Guest Post on Hero Creation with Atonus Perry

Hey guys! As part of a blog tour we have a fun guest post from Atonus Perry, the author of Sinexia : The Mark of Perillius.

Sinexia is a bastard world that never should have existed. Its birth was an accident. Born of war and anointed with savagery, its lands were conquered by magicians, monsters, and creatures that some would revere as gods or demons. Just as Earth holds Sinexia's Origin, Sinexia holds the fate of the Earth. The Sinexia series chronicles the events that bond Earth and Sinexia. Read them and become engrossed in the tales of honor, love, despair, and action that cycle in a ring of creation and cataclysm. The Mark of Perillius follows the adventures of a young orphan who inherits the powers and abilities of his fabled ancestor. He is taken from the only normalcy he has ever known and tossed into a world of mystery and magic. Once there, he must learn to master his newfound abilities while encountering a host of rich characters, places of wonder, and dire situations.

HERO CREATION

I keep getting asked how I came up with the protagonist for Sinexia: The Mark of Perillius. I do enjoy talking about it, but I am going to write it here so that I will still be able to answer this question when old age starts to claim my memory.

I wanted to write about a hero, but I wanted to show his progress in a gradual kind of way. When I was in junior high and high school, Dragonball and Dragonball Z was a very popular animated series. One of the things I really enjoyed bout the series was that it chronicled the events surrounding a young boy and continued to follow him when he reached adulthood. I liked the way it was done so much, that I did a similar thing in The Mark of Perillius. The exploits in the first Sinexia span nine years. The protagonist begins as a teenage orphan and has reached adulthood by the book’s end.

Although I write about beings with fantastic super powers, I felt it was vital for me to show traits that are not typical for heroes in my protagonist. So, I made him rash, impulsive, and selfish. Those traits, along with a tendency to wallow in his own self pity, earned him the disdain of even me! He was very un-heroic. Through the events in The Mark of Perillius, he grows into someone worthy of the title hero. Disdain turns to adoration and a hero is born.

I really just tried to make him human. I gave him faults, goals, and secrets. I also gave him passion, and love.

This is a progression that I have witnessed first hand. I have cousins who were hellions and have turned into upstanding pillars in their community. Everyone is given the opportunity to rise to the occasion. It how we meet these challenges that determine the titles we are worthy of.

Sinexia book trailer

A big thanks to Atonus Perry! Make sure to go check out his book, Sinexia: The Mark of Perillius!

xoxo and love always,

Shelbie and Amanda

Blog Tour with Sybil Nelson!

Were on Priscilla the Great's Blog tour and we were lucky enough to have Priscilla's interview with Sybil Nelson, enjoy!

Hey, hold up. Before click away into cyberspace, I gotta tell you this is
not religious or anything. My creator is none other than Sybil Nelson, author of
Priscilla the Great. And I’m Priscilla. I’m a lean, mean, tween, machine and I
want to tell you all about my world. But I thought a more fun way to do that
would be to interview the person who created me. I think she might know me
better than I know myself. So here it goes:

Priss: Hey Sybil. What’s up?

Sybil: Not much.

Priss: Quick, tell the people at The Mortal’s Library five interesting
things about yourself.

Sybil: Okay, let’s see. I’m a wife and mother of two little girls. I’m a
PhD student. I love to write in my spare time and create new realities. I taught
high school math and dance for nine years. And I love Justin Bieber.

Priss: Whoa. Wait. What? You love Justin Bieber?

Sybil: And not just Justin. I love all pop music. I was just “whippin my
hair” to the latest Willow Smith song this afternoon.

Priss: For future reference, I would just like to request that you do not
have me singing any pop music in future books.

Sybil: Not a problem. You’re a horrible singer anyway.

Priss: Good point. So where did you get the inspiration for my character
and my powers and my quirky little town of River’s Bend?

Sybil: Well, you are actually a compilation of two of my students named
Helen and Ellen. They were two hilarious girls that I taught a couple of years
ago. Helen especially would come to class each day with a new story of something
weird that happened to her or that she did. Your personality came from her. And
you looks came from Ellen. As for your town, I like to think of it as a kind of
Stars Hollow from the TV show Gilmore Girls. It’s small, quaint and tight nit.
Everyone knows everything about everyone…well, except for the fact that you can
shoot fire out of your fingers.

Now your powers, that’s kind of a crazy story. Originally, Priscilla Maxine
Sumner was a girl who got super powers along with her first period.

Priss: Wait. What? Is that why my initials spell PMS? How embarrassing!

Sybil: I know. It was a funny story, but an editor talked me into taking
out that angle. So instead of The Adventures of PMS Girl, we now have Priscilla
the Great.