THORN is a retelling of the Grimm’s tale, “The Goose Girl.” It’s both dark and whimsical, packed with sorrow and hope. It’s a tale of betrayal, and injustice, and sorcery, and learning to be strong in who you are and fight for what you understand to be right. 

At the heart of the story is Princess Alyrra. She’s grown up a victim of abuse, her power and rank protecting her from very little. So, when she is sent off to marry a prince whose family dies with alarming frequency, she has little hope for a better future. Along the way, she’s betrayed by her companion, Valka, who steals her skin and takes her place… leaving Alyrra free to make her own decisions for the first time in her life. And she decides she would much rather live a different life than her own. She has an unexpected ally in a talking horse who witnessed the switch (that’s straight from the fairy tale!), and a much more dangerous enemy in the fae sorceress who has sworn to destroy Prince Kestrin and his family. 

I love Alyrra deeply, and she is by far the character I have wept with and laughed with the most. (I mean, she’s also the point of view character!). But my favorite character is actually a rather ornery, ill-mannered horse named Moonflower who only shows up in the second half of the book or so. Moonflower has her own history, and I love how her response is to bite at people, and glower, and only slowly trust them. I love that she is passionately protective as a horse even if she won’t quite admit it to your face. As ridiculous as this might sound, I intend to keep writing companion novels until I manage to give Moonflower a happy fate. ;)

As I mentioned above, THORN is based on “The Goose Girl.” But much of the characters’ struggles with concepts of justice and compassion come from my own experiences growing up and watching nations lash out at each other over perceived wrongs… when a sense of history shows that both sides have been hurting each other for a very long time. How do you break out of that cycle? How do you achieve justice when everyone is wrong? Is it even possible? I still don’t know the answers to these questions, but I explore them and leave them open to the reader in THORN. 

Terrible confession: I don’t listen to a lot of music. I can’t while writing, and somehow the rest of my day is busy and filling and I … mostly end up hearing kid-appropriate songs, from albums like Blue Moo by Sandra Boynton. This question therefore takes me back to songs I heard a long time ago, or that have just snuck in an caught me despite my general obliviousness. In this case, I’m going to mention “Beautiful” by Carole King. The music itself isn’t quite where it’s at for me, it’s the lyrics, and they are so much Alyrra. 

If your book was going to be made into a movie, who would play your characters?

*cough cough* Look, I read books, okay? LOL. I do watch movies, but I’m actually really bad with faces. So, while I know I’ve loved most of what I’ve watched in the last year or so (Hidden Figures, Crazy Rich Asians, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, etc.) I’ve got nothing when it comes to actual actors…

I find visuals and sensory detail really challenging, so even when I write my first drafts, I rarely know what my characters look like. That’s something I build in afterward, mostly because my beta readers point out they have no idea what anyone looks like. Go figure. :P

What drink and place do you think will go with your book to have a perfect book date?

A cup of mint tea out on a deck or in a meadow or park sounds like just the thing to me!

Can you recommend your readers any other books in case they are left hungry for more once they finish THORN?

Although very different in tone, I love W.R. Gingell’s Two Monarchies sequence, that begins with Masque (hookline: Beauty met the Beast and there was . . . Bloody murder?) and Kate Stradling’s The Legendary Inge, which takes a seemingly throw-away moment from Beowulf, genderswaps the main character (yay girl power!), and builds a fabulous story from there. Definitely an original fairy tale, and one of the few reads I’ve enjoyed so much I flipped back to start over again the moment I finished.

What would you say is the most difficult part of writing a book?

Letting it go. Seriously. I find most parts of writing a book really challenging – from drafting to revision to line edits. But allowing myself to step back and decide I’ve done everything I can for that story? That’s so hard. I want to keep tinkering, I always know there’s more I can do, and I want to do it. I want to make it the best story that I can. Accepting that I’ve done the best I can in this moment, and that the story is as ready as it will be? That’s hard.

As a reader, what is the “one thing” that a mind-blowing story must have, in your opinion?

All the things. LOL! For me, if there isn’t strong character development, I tend to lose interest even with a fantastic plot. But I really think this is a matter of preference. 

What’s next for you?

I just turned in final edits (ouch! Letting gooooo!) on the first book in a companion duology to Thorn. If you pick up Thorn, you’ll notice a short story at the back of it titled The Bone Knife. It introduces my new heroine, Rae, who takes on a few of the strands left dangling from Thorn. Her book is titled The Theft of Sunlight and is slated to release sometime next year. Now I’ll be toggling back and forth between edits on the third book in my indie series, The Sunbolt Chronicles, and Rae’s second book. Never a dull moment!

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