Guest Post: Author Cherie Reich (Reborn Blog Tour!)

Today, author Cherie Reich is dropping by to explain why she reads fantasy. Be sure to check out the links to her new novel, Reborn, a Greek mythology-influenced YA high fantasy.

 

Why Cherie Reich Reads Fantasy

I didn’t start out reading fantasy. My fantasy experience as a child revolved around Disney movies. I delved more into mysteries and horror as a child. I loved RL Stine’s Goosebumps series. I couldn’t keep my hands off the next Nancy Drew book. I watched Scooby Doo and Inspector Gadget.

From childhood, I graduated to Stephen King and Michael Crichton. I couldn’t stop reading horror, mysteries, and thrillers. I watched The X-Files, CSI, Criminal Minds, etc. I loved it.

Then, my friend told me about Mercedes Lackey. That moment changed my life. I picked up her Magic’s Pawn. I fell in love with the world, the characters. I started snatching up as many books as possible from her Valdemar series. My friend and I even created a roleplaying game featuring her characters and characters we created in her worlds.

Then, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone movie was about to come out. I devoured the first four books, which were out at the time. I read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and so many other types of fantasy books. Recently I’ve been reading Brandon Sanderson’s work, and man, I’m crushing hard on his world building abilities.

I couldn’t get enough of magical worlds which contained elements of mystery and horror. Who wouldn’t want to live in a magical world, after all? I found my home within these worlds.

Do you read fantasy books? What are your favorites?

 

To save a kingdom, a prophetess must challenge Fate. 

On the day of Yssa’s death and rebirth, the god Apenth chose her as the Phoenix Prophetess.

Sea serpents and gods endanger the young prophetess’s journey and sour the omens. Yssa is cursed instead of blessed, and her duties at the Temple of Apenth prove it. She spends her days reading dusty scrolls, which does nothing to help her forget Tym, the boy back home. But the annoying yet gorgeous ferryman’s son Liam proves to be a distraction she can’t predict, even though he rarely leaves her alone for two sand grains.

Her boring temple life screeches to a halt when visions of her parents’ murders consume her. Yssa races across an ocean to stop the future. If she can’t change Fate, she’ll refuse to be the Phoenix Prophetess any longer. Fate, however, has other plans for her and the kingdom.

Yssa must either accept her destiny or fight to change Fate.

Available in Ebook and Print!

To purchase: Amazon | Createspace | GooglePlay | Kobo | Nook | OmniLit | Smashwords | Other Retailers 

Click here to add on Goodreads.

The authors of Untethered Realms and I are giving away over $50 worth of books to one lucky winner. The giveaway is open internationally. A Rafflecopter giveaway.

A self-proclaimed bookworm, Cherie Reich is a speculative fiction writer and library assistant living in Virginia. Her short stories have appeared in magazines and anthologies, and her books include the horror collection Nightmare, a space fantasy novella collection titled Gravity, and the fantasy series The Foxwick Chronicles and The Fate Challenges. Reborn is her debut novel. She is Vice President of Valley Writers and a member of the Virginia Writers Club and Untethered Realms. For more information, please visit her website.

IWSG: The Slow-Poke Edition... (#12)

Insecure Writers' Support Group (IWSG) is a really awesome meme that you should be doing along with the rest of us writers. Unless you truly are happy with your writing and don't feel the need to vent about your insecurities because they don't exist for you. But, really.... Don't they?  
IWSG is hosted by Captain Ninja Alex at his blog, Alex J. Cavanaugh.

l am nothing if not a slow writer.... This gives me a lot of anxiety because I have been trying to finish a first draft, any first draft!, of a novel-length story for over three years now and, even though I'm not giving up on my current project, I am still writing it... very slowly.

Perhaps this is just my process--my way of crafting my art. But, unless an author can publish a best seller from the get-go, needing to follow up by publishing many books quickly is essential to making a living out of this type of work. 

I'm at least one-third finished with my current first draft, if not even slightly more, which I'm very happy about. But, I've gotten to the point where I'm frozen. It's like climbing a mountain and looking up to see that the top is still VERY far away. And, I'm already very tired, hungry, grumpy, sick of walking, you name it!

I sound like I'm not enjoying writing this book at all, but that's not true. It's a great story that is fun to write, when I'm actually doing it. I'm lucky that what I have produced so far is close to my vision of it. But, I want to be able to stop time so I can rest for a while and not have real time pass. Does that make any sense?

I remember I used to like a TV sitcom when I was really young about a teenage girl whose father was an alien and her mother was human. She had the ability to freeze time and not have it affect her. Can I just borrow that ability for a little while? Like, say for a few months while I rest and not have to worry about how it will be August by the time I'm finished resting for three months in real time?

Anyway, writing may be wonderful, especially when you love the story and characters you're creating. But, it's soooooo exhausting, at least for me. I have so many energy issues, and I can tell you--writing is very draining of available energy. It is the most energy-guzzling thing I do.

I also exercise as much as I can now, which I also love to do. It's really fun and beneficial in all the ways exercise can be. But, sometimes, I get too tired to do it. I enjoy it, but I want to take more breaks away from it than I should in order to benefit from it the most. It's very similar to how I feel about writing. Despite how much I actually enjoy doing these things, I find them tiring, exhausting, and I end up not wanting to do them an awful lot of the time.

This is why I'm a slow writer. I feel bad about it because it seems like I'm supposed to spend every waking moment writing because I love it so much. As if I have nothing else that needs to be done and I only live to write. That's just not true. I think when it comes to creative endeavors, it's not the same as, say doing office work. You don't sit down and just "do" it, get it done. You create. It's not the same as "doing."

Anyone else feel the same? Or, perhaps starkly opposed? O_O