war.

And I knew I had my story.

 

About the Author

Joannah lives in northwest Washington State with her husband, two awesome teenagers, and a black dog that sheds relentlessly on her white furniture. When she's not writing she's usually driving a bunch of kids around town and drinking too much Coke Zero.

You can find Joannah on Google Plus, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Good Reads, and at joannahmiley.com.