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We’re All In This Together
The Ties That Bind follows a teenage girl who, after surviving her initial encounter with the enemy, is now honing her powers and preparing to unite the other six Human-Borns. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
I’ve always loved stories about teamwork and teens needing to learn how to work together despite differences. The anime, Digimon Adventure, proved to be a huge influence on my young mind, and upon recently rewatching it, I realized that it likely was the root of my inspiration for there to be a team of chosen ones, and that there would be tensions between the individuals. I’m someone who adores traveling, and that also played a big part in me wanting to turn this story into a global event, with each of the kids coming from different backgrounds, family structures, ethnic groups, and financial situations. I wanted to provide a sort of “we’re all in this together” idea, that no matter who you are or where you come from, you, too, could have been a Human-Born.
What character did you enjoy writing for? Was there one that was more challenging to write for?
I really enjoyed writing Jen in this book. Her struggles and growth were things that took me a while to convey well to the reader so that she came across fully believable in her reactions (I wrote the first draft of Ties back in 2011), but once I really focused on the trauma she’d been through and how she was feeling about it all, I was able to show my readers exactly where she is, and give her a cast that supported her growth and development (especially Tyron. Some of my favorite scenes in this book are the mentor/mentee scenes between Jen & Ty).
The hardest character to write for me was Lexa, and likely will be for a while. She’s so counter to my personality, and she thinks in such a selfish, brash way that I can understand but at the same time, I don’t understand because it’s not at all how I’d react to situations and people. I love her though, because there’s so much potential for growth in her. Naturally, my villains are hard to write (especially Cregorous), but Lexa proved difficult for me, because she’s supposed to be a good guy, and her way of seeing the world and even her motivations aren’t at all like the others’.
Are you a fan of the Young Adult and Coming-Of-Age genres? What books do you think most influenced your work?
It’s hard to say what books influenced my stories, especially in the YA and Coming-of-Age genres, because truthfully, I haven’t read many of them. My biggest influences, book-wise, came from the likes of Tolkien and Lewis, but when I was younger, I greatly enjoyed Orsen Scott Card’s books and I know I destroyed a copy of Where the Red Fern Grows. While I have read both Harry Potter and Percy Jackson, I never fell in love with them the way others did. I could appreciate the worldbuilding, and enjoyed aspects of the lore in both series, but I found more I didn’t like about them than things I did. So maybe they did influence me, but in a way that made me say, “I want my mentor character to never be compared to this character.” Or, “I want my characters and plot to be stronger than this.”
What will the next book in that series be about, and when will it be published?
Book 3, The Reflection of the Raidin, is available now! It launched June 25, 2024, and is all about the fact that the Human-Borns are now on the world of Tilion and are trying to figure out how to end the war with Caliga. (They don’t figure it out, because there’s still two books left in the series). Reflection is the book that shifts the series out of Young Adult and into New Adult, as the characters are growing, their situations are changing, the stakes are getting raised, and the themes discussed are deeper than your average upper YA reader might be ready to tackle.
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Seven teenagers rose to fight.
The world survived.
Now Jen Monroe is tasked with finding the six other Human-Borns. Still reeling from her traumatic encounter with the monstrous Cregorous, she faces cultural barriers, personality clashes, and a worldwide trek to find those destined to help her. But threats sleep in the shadows, and the humans were not blind to what they witnessed seven teenagers accomplish.
Meanwhile, the very enemy the Human-Borns are fated to encounter lies in wait.
He is patient. He is cunning. He is ruthless.
Soon, these seven teenagers find themselves in a battle they never expected. But in their drive to save those they care about, what might be lost in the process?
The Ties That Bind
The Ties That Bind, the second chapter in Susan L. Markloff’s Human-Born Era series, plunges readers back into the extraordinary saga of Jen Monroe and her fellow Human-Borns. This novel continues their epic struggle against the dark forces of Cregorous. A gripping YA fantasy, this installment brims with action, character growth, and masterful world-building, solidifying its place in the genre. The story picks up swiftly from where the first book left off. Jen, having survived her initial encounter with Cregorous, is now honing her powers and preparing to unite the other six Human-Borns. These teenagers, each wielding incredible abilities, must come together to confront their terrifying common enemy. Their journey demands not just facing external dangers but also wrestling with internal conflicts and the pressures of leading dual lives.
Markloff’s world-building stands out. Having established the foundation in the first book, she now enriches the world with intricate details that fantasy enthusiasts will relish. Her skill in blending the familiar with the fantastical breathes fresh life into a crowded genre. The world she creates feels vivid and layered, especially for a YA novel. The setting, a mix of the realistic and the supernatural, captivates the reader, making it easy to lose oneself in the story.
Not only does the world the author has created shine—but the characters do, too. Jen, our protagonist, is exceptionally well-crafted. Her authenticity and relatability draw readers in, even as the story delves into the strange and the surreal. Though the other Human-Borns don’t receive as much focus, each one emerges with a distinct personality and background. The interactions between the characters are often highlighted, with Markloff excelling at capturing the nuances of teenage banter. The chemistry between characters like Skylar and Takeo infuses the story with humor and warmth, raising the stakes when danger looms. Cregorous, the ever-present villain, remains a formidable and well-developed threat. At times, the amount of characters in the story can feel overwhelming, but the glossary at the back proves invaluable. The plot itself strikes a balance between intense, fast-paced action and slower, introspective moments. Without giving anything away, the climax delivers excitement and leaves readers eagerly anticipating the next installment.
The Ties That Bind is a stellar entry in YA fantasy, leaving me eager for what comes next. Susan Markloff delivers a thoroughly enjoyable experience.
Pages: 708 | ASIN : B0BR58QY1J
Diabolical Domains
Navigating Darkness follows a sixteen-year-old boy as he descends into a world of supernatural horrors where he is pushed to the brink of madness by a malevolent force. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
I’ve been interested in the realm of the supernatural ever since I was a young boy. With the revelation that “truth is stranger than fiction,” I was led to a great gathering of experiences, a story that must be told. Who were these demons waiting for darkness to enter my room and feed off the fear of a child? It’s been said that fear is a spirit, and it was my motivation in writing this story to bring to light that which dwells in diabolical domains and to expose the enemy of my soul with the light that overcomes the darkness.
Which character in the novel do you feel you relate to more and why?
The main character of the story is a teenage boy named Lucas Mofit. And without a doubt, I find Lucas to be the most relatable to myself. I recall the angst and rebellion of my own teenage years. Sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll, coupled with supernatural experiences, weighed heavily at times on my own adolescent soul. And yet, I managed to find light in the darkness, much like Lucas. The name Lucas means “bringer of light.”
How long did it take you to imagine, draft, and write the world Lucas finds himself in?
To imagine the world Lucas finds himself in, I only needed to recall my own journey through darkness. However, It took years to draft and write the manuscript. There were many obstacles along the way. There were days when I would finish my coffee with no ink on the page. And then there were those days when the creative juices were flowing, and the coffee would go cold.
I find a problem in well-written stories, in that I always want there to be another book to keep the story going. Is there a second book planned?
I never started out writing Navigating Darkness with the intention of writing a sequel. I was totally invested in the story from beginning to end. Although, after receiving such positive feedback and a desire to learn more about what happens next to Lucas, I’m left wondering myself. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
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Haunted by fears and supernatural signs, young Lucas Mofit must face his demons or risk losing his mind. Having found a way to escape the pressures of the day, sixteen-year-old Lucas looks forward to a night of self-indulgence. What he gets is more than he wants. In the woods, a dog is chasing its tail in a ring of smoke. “The Devil?” It’s the first sign. Day after day and night after night, they continue―visions and voices, omens and nightmares. His friends seek to console him, but to no avail. He feels all alone . . . But he’s not alone. There is something wicked with him, something frightening and foul. He can’t take it anymore. Finally, he breaks. He cries out to God, and God hears him. All is well until it happens again! Lust leads him to darkness. And in the darkness, a dog is chasing its tail.
Resolving Old Trauma
Calliope Wakes follows a young adult woman who is plagued by relentless nightmares and strange uncontrollable events happening around her. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
I grew up in the Midwest where I looked like no one else. First-generation immigrant families sometimes don’t assimilate well and I was stuck straddling two very different cultures. You want weird looks? Bring chopsticks for your school lunch. My happy place growing up with the tiny city library and that’s where I started exploring. All the good classics–Lloyd Alexander, Patricia McKillip, Alice Hoffman, Andre Norton, Katharine Kerr, Susan Cooper. If it was available, I read it. I wanted to write a book about an outsider trying to reconcile two completely different worlds. And, of course, I wanted sweeping romance, epic battles, and earth-shattering endings.
Callie struggles with her nightmares and the return of Erik into her life leaving her questioning what is happening and if she is the cause. What were some driving ideals behind your character’s development?
I needed Callie to earn her self-actualization. There’s always someone else telling you who you should be, what you should do, and weighing your worth, screw all of that. It took me a long time to realize I needed to run my own race and I pushed for Callie to start having faith in herself.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
For all young folks moving from high school to college, the mission should be to discover yourself. What do you believe in, what do you want to do with your life, what are your hard limits, or do you even have them? Emerging adulthood is a time like no other because you’re still unformed and that is your first shot at making yourself who you want to be. A key part of that is letting go of the past or resolving old trauma because you don’t want that weighing you down going forward.
Will there be a follow-up novel to this story? If so, what aspects of the story will the next book cover?
I always intended for this to be a one-shot but now I want to write a full trilogy! Let’s see what my lovely publisher at Evernight Teen thinks. Celtic and Norse mythology is vast and wide-ranging but there are some fantastic myths that I want to tie to the young adult experience.
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The gods are alive, and they’re in Michigan.
Something is wrong in Bellhaven, and Callie doesn’t know how to stop the nightmares. She just wants to be safe in her small city by Lake Michigan, but there are strangers in town and evil around the corner. Is she causing the troubles, or is there something more sinister? Erik has come back into her life and seems to know more about her bursts of insanity than her, but she doesn’t know if she can trust him or if he’s trying to distract her.
Then buildings are collapsing, wolves are attacking, people are dying and only Callie can save them. Will this time be different? Will they finally live to see the sun rise on All Hallows’ Eve?
Vivid Memories
Out of Body follows a teenage girl experiencing weird dreams who discovers they are not dreams but out-of-body experiences. What inspired the setup of your story?
Sometimes I dream that I’m flying, and after one particularly vivid dream, I wondered, “What if these aren’t dreams? What if my spirit actually leaves my body while I’m sleeping and goes flitting around town?” My next thought was, “What a great premise for a novel!” The idea marinated in my brain for a couple of years before I finally got around to turning it into a novel.
In many contemporary coming-of-age fiction novels, authors often add their own life experiences to the story. Are there any bits of you in this story?
Absolutely. I have vivid memories of my angsty teenage years. Unrequited love, shifting friendships, school drama—I lived it all, so it was easy for me to incorporate those elements into my story. For instance, in Out of Body, Abby has brilliant imaginary conversations with the boy she likes, but when she encounters him in person, she morphs into a tongue-tied idiot. Yep—been there, done that!
This sets up the novel to deliver some very entertaining scenes. What scene was the most fun to write?
At one point in the story, Abby’s astral travels take her to a very bizarre place, so I had to do some serious world-building. Those scenes were fun to write because I could let my imagination run wild. Since this was a made-up fantasy world, I didn’t have to worry about adhering to the laws of physics or biology. I just had to make sure everything seemed plausible in the context of the story. Constructing that world from scratch made me feel a little bit like a demigod: powerful, omnipotent, creative.
Will there be a follow-up novel to this story? If so, what aspects of the story will the next book cover?
Astral projection is a fascinating subject, one with infinite plot possibilities, so there could very well be additional books. Since finishing Out of Body I’ve been working on an unrelated project, but I do have a solid idea for a sequel. In Out of Body, Abby sets out to save her cousin after he gets lost on the astral plane. Without giving too much away, I can say that in the sequel, Abby will be the one in trouble, but it will be a different sort of trouble. Her world will be turned upside down, and she will have to go on the run as she figures out how to save herself.
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Wings and Cool Abilities
The Rise of the Raidin follows a seemingly ordinary eighteen-year-old high school girl who is secretly training as a dragon slayer warrior. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
The biggest inspiration started when I was in eighth grade and was diagnosed with idiopathic scoliosis. I already had terrible eyesight and bad teeth, and I found myself wishing to just wake up one day and all these broken parts of me were fixed. I was really into fantasy and sci-fi stories, and loved fast-paced stories with lots of action, especially in movies. So my brain basically asked the question, “What if when we woke up and everything was fixed, we also had wings and cool abilities? And maybe we had to save the world from something?” As I worked to develop the story, which initially had little by way of plot and was “just vibes,” I drew a lot of inspiration from fantasy and sci-fi books, movies, and TV shows like The Chronicles of Narnia, Lord of the Rings, Ender’s Game, Stargate SG-1, and Star Trek, as well as a bunch of my favorite animes, most notably Digimon and Zoids.
In a lot of contemporary coming-of-age fiction novels, authors often add their own life experiences to the story. Are there any bits of you in this story?
In the earliest drafts of the story, Jen was practically a carbon copy of me. By now, the only things we share are our love of photography, our drive to protect those we care about, and how deeply we love our families. She’s far wittier than I am, and far braver and more resilient, too. I can see where one of my brothers influenced bits of Krelien’s character, and where my deep love of animals influenced the creation of Blaze and Archer. Tyron has slowly become, quite truthfully, the picture of the sort of man I would want to marry someday. Ar’on and I have almost nothing in common, aside from maybe his favorite tea blend. But with Kaldok, I specifically gave him my love of baking. I really enjoy baking (though seldom do I give myself time for it), and I felt that of all the characters, it fit Kaldok the best to be this imposing werewolf that loves to bake treats for others.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
I don’t write my books with themes or tropes in mind. The only themes I ever want to convey in my stories is that there is an absolute truth, that there is such a thing as being wrong, accepting the cost of our wrong actions, and seeking repentance. As a Christian, I want to hold my stories to a realistic standard so that my characters feel real (even if their circumstances are fantastical), but I won’t shy away from the truth. Any other themes and tropes that readers see in the story are ones I didn’t plan for. In fact, I rely heavily on my early readers to tell me what tropes and themes are in my books, because I have a very hard time figuring out what the “theme” of a story I’ve written is.
When will book 2 be available? Can you give us an idea of where that book will take readers?
Book 2 is available now! The Ties That Bind launched on February 7, 2023. Ties blasts readers into a worldwide adventure. Where Rise took place mostly over the course of a single day, Ties takes about two months of traveling and meeting the ever-expansive cast. Readers have said that it’s a story where they realize they’re “all in” with the series and are fully invested to see where things go. It’s a book that can be intimidating, with its 600+ page count, but almost every reader finishes Ties within a week, many within two days. Readers can expect loads of character development, meeting dynamic characters from diverse backgrounds, plenty of banter, higher stakes, some trauma recovery, some heartache and loss, the introduction to the world of Tilion, and more epic battles.
If readers enjoyed The Rise of the Raidin, there are 6 parallel side-stories to Rise in a novella series called The Human-Born Chronicles. They can learn more about all of my books via my website.
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Which is precisely why no one—least of all herself—would suspect anything extraordinary from the quiet, boring girl who only has a few good friends to call her own. But that all got flipped on its head about a year ago, when two imposing men, a complete goofball, a werewolf, and two large four-legged creatures barged into her life.
Now over a year later, Jen leads a double life. Mild-mannered, quiet, high schooler by day; dragon slayer and raw-energy-wielding-warrior (in training) by night. Juggling SAT scores, papers, and mastering the art of flying, she’s managed to keep her friends and family oblivious of her hybrid abilities and continue on a track for college. Everything was going swimmingly.
Until one normal, foggy, November morning, when a dragon crashed through the clouds, heralding a small army to descend on her high school. All for little, forgettable her. Making her realize that maybe there’s a whole lot more going on than she originally thought.
A Little History And Girl Power
The Four follows a group of teenage girls with unique talents in New Orleans who learn to rely on one another for friendship and acceptance while facing a dark fairy. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
The book came about in an unusual way. I wrote an adult commercial fiction book & was in the midst of querying. One evening I received an email from an agent I had been corresponding with and I excitedly opened the email to find a plethora of praise surrounded by a “but at 137K words I will have to pass but will be cheering you from the sidelines.” So, I was disappointed since I had put a lot of hope into this agent. I decided it might just be that I had never written a novel before & it didn’t matter what I wrote. So, I sat down and wrote a query letter for a YA novel, since most of the agents I had queried were interested in YA, for a book that didn’t exist. The next morning, I received a request for the first 25 pages, and The Four was born.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
Once I began in earnest, it was very important that I convey acceptance. I had four very different girls who were alone with their secret, and I loved the idea of showing the awkwardness of beginning a new school, the challenge of high school, and being different but throughout all of that finding your squad. The very important relationship of a girl’s first real friendships.
Each of the girls in this story has different powers. In fantasy novels, it’s easy to get carried away with the magical powers characters have. How did you balance the use of supernatural powers?
I wanted the story to be grounded. There are so many books where the powers and supernatural become the focal point of the story. I wanted the friendships to be the center and I really wanted New Orleans to be almost a character in itself. I also tried to toss in a little history and girl power along the way. An example of that would be Joyce, a young survivor of the Titanic, who is the spokesperson for the hundreds of souls buried in her crypt.
Will this novel be the start of a series, or are you working on a different story?
The original book The Circlet is in edit, and I have begun a new project that blends Gaiman, Baum & The Legend of King Arthur in the environs of Savannah. With that said, when you purchase a copy of The Four from me there is a bookmark & sticker hidden inside the pages. The card asks the reader to tell me who of The Four they most related to. It’s been really lovely. I received one response who told me she was allergic to everything, but since it didn’t bother Mallory, my hemoglobin-intolerant vampire, it wouldn’t bother her anymore either. Along with lovely messages, I have been getting requests for sophomore year. I was told recently that I need the write the girls through college. So, the little unlikely book might have started something I never intended. I think the girls of The Four would like that.
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As they journey through freshman year of high school they face the trials and tribulations which come with discovering and embracing their differences. Together they will battle the dark fairy world to save a friend in the magical city of New Orleans. Along the way, they encounter a collection of creatures, both magical and mortal, under the rising full moon.
The Four is a tale of friendship, acceptance, and self-discovery, infused with the whimsy of Tim Burton and the magic found only in New Orleans. This is a story of finding the courage to be yourself and embrace your unique talents, no matter how different or unusual they may seem.
LITERARY TITAN 