The Gaia Wars — Interview

As part of this special promotional extravaganza sponsored by Novel Publicity, the price of The Gaia Wars eBook edition has dropped to just 99 cents this week. I will be reading, and eventually reviewing, the book this week.

What’s more, by purchasing this fantastic book at an incredibly low price, you can enter to win many awesome prizes, including a Kindle Fire, Amazon gift cards up to $100 in amount, 5 autographed copies of the book, and 5 autographed copies of its recently released sequel, Battle for Cascadia. Be sure to enter before the end of the day on Friday, December 9th, so you don’t miss out.

To Win the Prizes:

1. Purchase your copy of The Gaia Wars for just 99 cents on Amazon or Barnes & Noble
2. Fill-out the form on Novel Publicity to enter for the prizes
3. Visit today’s featured event; you may win an autographed copy of the book or a $50 gift card!
4. BONUS: If you leave a comment on this blog post, you have another chance at $100!

…And I can win too!

Over 100 bloggers are participating in this gigantic event, and there are plenty of prizes for us too. The blogger who receives the most votes in the traffic-breaker poll will win a $100 gift card as well. So when you visit Novel Publicity’s site to fill-out the contest entry form, don’t forget to say that I referred you, so I can get a point in the poll.

The Featured Events include:

Monday, Blogaganza on Novel Publicity! We’re kicking-off on the Novel Publicity Free Advice blog. We’ll ask the writer 5 fun and random questions to get everyone talking. Leave a comment or question in response to the post, and you may win an autographed copy of The Gaia Wars or its recently released sequel, Battle for Cascadia. Don’t forget to enter for the other contest prizes while you’re over there!

Tuesday, Twitter sharing contest! A tweet is tiny, only 140 characters. But on Tuesday, it could win you $50. Send the following tweet across the twittersphere, and you just may win a $50 Amazon gift card. Autographed copies of The Gaia Wars and its recently released sequel, Battle for Cascadia, are also up for grabs. The winner will be announced Wednesday morning. Here’s the tweet: Looking for a YA read that’s full of adventure & intrigue? Check out The Gaia Wars. Reduced to just 99 cents http://ow.ly/7ywpZ #whirlwind

Wednesday, Google+ sharing contest! Yup, there’s yet another awesome opportunity to win a $50 Amazon gift card, and this time it just takes a single click! Visit Google+ and share Emlyn Chand’s most recent post (you’ll see The Gaia Wars book cover included with it). On Thursday morning, one lucky sharer will be $50 richer. Autographed copies of The Gaia Wars and its recently released sequel, Battle for Cascadia, are also up for grabs. Three chances to win! How about that?

Thursday, Facebook sharing contest! Stop by Novel Publicity’s Facebook page and share their latest post (you’ll see The Gaia Wars book cover included with it). It’s ridiculously easy to win! On Friday morning, one lucky sharer will be $50 richer. Autographed copies of The Gaia Wars and its recently released sequel, Battle for Cascadia, are also up for grabs.

Friday, special contest on the author’s site! Win a Kindle Fire or a $100 Amazon gift card, simply by leaving a comment on Kenneth’s most recent blog post. How easy is that? Autographed copies of The Gaia Wars and its recently released sequel, Battle for Cascadia, are also up for grabs.

Remember, it’s all about the books!

About The Gaia Wars: DEADLY SECRETS have been buried in the Cascade mountain wilderness for centuries. Hidden. Out of sight and out of mind. Until today… Warren Wilkes, age 13, doesn’t like what a greedy housing developer has done to his peaceful mountain community, so he vandalizes the developer’s property, flees into the wild, and stumbles upon an ancient human skeleton revealed by torrential rain. More than old bones have been exposed, however, and the curious artifact Warren finds makes him question his own identity, and his connection to an ancient terror. A terror destined to rise again and annihilate all that Warren loves. He must fight or see his whole world destroyed. Get it on Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

About Battle for Cascadia: When Warren Wilkes, age 13, stumbles upon a mysterious relic deep in the Cascade Mountains, wonder reigns. Brimming with secrets and sentient energy, the relic leads Warren to a fantastic chamber, and to shocking revelations about his identity. Now wonder has turned to dread. A forgotten terror—a demon that knows Warren better than he knows himself—has risen again and is assembling an army; gathering power with a singularly evil goal in mind: to capture and enslave the wild spirit of the Earth itself. As war erupts and the planet slips into chaos, Warren embraces his destiny and finds help where he least expects it. Get it on Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

About the Author: Kenneth G. Bennett is the author of the Young Adult novels The Gaia Wars and Battle for Cascadia (the second book of The Gaia Wars), as well as the forthcoming Exodus 2018, a paranormal thriller set in the Puget Sound region of Washington State. A wilderness enthusiast who loves backpacking, skiing and kayaking, Ken enjoys novels that explore the relationship between humans and the wild. He lives on an island in the Pacific Northwest with his wife and son. Visit him on his website, Twitter, Facebook, or GoodReads.

Let’s get to know Kenneth better through a rousing Q&A…

Where did you find the inspiration for this novel?

The idea began with an article I read about The Gaia Hypothesis. This hypothesis, proposed by NASA scientist James Lovelock, says, in brief: “all organisms and their inorganic surroundings on Earth make up a single, self-regulating entity.” In other words, the Earth itself is a living thing. A vast, “super-organism.”

I love this idea! And when I first read about it I wondered how it might be woven into a novel. In my imagination, and in conversations with friends, I took the Gaia Hypothesis one step further. “What if Gaia (the Earth) is not simply alive,” I asked, “but also sentient?” It occurred to me that a lot of so-called primitive cultures believed this very thing. Understood it in their bones.

Then I was backpacking with my son Eli (age 9 at the time). After a few days in the wilderness, feeling more connected to the land, perhaps, I started to tell Eli the story of The Gaia Wars. He loved it. It took me about a year to write the book and refine it.

Warren Wilkes is quite the unexpected hero. Tell us about him. Is he someone you’ve met before, or is he completely fictional?

My son and his friends are all pretty outdoorsy kids. They’ve backpacked and skied and kayaked and climbed since they were really little, so Warren (a sort of feral, wilderness boy) is probably a composite of the kids I see every day.

This story’s setting is incredibly vivid. How did the Cascade Mountains influence your writing? Do you believe you could have told the same story in a different setting, or would it have been missing something otherwise?

North Cascades National Park is one of my favorite places on the planet, and I go there often. It’s easy to find inspiration in the ancient forests and high-alpine meadows of that region. I’ve also been heavily influenced by Olympic National Park, and by wild areas in Alaska, where I spent much of my childhood. The landscapes in the book contain elements of all of those places.

The Mendari aliens and their organic droids, the Fabrinels, mix-up the story in a way nothing else could have (not even the irksome Mr. Finley). How did you go about creating these other races and defining their culture and behavior?

The Mendari are fantastically advanced, technologically, but suffer from a civilization-wide melancholy. They have every device and contraption imaginable, but in the process of acquiring all this stuff, they’ve nearly destroyed their lovely planet and suffocated their own wild souls. They venture to Earth out of desperation, and with newfound humility, hoping to regain the wisdom they lost millennia ago. The Mendari race is basically the Human race in a few hundred years—if we don’t get our act together in terms of taking care of our planet.

Gaia, or Onatah, is the living embodiment of the Earth Mother. Without giving anything away, tell the readers how she fits into the story.

Gaia, the Earth Mother, represents the wild soul of the planet. She’s the wellspring of all life; the source of the DNA that animates everything from bacteria to redwood trees to homo sapiens. But we humans have reached the point where we think maybe we don’t need to be connected to this wild soul any longer. We see ourselves as separate from the natural world. I think this kind of hubris is a huge mistake, and that’s reflected in the story.

How much research did you have to do in order to learn about the Denelai people’s folklore and nature rituals? How did you find this information?

I love to learn about Native American culture, modern and ancient, and have read a lot about what North America was like prior to European contact. I’m steeped in that history, but the Denelai culture is entirely a product of my imagination—not based on any one people or tribe.

Your cast of characters has very interesting names—ones I suspect were not chosen arbitrarily. Please tell us how you came up with the names for Ina, Mirra, Uhlgoth, and the others.

I greatly admire the name-inventing abilities of authors such as Philip Pullman, J.K. Rowling, Ursula K. LeGuin and (of course) J.R.R. Tolkien. I worked really hard to come up with names that fit the various characters in The Gaia Wars.

You leave The Gaia Wars off on a very big cliff-hanger. What made you decide to take this gutsy literary move—channeling Warren, are you?

The Gaia Wars ends at what felt to me like a natural stopping point (or at least a “pausing” point)–A slight break in the action before all hell breaks loose in Battle for Cascadia.

Battle for Cascadia picks up where the first book leaves off. What can we expect from the sequel? Are there any major ways in which the style or plot line is different than The Gaia Wars?

Battle for Cascadia is a direct and immediate continuation of The Gaia Wars. Many of the storylines begun in Gaia draw to a conclusion in Battle—but not all of them! There are a lot of mysteries left to unravel in those rugged North Cascade canyons.

You’re going to give us more Warren Wilkes, right?! Please tell us you’re planning a third book in the series, and if you can, give us some clues about what happens next.

Absolutely! Warren and company find themselves in a very dangerous place and in very perilous circumstances at the conclusion of Battle. There’s a whole lot of story left to tell.

Interview with Austin Briggs, author of Five Dances with Death

Austin Briggs, whose book I recently reviewed (Five Dances with Death: Dance One), has granted me an interview with a look into the research and future of his work. I received his book through Adopt and Indie and have really enjoyed communicating with him. I hope to get involved in this program again in February. To learn more:

http://hannahrose42.wordpress.com/2011/11/04/adopt-an-indie-has-authors-left-to-adopt/

http://hannahrose42.wordpress.com/2011/11/15/five-dances-with-death-dance-one/

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1. What gave you the idea for such a unique and complex setting?

I’ve been attracted to the Native American cultures as long as I can remember myself. In my childhood, I was mostly obsessed with the Incas and Mohicans, Hurons and Cherokees. The Aztecs caught my interest relatively late.

Mexico is an incredibly compact location with all sorts of climates and conditions crammed into a narrow, relatively small space. This has enabled many diverse and rich cultures to develop, making the place endlessly interesting.

I’m also intrigued by the idea of a society that is about to lose itself entirely, because I’ve lived through such collapse.

2. What kind of travel or research did you do for Dance One?

Before I dared publish the first book, I spent 10 years researching.

I have, of course, read every single tome I could find about the Aztecs, starting from the first letters sent home by the Conquistadors, to the latest research papers. I studied both the European and Native documents. I learned some Spanish and Nahuatl to understand them better.

Most importantly, I travelled across Mexico and visited the places where my characters lived, fought their battles, and struggled with their choices.

Mexico taught me some hard lessons. For example, I had two books worth of text by the time I first visited the country, written based on what I imagined the Aztec culture would be after reading many historical sources. After two weeks of travelling around Mexico, I understood that I had written complete rubbish. So I deleted my books and wrote everything again, this time, hopefully, bringing real life into my texts.

Some readers ask me why did I add elements of magic into the story. I did that after visiting Mexico. If you slow down, step out of the cities and listen, you may see magic in many places. I’m not talking pretty flowers. I’m talking sorcery, old beliefs, persistent ideas that may seem either beautiful or superstitious, depending on your mindset.

3. Will your next book (in this series) be in a similar setting?

Yes, absolutely. The setting will naturally expand to include more details of the Spanish conquest, but the action will continue along the route of Cortés from the Caribbean coast to what now is Mexico City.

4. Tell me about your current work — are you working on any side projects or just focusing on Five Dances with Death? Do you have the other four books planned out, and if so, when can we look forward to reading them?

No side projects for me. Between a full time job in corporate business, a family with three kids, and much travel, I have time to focus on one writing project at a time.

The rest of the series is fully planned and developed. In a week I’m returning to Mexico to start writing the second book.

It takes a few months to finish writing and prepare the book for launch, so will be adding books reasonably soon.

5. Do you have any fun/weird habits that you do while you write?

Yes, I do.

Here’s one. I try to feel my protagonist’s mood. If he’s scared, I try to find the scariest place in my house to write – for example, at night with my back to the dark forest outside. If he’s drunk, I get drunk. If he’s angry, you can bet that so am I at the time.

Another habit of mine is to put either a piece of black obsidian from Mexico, or a silver statuette of a dancing Aztec warrior on my desk as I write. These things get me in the mood. The obsidian mystifies me, and the warrior doesn’t let me relax.

6. What are you currently reading: book or series, what do you like about it? Would you recommend it?

Right now, I’m enjoying the Lyonesse series by Jack Vance. I literally can’t put that book down. Just before that, I read Vanessa Wu’s stories. I passionately recommend both. Although dramatically different, they share true love for good language and a good story.

7. Tell me a little about your involvement with Adopt an Indie. Are there any myths or stigmas surrounding small publishing that you would like to abolish?

I heard about Adopt an Indie by chance, and decided to apply. Happy that you’ve found me, I’ve enjoyed our interaction.

As for the myths and stigmas… I remember feeling puzzled when one reviewer mentioned twice or thrice that my book was self-published. My first reaction was “Who cares?”

Then I realized that some folks indeed care. I don’t.

A book is a book. When I read, I judge the book, not the publisher. I never notice who publishes what. I love books, not the brand of the paper they’re printed on.

I self-publish by choice; I don’t feel stigmatized for choosing freedom.

8. Do you have any advice for authors who are looking to either self-publish or publish with a small company?

I’d suggest taking your time. Don’t rush to publish. Edit, then edit again, and edit yet again. Respect your readers, and spare them your rushed scenes and typos. You’re an entrepreneur, not an amateur; behave like one!

Here’s an example: I gave my book four professional edits and seven proofreads. Both commercially successful authors and Ph.D.’s in literature worked on perfecting my text. Still, at least one typo made it through. A friendly reader pointed it out to me, and I’ll fix it soon.

And another thing… don’t spend too much time with the fellow authors. Quit checking your sales numbers every hour. Get off the Kindle Boards or whatever forum you frequent.

Instead, connect with your readers, listen to them, and write quality stuff.

9. If you could pick one question that I didn’t ask that you wanted me to, what would it be, and how would you answer?

Is your book coming out in any other languages?

Yes! The Spanish translation will soon be ready. After that, I may translate my books into German, French and Russian.

10. Any last thoughts?

Thanks for your nice questions