Today I’m hosting author Roland Yeomans, who’s just released a new fantasy novel: END OF DAYS.
I met Roland through blogging and we got to know each other better in the A to Z Challenge. I really love both his writing and the high school setting for this supernatural novel. Roland says:
“I’ve read many YA books set in schools, and very, very few mention what goes on in the classrooms. The action all transpires before or after class, making the school almost non-existent when for students, it makes up a bulk of their weekly lives. In END OF DAYS, I brought the class into the lives of the students. Seeing as it was a high school for and taught by supernaturals, the classes were hardly boring!”
Here’s are a couple of excerpts from End of Days:
1) Wolf Howl, a Lakota shaman, is a teacher at St. Marrok’s. He begins his classes with:
“Students, let us put our minds together and see what lives we can make for ourselves, shall we?
“The Sidhe who sent you here hope that I will talk of the Native American People and their failure to stop an invading horde of ever-increasing numbers and far advanced technology.”
He seemed to grow taller. “Instead I will talk of how a small people held off overwhelming odds and in so doing set the stage for what the Western World calls civilization.”
He said the last word as if it tasted bad.
He leaned against the teaching boulder. “To an invader, the indigenous people always look easy prey. The Tuatha de Danann should have learned on September 11, 2001, that the age of heroes is not dead. Heroes live among us like demigods in old Greek myth. They are everyday people who value human dignity to such a degree that they will rise to protect it, sometimes sacrificing themselves in the process.”
2) Another teacher, a vampire priest (yes, this IS a fantasy — LOL) uses DRACULA as a text to teach how to approach life. How?
Renfield started to pace. “The whole story. That is something none of the characters in DRACULA ever get. Nor does the reader.”
Father Renfield rubbed his hands together, his eyes beginning to burn with a strange light. “DRACULA is told entirely in letters, telegrams, press cuttings, and other similar narratives. None of the people telling us the tale knows the entirety of what is actually happening around them and to them.”
He stopped suddenly staring at each of us in turn. “This means that DRACULA is a book that forces the reader to fill in the blanks, to hypothesize, to imagine, and to presume.”
Renfield held up a long forefinger. “As all of us must do as we live each day, each week, each year.”
Roland is giving away one ebook of End of Days to a lucky commenter! So get your supernatural groove on and talk to us, Obi Wan.
Jennifer Lane Books 