Hello readers! Welcome to the Release Week Blitz for
Memories of Ash (The Sunbolt Chronicles #2)
by Intisar Khanani
Fantasy lovers, this one's for you! Love magic, look no further!
And you definitely need to check out the awesome giveaway found below.
Happy Book Birthday Intisar!
Let's celebrate everyone!!
In the year since she cast her sunbolt, Hitomi has recovered only a handful of memories. But the truths of the past have a tendency to come calling, and an isolated mountain fastness can offer only so much shelter. When the High Council of Mages summons Brigit Stormwind to stand trial for treason, Hitomi knows her mentor won’t return—not with Arch Mage Blackflame behind the charges.
Armed only with her magic and her wits, Hitomi vows to free her mentor from unjust imprisonment. She must traverse spell-cursed lands and barren deserts, facing powerful ancient enchantments and navigating bitter enmities, as she races to reach the High Council. There, she reunites with old friends, planning a rescue equal parts magic and trickery. If she succeeds, Hitomi will be hunted the rest of her life. If she fails, she’ll face the ultimate punishment: enslavement to the High Council, her magic slowly drained until she dies.
Title: Memories of Ash
Series: The Sunbolt Chronicles, Book Two
Author: Intisar Khanani
Cover Designer: Jenny Zemanek
Genre: Young Adult Fantasy
Release Date: May 30, 2016
Publisher: Purple Monkey Press
“It needs a meal,”
the mage says, voice rasping, “and it won’t be me.” He yanks me off balance. I
cry out, jerking away from him and lashing out with my glowstone. I manage to
smack him hard across the face, but then his boot comes between my feet. For a
sickening moment I teeter on the edge of the stairs.
Get back!
I barely register
the words ringing in my mind before the mage shoves me, hard. I swallow a
scream, throwing my arms up to shield my head as I fall. I slam down the
stairs, bouncing toward the mass of tentacles.
Feet first—get your feet first!
I follow the
shouted advice mindlessly, twisting my body as I come to a stop amidst a tangle
of three or four great tentacles.
Don’t move.
Someone is talking
inside my head, and it’s not me. Somehow, that’s almost worse than lying
surrounded by the talons of a nightmare monster. Almost.
Author’s Inspirations
There are some stories that write
themselves, and other stories you write and write and write. The Sunbolt
Chronicles are both for me.
I wrote the first chapter or so of Sunbolt (Book 1) as a short
story that ended rather abruptly because I couldn’t figure out what the ending
actually was. I wasn’t even sure what the story was about, so I gave it the
working title of “Night Story” (since most of it took place at night) and left
it at that. It sat quietly on my laptop for a long time. Every now and then I
would come back to it, scratch my head, make a few attempts to figure it out,
and leave it alone again.
Two years later, while staying with my
in-laws in Pakistan during a family illness, volunteered to stay awake through
the night with our ill family member while everyone slept. I was the most
jet-lagged of everyone, so this set-up made a lot of sense. Sitting up each
night in the sick room with my laptop, I picked up that story and Sunbolt, Memories of Ash, and a third novella all came pouring out of me in
the space of about two or three weeks. They were a necessary and complete
escape for me, and if you look at each carefully, you might see a bit of the
illness and sorrow we were dealing with, especially in Sunbolt. Admittedly, each story went through massive revisions
before being published, to the extent that the third novella is now utterly
irrelevant, and Memories of Ash has
become an epically long novel.
Then I left it alone again for nearly
three years, while I polished up my debut novel to release and worked on other
projects. When I came back to my draft, I knew this was a project I wanted to
complete and publish. So I started revising and developing the storyline
further. The funny part? Not a single scene from the original beginning that I
wrote and pondered over is left. Bit by bit, it got chipped away, re-visioned,
and rewritten. But the story that it inspired still has me in its grip, and I’m
looking forward to bringing you the rest of Hitomi’s adventures!
OTHER BOOKS IN THE SERIES:
The winding streets and narrow alleys of Karolene hide many secrets, and Hitomi is one of them. Orphaned at a young age, Hitomi has learned to hide her magical aptitude and who her parents really were. Most of all, she must conceal her role in the Shadow League, an underground movement working to undermine the powerful and corrupt Arch Mage Wilhelm Blackflame.When the League gets word that Blackflame intends to detain—and execute—a leading political family, Hitomi volunteers to help the family escape. But there are more secrets at play than Hitomi’s, and much worse fates than execution. When Hitomi finds herself captured along with her charges, it will take everything she can summon to escape with her life.
Intisar Khanani grew up a nomad and world traveler. Born in Wisconsin, she has lived in five different states as well as in Jeddah on the coast of the Red Sea. She first remembers seeing snow on a wintry street in Zurich, Switzerland, and vaguely recollects having breakfast with the orangutans at the Singapore Zoo when she was five. She currently resides in Cincinnati, Ohio, with her husband and two young daughters.Until recently, Intisar wrote grants and developed projects to address community health with the Cincinnati Health Department, which was as close as she could get to saving the world. Now she focuses her time on her two passions: raising her family and writing fantasy. Intisar's current projects include a companion trilogy to Thorn, following the heroine introduced in her free short story The Bone Knife, and The Sunbolt Chronicles, an epic series following a street thief with a propensity to play hero when people need saving, and her nemesis, a dark mage intent on taking over the Eleven Kingdoms.
Complete the Rafflecopter below for a chance to win!
Thanks so much for featuring Memories of Ash on your blog, Mary Anne! And thank you for offering me the opportunity to include a guest post. :)
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