Can you tell readers a little bit about
yourself and what inspired to write in this particular genre?
While I love multiple
genres, I flew through books that were fantasy- or paranormal-based as a kid
and into my adult years. I love magic and the mystic, and it’s where my
creative brain goes when stories come to life in my mind.
Is there a character that you
enjoyed writing more than any of the others?
I definitely loved writing
Shelby, Blake’s best friend. She’s full of pizazz and snark, so she was a fun
character to create.
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?
I’m more of a let them come alive as I write. The writing process
is very organic for me, so my characters tell me who they are as we go along
the adventure.
With the book being part of a
series, are there any character or story arcs, that readers jumping in somewhere
other than the first book, need to be aware of? Can these books be read as
stand alones?
I would say you’ll
want to read the second after reading this one to continue on with the story.
It doesn’t come completely full-circle in the first and is more like a To Be
Continued.
Do any of your characters have
similar characteristics of yourself in them and what are they?
Like Shelby, I was
fascinated by the occult as a teenager and young college-something.
When did you consider yourself a
writer?
I’ve considered myself
a writer for as long as I can remember. I used to sit in my basement on our
now-archaic computer when I was six and write stories and books of poems.
What are your guilty pleasures in
life?
I get really excited
about Disney original movies and TV shows. I just enjoy them, what can I say!
What was the last amazing book you
read?
The Third Power, the
third book in Kelly Hess’s BlackMyst trilogy. It’s really fantastic
middle-grade fantasy. Awesome, perfect ending.
What can readers expect next from
you?
Shattered World, the
second book in the Dreamer Saga trilogy. Then after that it will be Song of the
Scythe, the second book in The Reaper’s Daughter series.
The Reaper’s Daughter
The Reaper’s Daughter Series
Book One
KM Randall
Genre: Paranormal/Dark Fantasy
Publisher: Booktrope
Date of Publication: 5/9/15
ISBN: 978-1-62015-841-8
ASIN: B00X90741G
Number of pages: 244
Cover Artist: Shari Ryan
Book Description:
I've always felt like an average girl ... except for my strange relationship with death. You could say I like to court it. Whether I'm soaring through the air as a flyer for Specter University's cheer squad, or speeding down the steepest mountain with only grace and balance keeping me from an icy end, I've always needed to feel a rush. But now Death is courting me―in more ways than one. First, there's Rishi, a rogue death deity who has a penchant for annoying me nearly to my grave and whose intense gaze has the power to see right through me. Then there's Hades, who I'd rather had stayed just a myth. Now that he knows I exist, he's not going to leave me alone until I meet the same end as my mother.
Oh yeah, did I forget to mention her? I spent my whole life thinking she had died when I was a baby, but now I've found out she's much more than dead. Fifty years ago, Hades banished my mother from the underworld and took away her ability to cross over souls―souls that have wandered lost through the world ever since. Now she wants me to clean up the mess.
You may have heard of her before...
They call her the Grim Reaper.
Book Trailer: https://youtu.be/SATOtS9Ehuk
Excerpt:
Present
THE ROLLING
GREEN of her eyes was dimming fast, losing color and life to the quick click of
time that beat out her days and nights, a perpetual circle that was now fading
to a close. Light brown hair that had been recently styled into looping curls
was limp against the black pillowcase―a metaphor for her wilted spirit, I
mused, thinking offhandedly how proud my English professor would be at my
thoughtful use of language.
I sighed. I didn’t want to be here.
When her eyes met mine, I knew she saw me for
who I really was—what I really was. She reached out an eager hand to take mine.
I didn’t want anything to do with it. But it wasn’t because her fingers were
slick with blood, deep crimson dripping down her arm and fingernails from where
she’d so precisely placed a razor blade to her vein and dug deep, thinking
she’d be free of her pain. It was because her face reflected back to me all the
times I’d felt I’d been given a shitty deal. Current situation: case in point.
“Hi,” she whispered, her once pink lips fading
with every pump of her life, which was idly dripping away from her to the plush
white carpet below. I could smell the newness of it, the fresh aroma of a
recently laid floor. That’s going to be a bitch to get clean.
I looked around
her bedroom, at the dance trophies and pictures of smiling friends, and
wondered why. Why me? “Blake …” Hearing
my mother's warning tone, I looked over at her where she stood in the shadows,
overseeing my tutelage.
“Why can’t we just call an ambulance? It’s not
too late. They could save her,” I whispered fiercely, staring at the girl’s
hand stretched out to me as if I were her savior and not her end. “We should
save—”
“It’s not for us
to decide, you know that. We are only here to bring souls over, not save their
mortal lives. Take her, she wants to go.”
“And will she still feel the same when she’s
looking down at her body?” I asked, not even bothering to check my mother’s
expression when she didn’t answer. Suicide wasn’t a peaceful death. It was
pain―that much I knew.
I choked back the tears that wanted to rise in
my eyes for this girl, for me … I turned to her once more and leaned down,
brushing a strand of her hair from her graying face. “What’s your name?”
Barely blinking, her pale eyes darted to me.
“Carly,” she said, choking around her words.
“Just hold my
hand and I’ll help you cross,” I said softly, forcing myself to meet her gaze
so that someone would witness her ending as they had her beginning.
She smiled slowly, and I saw that in life she
had been pretty. When she’d believed. When she’d had hope.
“The light?” Her
eyes widened, glittering green for a brief moment in their otherwise colorless
depths at the prospect of going somewhere beautiful after this life had been so
cold.
I nodded,
although I didn’t really know where she would go. I was only in training, but I
hoped it was someplace good, where her tormented soul could rest.
She had small,
feminine hands, I thought, as she laced her slippery fingers around my longer
warm ones. She didn’t last long, her pulse giving one last flutter before
sputtering out.
The room was
suffused with the silence left behind in the absence of such a simple thing.
The thundering lack of a person’s heartbeat had never seemed quite so loud. As
life departed Carly’s mortal coil, her soul lifted from the body, but unlike
some souls I’d seen that were light and buoyant, at peace with the next step in
their existence, hers was outlined in darkness, and it rippled, suspended in
space like a special effect in a bad horror film. Her gaze turned from her body
to me, sorrow coming to settle on the slope of her bowed shoulders and in the
recesses of her eyes. Regret was a fickle creature. It always came too late.
About the Author :
As a girl, K.M. always wished she’d suddenly come into magical powers or cross over into a Faerie circle. Although that has yet to happen, she instead lives vicariously through the characters she creates writing fantasy and paranormal.
When K.M. is not busy writing her next novel, she serves as a freelance editor and writer. She has a master’s degree in journalism from Syracuse University and a bachelor’s degree in English-Lit from Nazareth College of Rochester. K.M. lives in Upstate New York’s Finger Lakes region with her husband, her extremely energetic little boy, and their crazy goldendoodle Luna (short for Lunatic)
Learn more at http://www.kmrandallauthor.com/
@KM_Randall
A great post thank you. I enjoyed the excerpt.
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