Love Beyond Time Tour Stop: Interview with Rebecca Royce

Can you tell readers a little bit about yourself and what inspired to write in this particular genre?

As a teenager, I would hide in my room to read my favorite romance novels when I was supposed to be doing my homework. I hope, these days, that my parents think it was worth it.

I am the mother of three adorable boys and I am fortunate to be married to my best friend. We live in northern New Jersey and try not to freeze too badly during the winter months.

I am in love with science fiction, fantasy, and the paranormal and try to use all of these elements in my writing. I've been told I'm a little bloodthirsty so I hope that when people read my work they’ll enjoy the action packed ride that always ends in romance. I love to write series because I love to see characters develop over time and it always makes me happy to see my favorite characters make guest appearances in other books.

In my world anything is possible, anything can happen, and you should suspect that it will.

What inspired you to write this book?

I’m not really sure. I was pregnant with my second son and just overwhelmed with creative juices and the need to write. A different version of Love Beyond Time was what resulted from that attempt. Then I had to learn how to edit, how to really create a story people would want to read. But the original idea for Love Beyond Time started there. Lets blame it on the pregnancy hormones.

Please tell us about your latest release.

Prophesized that they will save humanity from the greatest threat it has ever faced, eighteen Outsider children are born within hours of one another. But when things go terribly wrong, they will be separated from one another to live a human life—with little to nothing known of their true powers or destiny.

In Love Beyond Time, fate finally gets the ball rolling by bringing two soul mates together for the first time in thirty years.

Blurb:

Born one half of a perfect pair, Kal has spent his life believing his other half is gone. But when fate thrusts Isabelle into his arms, he will have no choice but to become the man he was destined to be. That is, if he can battle his own demons first.



Not willing to accept her heritage as an Outsider, Isabelle tries to hide from the truth. But when Kal’s life is on the line, she will have to step forward and embrace her powers or watch everything she has come to love disappear.

Do you have a special formula for creating characters' names? Do you try to match a name with a certain meaning to attributes of the character or do you search for names popular in certain time periods or regions?

Its funny you ask that. The Outsiders have proven to be difficult to name. There are three of them who know they are from the beginning—Kal, Leonardo, and Charma. As they are ‘other’ and exist on society’s outskirts, they had to have names that could represent a wide range of regions. Kal, for example, is Kalmari. Charma is “Karma” spelled with a Ch. Marina, who they discover in a Russian orphanage when she’s a child, needed a name that could work in several languages.

Other than the Outsiders, however, I tend to use baby name books and the Baby Name Genie, online.

Was one of your characters more challenging to write than another?

Kalmari has been pretty thoroughly emotionally abused by the time we meet him. His journey was a hard one to write, but completely worth it in the end. He was one of the more challenging characters I’ve ever written.

Is there a character that you enjoyed writing more than any of the others?

The truth is that whichever character I am writing is the one I enjoy the most at that time. They’re like my children. I couldn’t possibly pick between them.

Do you have a formula for developing characters? Like do you create a character sketch or list of attributes before you start writing or do you just let the character develop as you write?

No, I have a pretty good sense of the characters before I start because I let them stew in my imagination for a long time before I write them. But I’m a pantser, not a plotter. I let the characters and the plot introduce itself on the page and then I try to go with it.

What is your favorite scene from the book? Could you share a little bit of it, without spoilers of course?

This is the opening scene. Its actually not Kal or Isabelle, but Abraxis who is the leader of the Outsiders before their fall. He knows their time is coming to an end and he’s afraid he can’t keep the children alive long enough for them to fulfill their prophecy.

Abraxas Moore stared one more time at the unforgiving clouds forming above him. The weather would soon become perilous, and he knew he had very little time until they caught him. Even the Green Hills, the place that had sheltered him and his kind for centuries--their home--was no longer safe.

The rain that he was sure would start at any moment would not be life renewing. It was not a sign of rebirth, and he knew with a near perfect certainty it was not even natural in its origins. Rather, it had been conjured by those who sought to kill him as a means to draw him out into the open. They hoped he would make a mistake and fail at his task. Then they would be able to trap and kill him.

Most disturbing, however, was he knew they would succeed in their task.

His role as leader of his people, not one he ever truly sought, weighed heavily on him that night, and he knew not even the love of his wife, Niki, would sustain him through what was to come. The prophecy was no longer something that would eventually happen, but was actually occurring in front of his eyes.

Time had finally caught up with them.

After centuries of very little change, his people were facing almost immediate destruction, and it had fallen to him to somehow find a way to help them survive what would be certain annihilation.

Ironically, the storm that had come out of nowhere this evening had been the final sign he needed to indicate their impending doom. When an Outsider stopped being able to predict the weather then it really was the end of the world.

How would humanity last even another decade without them around to silently keep the balance of lightness and darkness in order? His people had thrived, for centuries by walking the lines of grey that fell between the two extremes of Good and Evil. They kept order and balance in their little space in the universe.

They always had and he had hoped they always would.

Oh sure, they may have slightly pushed things towards the side of Good whenever possible. They were, after all, not Gods or Deities who could see the fabric of time and know the outcome of decisions they made before they made them. They were humans--of a sort--with another power, another layer, to their minds that allowed them to see what most humans could not--all things were connected.

Time, energy, life, and even death all flowed on the same strings of current, like a sound wave or an electrical wire, and they had been used or manipulated by his people since the dawn of time to keep things in order. This had been their sacred duty since creation, and it was the obligation they would all be forfeiting with their deaths in no short amount of time.

Without them, it was likely there would be chaos. Humanity would fall in this dimension. Chaos. Enslavement. Famine. Death. Evil would finally win its battle to control all things. Good would stand no chance of prevailing because they wouldn't see the 'bad guys' coming until it was too late to stop them.

His people had forgotten they were not Gods. He was to blame for this, as he was to blame for so many other mistakes over his short reign. If there was a way to fix things, he would gladly do whatever it took to complete the task. But alas, the chanting had stopped for him, and he knew he was out of the precious currency known as time.

Even transporting backwards into the past seemed to be out of the question. It was as if a wall had been erected to keep his kind from reaching back to that moment when all things had gone awry.

He should have been paying better attention.

Clenching his fists at his side, Abraxas stomped across the grass from his small cottage home towards the top of Windfelt Hill. What would the local population think when the barriers fell and they suddenly realized they had been living side by side with unknown people for generations?

The wind blew, pushing his blond hair into his face and since he couldn't see, it made it exceptionally hard to proceed to his destination.

It was absolutely essential he get up the hill before the sun went down and he was plunged into darkness. He needed to place his ritual staff upon the hill and call to the heavens for help. That is if they hadn't abandoned him and could still hear his pleas for his people. Was anyone up there still listening to the Outsiders or was it too late?

The grass chomped below his feet. It was still winter, and spring hadn't made its first pushes to thaw out his part of the world. Ice sat atop the grass, changing its color from its natural green to a more transparent blue. It crunched below his well-worn boots. Niki had started mending them, begging him to actually acquire a new pair, before she had taken off with their daughter to hide with the others.

Perhaps he should have stopped her, but it had seemed futile. Let them go. Let them all go and see if we can hide the children was what he had ultimately decided.

Finally reaching his destination, Abraxas stopped to look around him. He had known the top of this hill intimately since he was a child.

Windfelt Hill was the outer ring of their boundary. To cross over the top of the barrier and over to the other side was to cross into the land of humanity. No amount of power, his or anyone else's, could shield his people for very long from the humans if they crossed this hill, which was why in the past only a select few were chosen to make the trek.

Last month, all of his people, with the exception of him, had opted to cross. His job wasn't done. He didn't have the luxury of leaving. Not until he had exhausted every option. If the Darkness knew where they were, then it was time to be somewhere else. They had decided their strength no longer held in numbers but in small hidden groups that were far from each other, far from the hills and woods that had hidden them and nourished them. It was their last desperate attempt to keep this annihilation of their people at bay and it made him crazier than he cared to dwell on that the whole of their society had opted to run away than stay and fight. Why was he the only one who could see it was better to stay and fight than turn and run?

He wondered how they were all faring out there in the world and once again he felt the pull to Niki and the unrelenting desire to throw away all of his responsibilities and join her in her hiding place. So maybe he wasn't that different from the others when it came down to it. He wanted the family life too. Their daughter was a month older and she aged without him there to watch her do it. A lump formed in his throat and he swallowed it away. He had thought they would never have children. They should have been too old. One lone tear slipped from his left eye and he brushed it away. She was growing up without him and it truly made his insides burn.

Did you find anything really interesting while researching this or another book?

I learned all about fishing rituals in upstate New York. I’m not kidding. I spent more time learning about the fishing that Kal does in one scene than I ever spent researching anything else. When I finally finished, I was like ‘huh, there is no way I can use all of this.’ But I guess I have a real interest in fishing. Who knew? LOL

What is the most interesting thing you have physically done for book related research purposes?

When I wrote one my earliest books, First Dimension, I visited The Mote Museum in Sarasota, Florida to look at the giant squid they have there. I spent a huge amount of time on my vacation with my family staring a dead, preserved squid. I felt that was dedication. LOL

Excerpt #2

Isabelle Listora stood in front of the creepiest cabin she had ever seen. It didn't look deserted, not really, but it didn't look lived in either. It hadn't been occupied for at least several days, she was sure about that. The door hung open and it looked like the local wildlife had taken what was left of the food from the cupboards. At the very least, Isabelle was relatively sure that she wasn't going to be finding any neglected children occupying the cabin today. If they were there—and her instincts told her they were not—then they were well hidden and not likely to come out just because she asked.

Everything about what had happened since she had woken up this morning had seemed so bizarre to her. Why was she being sent out into the woods to investigate child abuse? Where was the local agency and why were they not looking into what was happening? She had, in fact, asked her boss those same questions several times before heading off into the middle of nowhere, driving four hours from home to an unknown destination where she would have no police help or known local resources to call upon in case of an emergency. Once again, inwardly, she groaned at the absurdity of the whole thing.

Author Bio:

As a teenager, Rebecca Royce would hide in her room to read her favorite romance novels when she was supposed to be doing her homework. She hopes, these days, that her parents think it was well worth it.

Rebecca is the mother of three adorable boys and is fortunate to be married to her best friend. They live in northern New Jersey and try not to freeze too badly during the winter months.

She's in love with science fiction, fantasy, and the pararnormal and tries to use all of these elements in her writing. She's been told she's a little bloodthirsty so she hopes that when you read her work you'll enjoy the action packed ride that always ends in romance. Rebecca loves to write series because she loves to see characters develop over time and it always makes her happy to see her favorite characters make guest appearances in other books.

In Rebecca Royce's world anything is possible, anything can happen, and you should suspect that it will.

www.rebeccaroyce.com
www.rebeccaroyce.blogspot.com

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