Author Names: Bellora Quinn and Angel Martinez
Book Name: Kellen’s Awakening
Series: AURA
Book: Three
Series should be read in order
Release Date: May 3, 2016
Exclusive Interview with Bellora Quinn!
Ten Books that influenced me
I think the first book I read that I really fell in love with the characters was Jean Auel’s Clan of the Cave Bear. I cried over Ayla’s hardships and the injustices she faced and when I was done reading it, I immediately read it again and when I was done a second time I missed the characters so much that for a while I would read this book once a year. This book taught me the value of developing your characters as they face obstacles.
Stephen King’s Different Seasons was the first time I read a book that I wanted to stop reading but couldn’t. I was more horrified by the possibility of what may happen to the characters than what actually happened to them. The tension of worrying if the guards would discover the hole behind the poster in Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption and all that work would go down the drain drove me crazy and started an addiction for suspense.
Dean Koontz’s Odd Tomas was another very character driven book that made me care less about what was going on around him than what Odd thought and felt. The story was cool but I wanted to get to know Odd like he was a real person, someone I’d like to befriend. I’ve read stories where you could have taken out the main characters and replaced them with just about anyone and it wouldn’t have mattered. Odd Tomas would not be the same story at all without Odd, and I felt that was an important thing in writing.
I started Anne McCaffrey’s Dragon Flight probably three of four times before I was able to get into it and get past the first couple of chapters, and then I was hooked. I couldn’t believe after reading that first book, and then the next dozen or so, that I’d almost missed out on this classic series. McCaffrey’s Lessa and F’lar were not immediately likable to me. They grew on me only after a couple books. That idea stuck with me. That with enough personality, a main character doesn’t have to be immediately likable, that and the fantastic world building without giving big info dumps.
This is a weird one but, Wizards of the Coast’s Dungeon Master’s Guide, and the Monster Compendium. Laugh if you will but this book was like basic training for the imagination. Playing D&D was like writing a short story once a week. It was a lot of fun and I think this is what started my love for collaborative writing.
Jim Butcher’s Storm Front and Neil Gaiman’s American Gods both did a lot to make me love the idea of alternate realities and secret worlds not everyone was privy too. They are very different books and writing styles but that was the takeaway I got from both. If I wasn’t going to create an entirely new universe, I could take the one we have and give it a makeover.
I’ve seen a lot of people put Anne Rice’s Interview with a Vampire in their top favorites or top influential lists. I don’t care about trying to be different enough to find another to fill Anne’s spot but I will say that The Vampire Lestat was by far more influential than Interview with a Vampire was for me. I think what I liked best was how we already knew Lestat from the first book and he wasn’t cast in a very flattering light, and although there were hints there would be more to him, it wasn’t until you started reading The Vampire Lestat that you realized it was just a tiny sliver we were shown.
I have to say my most recent influences would be Lynn Flewelling’s Luck in the Shadows and Poppy Z Brite’s (Billy Martin), Drawing Blood. Again, these are totally different books in totally different genres but they both feature gay characters, which is about all they have in common story wise. What inspires me about them is they are excellently written, engaging stories, with characters I really cared about. These are the kind of books I aspire to write.
And now… Kellen’s Awakening!
Blurb:
The staff at AURA has had a busy summer. Between chronic understaffing, dealing with warring goblin factions and an unusual number of hazardous Events, everyone is overworked. Sinistrus the incubus, newly hired as an AURA medic, actually enjoys his busy new life of responsible employee and faithful lover to his gorgeous police sergeant, Ness the centaur. Life would be perfect, except for a niggling suspicion about a colleague. Everyone else seems to disagree, but Sin’s certain something’s not right with that pixie.
Kellen, a pixie crossover, loves his job working in AURA medical, even if he is something of an outsider. His job and the friends he manages to make are happy spots in an otherwise dark and secretive life. As the rest of AURA tries to discover the root of the inexplicable rise in violence and large scale Events, Kellen fights to preserve his own life and what dignity he has left.
These two unlikely heroes must put their differences aside and navigate tragedy and ever-escalating disaster together in order to stop the sinister forces that hold Kellen in thrall.
