Welcome to my first Romancing the Reader spot where guest authors come by and chat a spell about creating their stories. Kisses to Jasmine Aherne for sharing her experiences in the Spellbound Treasure’s world with us. She has written several novellas for the series including her new release A Wolf at her Door. Be sure to come back Friday for my first Friday Flirtations, or, better yet, register for email notifications from my blog. The first five people to register for email notifications after this post goes live will receive a free Jasmine Aherne Spellbound novella of their choice!
And now, without further ado, I present the lovely Jasmine Aherne:
My name is Jasmine and I write for Jupiter Gardens Press. I’ve had the pleasure and the privilege to have written several novellas in the shared world of the Spellbound Treasure series, and I have been lucky enough to have the permission to create my own section of that world, the Faewild. The Fae live in the Spellbound Treasure world, but the Faewild is a sectioned off area which was born when some of the Fae developed shifting powers to take the form of animals. Unable to deal with the fear that the shifting Fae might one day attack or try and stage a coup, the Fae of the fairy realm of Caroann banished the shifting Fae to a dark, wild forest they named the Faewild.
The shifting Fae cannot cross into Caroann (well, maybe except if they got someone to help them, through bribes or otherwise!) but with the help of a magical human called the Realmbinder, they can cross into the human world in order to find a mate for bonding, and to explore.
I found writing in a shared world extremely exciting. In a way it was easier for me, as I created the Faewild, so I could start with an almost blank canvas. It was very useful to have Caroann to compare the Faewild to, as well – Caroann is a magical fairytale Kingdom of light, ruled by a King and Queen. The Faewild is much more like a collection of tribes or clans, each with the own lands and tribal leaders.
Shifters are such an interesting group to write about, because they’re so out of this world, especially to humans. How would someone react when confronted with a shifter, especially when seeing them shift. Fear? Anger? Total denial? I think all are possible. The thing about shifting through magic, is that it happens so fast that the process is very hard to take in and consider/observe properly. But at the same time, I was aware that I didn’t want to write something totally unbelievable. If you push your reader too far, they’ll put the book down, say “that’s just too crazy” and walk away. A fantasy world has to be at least believable and I think that’s where your characters come in. If your characters can be related to, then you’re halfway there with making your books believable.
My first book in the Faewild “series” (I say series loosely as none of the characters, except the Realmbinder, are connected) was Birthday Shift with Cade, the cat shifter. Cade is one of my favourite shifters as he was the first one I ever wrote about! I found it fun exploring the human world through his eyes, and telling the story of his love for Molly, his chosen human mate.
To make matters more magical (and fun for me!), the shifting Fae can only enter the human realm in their shifted animal form (after all, magic has its boundaries – I dislike stories where magic can do any damn thing you want, at the drop of a hat). So, in order to get close to Molly as someone she could love, Cade appears to her in a dream, in his biped form, and all sorts of sexy fun times begin!
I won’t ruin the story for you if you want to read it. But the other really exciting part of the ST worlds is that any author wanting to write a book within Caroann, or the Faewild, or any other realm, is that with the creator’s permission, characters can be “borrowed” – as Evelyn is borrowing Cade, who now works with Etienne at ST HQ, for her new release. I was so glad to hear from him and that he’s still enjoying life. I love it when characters get to live on, and I firmly believe that shared characters leads to even more verisimilitude for the ST world as a whole, and thus a better experience for the readers.
If you would like to read more of the Faewild, you can check out Outfoxed, where a shy but sexy professor falls for a female fox shifter, or the latest in the ST novels, A Wolf at Her Door, where a smoking hot wolf shifter rescues an animal sanctuary in danger.
I will leave you with my vision of what the Faewild looks likes – dark and wild, mysterious and deep.
Image credit: www.alphacoders.com
Please check out Evelyn’s work. I had the pleasure of reading a bit of Through The Paintings and it’s awesome, a great addition to the Spellbound collection.
Evelyn Aster 