Rogues Angels Hosts The Ruby Curse

Please welcome Makayla Yokley author of The Ruby Curse.

Makayla will be giving away a digital copy of "The Ruby Curse" one at every stop.

The Ruby Curse

by Makayla Yokley

INTERVIEW:

Interview Questions for Rogue's Angels 

1.    What elements are necessary components for this genre.

Definitely the technology. Writing “The Ruby Curse” has taught me where the line between “Steampunk” and “Traditional Fantasy”/ “Victorian Fantasy” (that’s not official lingo, just what I use to reference it) is drawn. It’s the robots, airships, and any other kind of contraption you can think of that really defines what steampunk is. Now this is all just my opinion and how I’ve grown to understand it. When the time came to come up with what kind of technology would exist within the world that I built, I looked at what needs people would’ve had back then in real-world Victorian England, then came up with a mechanical solution to it (I.e: The Service Bots, who are programmed to essentially be slaves to shop owners/sewer workers/whoever needs them). Science had to be advanced quite a bit as well, something that proved to be a challenge for me because I’m practically science-illiterate.

2.    How did you come up with your idea for your novel?

It was actually recycled from a Tolkien-esque fantasy that I tried to write, but lost momentum for because I couldn’t get far enough into it. I took a few of the characters and the basic idea out of that failed idea and brought it into this new one!

Once I had the base plot (and this part took the entire course of writing it) I quickly began to see what themes were coming out of the mist and did my best to accentuate them. I wanted a story that not only questioned the traditional idea of what a “hero” (the ones in movies, novels, fairy tales, whatever) really is, since in most of what I’ve seen they are just the ones who happened to be willing to solve the problem. But what if they were bound to it by blood? What if, genetically, they were the ones that had to save the world? On top of that, what if one of the only known heroes left had no desire to save the world at all?

After that it was just a matter of fleshing out the details. I wanted there to be a lot of pain within my cast of main characters so that they would all know suffering. I don’t think someone can expect to do the things they have to do without knowing what it’s like to be in pain, and to use that pain to try and prevent it in someone else.

3.    What expertise did you bring to your writing?

I don’t think I brought much “expertise” to my writing other than all the “how to” books on writing I’ve read over the years and whatever I found in the way of research on Steampunk. There’s quite a bit of steampunk material out there if you really make a point to look for it, and a lot of it is incredibly helpful for getting down the aesthetics needed for this kind of genre.

4.    What would you want your readers to know about you that might not be in your bio?

5.    As far as your writing goes, what are your future plans?

Most of what I plan right now is to write the Violet Chronicles in its entirety. Right now I’m working on the second book in the series, and it’s… going. Slow and steady, but going none the less. Other than the Violet Chronicles I don’t know. I want to be able to do something in a wide range of genres and really push what I can do as a writer. Right now, though, the Violet Chronicles is my main priority and any other projects I have going are simply for the purpose of giving my mind something else to think about when things start getting slow.

6.    If you could be one of the characters from this book, who would it be and why?

That’s a hard question to answer. As much as I love Violet and enjoy being her friend, I’d never want to be her. I don’t think I could handle the things she goes through half as well as she does. I guess I would want to be Ethan up to a certain point because he’s got a pretty good life going up until the plot messes it all up. Aurora I definitely wouldn’t want to be, even less than Violet.

7.    Can you give us a sneak peak into this book?

8.    Do you belong to a critique group? If so how does this help or hinder your writing?

I do, actually. It’s done nothing but help me because, before I joined their group, I only had my eyes looking at my work and that’s one of the worst things a writer can do. It was frustrating like nobody’s business and usually made my work lesser quality than what it deserved because there’s only so much you can do by yourself. Now that I’ve joined a group and have other people looking at it, people who know that you can’t be biased because you wouldn’t want someone sugar coating your work, my work has evolved and improved in ways that would’ve been impossible alone.

I owe everything to my critique group, everything that’s happening to me right now in regards to my writing and everything that will happen to me in the future.

9. When did you first decide to submit your work? Please tell us what or who encouraged you to take this big step?

Actually, joining my writer’s organization and critique group was what encouraged me to do this. If it hadn’t been for them I might not have ever have had the follow through to finish “the Ruby Curse” or the confidence to think it was worth putting out there.

I first decided to submit my work when I started seeing self-publishing as an actual option. Before then I’d had some pretty negative experience with it and thought that the only way you could publish and have people read it was to get an agent and go through the submission process. But, again, thanks to my writer’s group I learned that there are many, many, MANY options available if you’re not having any luck.

10. What is the best and worst advice you ever received? (regarding writing or publishing)

Can’t think of what the worst advice was, but definitely the best advice was from reading quotes by people like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Mark Twain.

F. Scott Fitzgerald said not to use exclamation points in one’s own writing because it’s like laughing at your own joke, and I’ve tried to follow this as much as I could. Naturally, not doing it at all kind of robs the story of a certain personality quirk, but it’s definitely not always needed.

The next one is a surprisingly hard piece of advice to try and follow. Mark Twain had suggested in a quote that you should replace the word ‘very’ with ‘damn’ and when your editor deletes it then the writing will be “as it should be”. This one I’ve tried to follow more dutifully than Fitzgerald’s advice about the exclamation points because this one makes a lot of sense. It helps give the writing a more professional feel to it and forces you to look deeper at what you’re trying to say. Is there a way I can say this in a way that won’t ask me to use ‘very’ here? Sometimes a ‘very’ will make it through in my writing, but I’m still working on it and am aspiring to improve enough so that I won’t need it as a crutch anymore.

11. Do you outline your books or just start writing?

I just start writing. There were times when I used to try and outline my stories before I wrote them, and it never worked. Whenever I would sit down to try and outline, I would always get stuck because I didn’t know what was going to happen next because it wasn’t happening right in front of me. I’m the kind of person whose just got to write the first draft as it comes to me, good or bad, and let the editing process sort it out when the time comes.

12. How do you maintain your creativity?

13. Who is your favorite character in the book. Can you tell us why?

Violet. While some of the people I talked to about the story said they hated her most of all, I can’t help but love Violet because I know sides of her that they don’t yet. She’s actually a pretty interesting character once we start delving into her past and her motivations, and once we do I can start being more specific!

14. Are your plotting bunnies angels or demons?

At either the beginning or the very end of the movie Suckerpunch, Sweet Pea’s voice over says: “You can deny angels exist, Convince ourselves they can't be real. But they show up anyway, at strange places and at strange times. They can speak through any character we can imagine. They'll shout through demons if they have to. Daring us, challenging us to fight.”

This perfectly describes my plotting bunnies. They can be loving and cruel task masters all wrapped up in one fluffy package, and frankly, sometimes I’m glad for it!

15. Anything else you might want to add?

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BLURB:

Heroes come in all shapes and sizes... though they're not usually escaped convicts. Seventeen-year-old Violet Seymour is the only person to ever escape the highest maximum security prison in the steam-and-clockwork powered nation of Arcova. She is also a link in an ancient bloodline of heroes. When mages start going missing, Violet is the only person who can find them.

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EXCERPT:

Off to one side of the path was a large curved wagon made out of polished brass and gold colored metal. The wheels on the side were comically large in the back, which made the normal-sized wheels in the front look disproportionally small. A black horse with white spots peppering its back grazed a few feet away, leisurely munching on the grass and soaking up the sun. As we advanced on the wagon, the horse did little more than lift its head in our direction.

Back towards the edge of the forest was a woman picking flowers. Long brown hair twisted into clumps cascaded down her back, moving stiffly against the colorful beads interwoven among the hair. She wore a long brown skirt that breezed around her delicate ankles when she stood up, revealing a pair of dainty black shoes with no heel. She turned around, cradling in her arms a bundle of droopy purple flowers with yellow centers and fat red berries hanging off the stems. A brown bandanna was tied around her waist, a red one around her neck, and another red bandanna held her hair away from her face.

From behind the dreadlocks I saw the woman’s pointed ears. She was an elf as well as a mage. Double-whammy when you consider how much people hated both elves and mages.

Her black lips spread into a toothy grin when she saw us.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

AUTHOR Bio and Links:

Makayla Yokley is a college student who lives in Kansas with her somewhat evil cat named Cujo. She likes to write fiction of all genres. Currently she is majoring in Liberal Arts.

Where to find me:

(Fan page on Facebook) http://www.facebook.com/pages/Makayla-Yokley/231164716982029

(Blog) http://www.theforgotten-kingdom.webs.com/

Buy a copy of “The Ruby Curse” at:

(Paperback and Kindle) http://www.amazon.com/The-Ruby-Curse-Makayla-Yokley/dp/1479117471/ref=pd_rhf_gw_p_t_1

(Nook) http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/206917