Absolutely. Shadow & Flame is the sequel and conclusion to Onyx & Ivory, a high fantasy set in a world divided by magic—who has it, who gets to use it, and who doesn’t. Specifically, there is magist magic, which is controlled and regulated by the government, and then there’s wilder magic which is outlawed. This division is the primary concern of book 1. In book 2, we add a new element to this existing conflict in the threat of the foreign nation of Seva. Seva doesn’t care much about the legality of magic. They simply want all magic for their own. The two main characters of the series are Kate and Corwin. Kate is a wilder and Corwin is the high prince. They’re in love but nothing about their relationship is easy, and the events of Shadow & Flame are sure to put them both to the test. 

Kate is my favorite. By default, the main character usually has to be the favorite since I spend the most time with them. I mean, it would be hard to write a whole novel about someone I didn’t like very much or didn’t find interesting. By definition, Corwin is a favorite as well. But aside from them, I absolutely adore Signe’s character. She’s sassy and tough and fun. Of the new characters in Shadow & Flame, my favorite is a magist named Harue. She’s sort of an absent-minded professor type. The kind of person who’s both really smart and really clueless at the same time. I have a lot of fun with her. 

The core inspiration for Onyx & Ivory was “the Pony Express” meets “Pitch Black.” This sounds a bit strange but the inspiration for Shadow & Flame mostly came from the first book. The events of book 1 influenced the direction of book 2 quite a lot. For some external inspiration though, I drew from a couple of different, and seemingly random, sources such as the first season of Jessica Jones on Netflix, the adult fantasy book The Dragon Prince by Melanie Rawn, and the history of the city of Constantinople. 

Gosh, what a fun and ridiculously hard question! I do make playlists for all my books, and every one of those songs represents a theme or feeling or expression from the book. So I’m going to cheat and pick three of them that together represent the emotional arc of the book for me as the writer:

Miracle by Jon Bon Jovi

Beast by Nico Vega

Below My Feet by Mumford & Sons

Onyx & Ivory remains my favorite of the two covers. But then again, I haven’t seen the actual printed version of Shadow & Flame yet so that might change once I hold the real book in my hands. They’re both beautiful though. As an author, I’ve won the book cover lottery for sure.

Overall, I would say Shadow & Flame was more fun to write, but only in the sense that it was less hard. In my experience sequels are always a little easier because you’ve laid a lot of framework for the story already. There are a lot of decisions you don’t have to make with the book since you already made them previously, such as the main characters, names of places and things, rules of magic and so on. Onyx & Ivory was a much harder book to write mostly because I had no idea what I was doing (I still don’t honestly, but I might be a little less clueless, I hope). Seriously, I’d never written multiple point of view and I hadn’t done high fantasy. There was a steep learning curve on that book. Fortunately, I did learn and Shadow & Flame was much less arduous. Also, I’m a huge fan of endings, so the last book usually wins by default.

It’s funny, but on the one had I never image anyone actually portraying my characters, and honestly if they ever do get made I hope that someone new and fresh will be cast. But I do usually pick an actor to represent the character to me physically. I’ll take screenshots of the actor from whatever role I find most inspiring as far as aesthetics go and put it in my book bible. For Onyx & Ivory, I used Chris Evans as Captain America for the inspiration for Corwin. For Kate, I used a combination of Mila Kunis and Kirsten Maldonado from Pentatonix. Kirsten in particular inspired the “sideways” smile that Corwin often refers to when he’s thinking about Kate. She has the coolest way of curling her lips to one side when she’s performing that I find charming and attractive.

The opening half of Shadow & Flame takes place in what I imagine is a very Mediterranean climate. So I’m going to go with a bottle of red wine anywhere overlooking the sea. 

Well, I do have two previous series that are available—a science fiction thriller that starts with Avalon and a contemporary fantasy that starts with The Nightmare Affair. But the best fantasy book I’ve read recently is Spinning Silver by Naomi Novick. It’s a very different flare from Onyx & Ivory but I can’t recommend it enough. Probably my favorite YA fantasy series of all time though is the Lumatere Chronicles by Melina Marchetta, which starts with Finnikin of the Rock. 

I have standalone fantasy in the works as well as a co-authored paranormal. I’m equally excited about both but I don’t have any details I’m allowed to share yet. Hopefully soon though!

Thank you so much for hosting me and my book.