Rogue's Angels Present: The Blackfish Prophecy by Rachel Clark

Please welcome Rachel Clark author of The Blackfish Prophecy

Rachel Clark will be awarding 1 signed paperback of the Blackfish Prophecy

1 bookmark for The Blackfish Prophecy, 1 Orca-themed or book-themed mug to one randomly drawn US winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

The Blackfish Prophecy

by Rachel Clark

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GENRE:   Young Adult/Nature

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INTERVIEW:

·      What or who inspired you to start writing? I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember. My earliest memory is a story about a princess I wrote in second grade. My mom read stories when I was a very little girl, and my connection to animals and nature started very early, on a farm. Those bedtime stories and the farm ignited early writings. That connection to the Earth and her creatures, including princes and princesses – people of all kinds facing their own journeys – inspire me every day, and are always part of my writing. 

·      What elements are necessary components for this genre? Writing for young adults in this era is a benchmark in speaking truth. Young people are on the cusp of personal and collective change the likes of which we have not seen in recorded history. Writing stories and fiction for them at this time beckons fierce honesty, profound respect for what they face, and support for healing, action, and resilience across all social and environmental strata. Even if through the lens of a “simple” plot and characters. Perhaps especiallythen.  

·      How did you come up with your idea for your novel? The short version is that, as a college student, I had the great opportunity to work with dolphins and Beluga whales at the National Aquarium in Baltimore. Shortly thereafter, there was the joy of witnessing wild orca in the Pacific Northwest, so close I could smell their breath. The idea for the novel hatched in the months after that encounter. It took almost 20 years for the idea to grow into the actual book because it needed many other elements to develop it. 

The inspiration for the book really hit me via a powerful lucid dream in the summer of 2012, in which a matriarchal killer whale visited me and my sons on a beach, emanating a pure joy I’d never experienced before. Then a few weeks later, I read Death at SeaWorldby David Kirby, which was the match that lit my fiction-writing fire.

·      What expertise did you bring to your writing? I am a veteran freelance science and environment writer, trained biologist, and fierce lifelong reader. When The Blackfish Prophecycaptured me, I brought a love of story, thousands of hours of writing practice, and deep understanding our culture’s impacts on the natural world to my desk. More important, the story told itself.

·      What would you want your readers to know about you that might not be in your bio? My life has been deeply affected by dreams. After direct experience, I know our dreams are bigger than we realize; connecting us to a collective wisdom that has the potential to be far more generative, healing, and transformative than we yet realize in Western culture. Everyone can tap the power of their dreams. There is abundant guidance in books and ancient cultures.

·      As far as your writing goes, what are your future plans? Speaking of dreams, my next book in the series is The Whale Dreamers.That is the second of five books in the series, Terra Incognita and The Great Transition. 

·      Can you give us a sneak peek into this book? The Whale Dreamersis a gateway for the characters (and readers!) to awaken to the profound power of their dreaming, and connection to mystical consciousness. Dreams can be game-changers in waking life, personally and collectively. The book explores this through a backdrop of current difficult issues that include the potential extinction of the Southern Resident Killer Whales, whales whom many love as their own family.

·      When did you first decide to submit your work? Please tell us what or who encouraged you to take this big step? I began submitting work back in 2^ndgrade and never really stopped. However, my first novel,The Blackfish Prophecy, is a special case. I had never written a novel before. It was a number of important writing mentors who encouraged me to keep writing, then to submit to my first publishing house. Early on in a writing group, an accomplished author I didn’t know listened to me read the first chapter (just a few days after I’d finished it). She came up to me afterwards to say, “If you keep going with that, I’d like to read more of it.”  That was a huge motivation. Then, a year later, draft in hand, another mentor said, “You need to submit that.” Both of these mentors, and others, have become lifelong friends and colleagues. All because I paid attention to that whale who visited my dreams. And took action.

·      Do you outline your books or just start writing? Typically there is a very lose outline in my mind, and I start writing from there. I’ll put notes of plot structure down as I go, but my experience so far is that the story arrives as I write, with modification along the way. When I’m actively writing a novel, I keep a dedicated journal beside me at all times. Into it go all the conversations, ideas, threads, plot twists, as I go. I often have to write these ideas down before bed, to let them go enough to sleep before waking early to write. I’m a pre-dawn writer, with my best writing time typically from 4:30 am to mid-morning.

·      Who is your favorite character in the book? Can you tell us why? Miles, hands down. Because I had no idea where he was coming from, he surprised me at every turn, I grew very fond of him as a character as he developed, he is instrumental to recovery and inspiring powerful healthy action in others, and maybe most of all, because in real life I met and became friends with someone eerily like Miles, a good three years after writing the book.

BLURB:

Best friends Terra and Tiluk live alongside the wild orcas of Washington State. On the other side of the continent, Miles wallows in anger and self-pity fueled by his parents' divorce. In a moment of harrowing fate, their lives converge when Miles witnesses a captive orca brutally kill his trainer at a marine amusement park. 

When Miles contacts Terra and her family of whale biologists to better understand the "killer" whale, the three teens soon realize they are more linked to each other - and the whales - than they ever imagined. Driven by a primal urge to connect with the highly-evolved consciousness of the orca, the teens take extraordinary risks to challenge big business and renew lost traditions. 

Their journey is set to restore an ancient mystical bond between humans and whales that ultimately reveals The Blackfish Prophecy…a revelation about Terra - and those like her - that's about to change everything.

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EXCERPT:

But this evening Claire was no peacemaker. She’d rung the bell. The bell was only for extreme emergencies. Yet when she’d gotten the call from a colleague in Florida about what had happened at OceanLand this morning, ringing the bell was her first response. With that phone call, all the years of hurt and frustration burst, and something broke inside her. She’d known even as she rang the bell that obviously this wasn’t a true emergency, but a part of her needed the tolling just the same. Something had to change. He’d killed again. Her heart cringed, thinking of him. She wiped her eyes, again. 

Claire shivered inside her parka and glanced back at Terra and Tiluk, hand in hand as they descended the long set of stairs behind her and the other adults. She saw that Terra gingerly held the carved and blood‐soaked whale that she’d brought home, her fingers bandaged from the cut she’d given herself. Claire hadn’t been surprised to see Terra’s carving of the new calf. She knew her daughter felt a special kinship with Wendy’s new baby. She took a deep breath of the salted air she loved so much, reminding herself why she and her family were here. But her stomach remained tight with grief and empathy. Now, instead of having the chance to meet the new calf her daughter had dreamt about with a free and easy heart, the news of the killing shadowed everything. And even though she was a scientist, a world‐class researcher of the highest order, Claire had asked Terra to broadcast the Adagio on the two‐way. Just this once. With this latest killing, she felt an overwhelming need to ritualize her sorrow with the whales.

She looked at her husband Bill, taking in his salt‐and‐pepper windswept tousle of hair and etched face. His grim glance told her he felt as sick with the news and what it meant as she did. Looking back at Joseph and Maggie, she knew they felt it, too. Joseph reached out and clasped her shoulder for a moment, his eyes holding hers.

“Careful Claire,” Maggie said, eyeing the narrow, steep stairway. “Mercy, we don’t need any more injuries today,” she murmured. Claire stopped short, turned all the way around, and leaned into Maggie, hugging her briefly from the stair below.

“I know, honey.” Maggie hugged her hard. “I know.” 

Terra met Tiluk’s eyes, puzzled. What is really going on here? The adults said they’d explain about the Shantu news later, at dinner. Why was her mom so upset? Terra didn’t even know how to feel about what they’d told her. She was too dazed. The calf has a brother. The calf has a brother. Her mind, overwhelmed by this news—and the killing—had shut down. The words kept rolling around and around her head: The calf has a brother. But her brother killed a human. Her brother killed someone. It was all she could think of, as if the news itself blocked her from considering its implications. Tiluk had grown even more solemn and quiet than usual. Neither Terra nor Tiluk were ready to know more.

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AUTHOR Bio and Links:

Rachel is a writer and biologist. As a kid she got hooked on all things animal, vegetable, and mineral. To complicate matters, she was hatching up stories before she could hold a crayon. Once she discovered biology it was all over. Ever since her first class in 7th grade when she refused to dissect a frog, a little voice in her head said: You gotta share this amazing stuff about how nature works, and ask if we really need to harm it. The little voice only got fiercer once she went to college and worked with captive dolphins and Beluga whales, then got to see wild killer whales only a few weeks later. From then on it was an all-out quest to convey the wonders of nature, while pointing out the serious problems of our very bad habit of dominating others and the Earth. She’s been a card-carrying science writer for twenty years. The Blackfish Prophecy is Rachel’s first book.

These days when Rachel is not writing, reading, dreaming, or speaking, you can find her sculpting an unruly assortment of moose-pruned orchard trees & berry bushes, gathering veggies & eggs in her micro-farmyard, foraging for mushrooms, and feasting on local food with friends.

She is a lifelong yogini, devoted pack mate to her free-spirited Canid, and mama bear who's sustained by treks deep into the Pacific Northwest with her increasingly feral family. Rachel drives a 100% electric zero-emission car, and her family's home is powered by renewable energy. Their little house is nestled on an urban lot they tend for kids' play, territory Animalia, sequestering carbon, and a food forest to augment the bounty of local growers.

Her work is fiercely aligned with the science of Life, harmony & justice for all: the enduring dream of Earth.

Book Links:

http://www.rachelclarkauthor.com/

https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781945419003

https://www.amazon.com/Blackfish-Prophecy-Terra-Incognita-Transition/dp/1945419008/

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27227443-the-blackfish-prophecy

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-blackfish-prophecy-rachel-clark/1123608352

https://shop.whales.org/the-blackfish-prophecy.ir

https://twitter.com/BlckfshProphecy

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GIVEAWAY INFORMATION and RAFFLECOPTER CODE:

Rachel Clark will be awarding 1 signed paperback of the Blackfish Prophecy

1 bookmark for The Blackfish Prophecy, 1 Orca-themed or book-themed mug to one randomly drawn US winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/28e4345f2943