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Leaping Beauty
In Leaping Beauty, Rebecca Fox transports readers into a world brimming with fantasy, intrigue, and a touch of mystery. Red Felian, the last princess of a crumbling kingdom, is cursed, her strength slowly drained by a spell that keeps her imprisoned within the palace walls. But Red, a symbol of resilience and courage, refuses to let her fate be sealed. With only days left to live, she breaks free, determined to explore the world beyond and uncover the truth behind her parents’ disappearance. Outside the palace, Red encounters a kingdom rife with peril—shadowy forests, corrupt guards, and a ruthless nobleman’s son who’s hellbent on capturing her. Yet, she remains unwavering in her quest. Her journey takes an unexpected turn when she meets Robbie, a captivating and enigmatic traveler whose involvement complicates her already dangerous mission. With time slipping away and threats looming, Red must seize control of her destiny before it’s too late.
Fox masterfully captures readers from the first page, blending elements of fantasy and mystery in an enticing narrative. The story opens with Red boldly declaring her intent to follow in her father’s footsteps on a dangerous quest to find her missing mother. The dialogue is crisp, immediately pulling readers into a world of fog-drenched castles, vanishing royalty, and legendary adventures. Red’s character, with her fierce determination and quiet resolve, is the beating heart of this tale. She reminds us that even the most unlikely hero can challenge destiny.
Unlike traditional tales of epic quests, Leaping Beauty takes a fresh approach, showcasing how quests are not always filled with triumph and glory. They can be a test of endurance, a theme that Fox explores beautifully. Red’s discoveries reveal that courage isn’t just about fighting battles but about pushing through uncertainty and loss. The novel’s atmosphere is rich with tension and symbolism. The persistent rain that falls after the Queen’s disappearance mirrors the kingdom’s grief, while the creeping fog that winds through the castle grounds hints at the uncertainty of the journey ahead. Red spends her time poring over ancient texts in the castle’s vast library, searching for answers to her mother’s vanishing and the strange fog engulfing her world. These scenes add depth, showing that Leaping Beauty isn’t just a fantasy tale but an exploration of familial duty, perseverance, and the battle between hope and despair. As the story builds to its thrilling conclusion, readers are treated to a heart-pounding moment of truth. Red and her companions face the mystery that has haunted them, leading to a surprising and emotional climax. The eerie atmosphere, combined with moments of humor and camaraderie, strikes a perfect balance. Fox weaves together the fantastical and the human, reminding us that in a world of magic and danger, it’s the strength of friendships and human connection that ultimately triumphs.
Leaping Beauty is a must-read for fans of epic quests, magical realism, and character-driven stories. It invites readers into a world where bravery is defined not just by vanquishing monsters but by holding onto hope even when the path forward is uncertain. The journey itself, and the bonds formed along the way, make this story both thought-provoking and deeply resonant.
Pages: 442 | ISBN : 1739356101
Inverse of the Typical Fantasy
Arsalan the Magnificent follows a professional wizard who is a magical architect who, after having a building collapse, is exiled and goes on a journey leading to redemption. What was the inspiration that drove the development of the world the characters live in?
It all stemmed from the main character. I once saw a video of an older man playing a stringed instrument while sitting outside a cabin on a mountain with cats walking around him. I believe the video was from Turkey. I imagined that that old man must have had an interesting former life he was retired from. Perhaps he was once a hitman, a general, or even a wizard. I kept this idea in the back of my mind for a good while. When I finally decided to write a fantasy story, I started from this idea of a mysterious, mountain-dwelling retiree, and I decided to make him a wizard character. Since I wanted to write a fantasy story that was unlike most others, I decided to make it historical fantasy fiction—in a world that was our own or adjacent to it—and use characters, circumstances, tropes, themes, and settings that are the inverse of the typical fantasy story of sword-wielding, dragon-riding warriors.
One thing that stands out to me the most in this novel is that instead of magic being used as a weapon, it is used to create and enrich lives. How did you balance magic and its use throughout the story to keep it believable?
I took cues from the way magic was handled in Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. If you notice, the use of magic in those stories is really subdued. Magic is used in the background by wizards of great power, but it is rarely utilized in the presence of the main characters to solve their largest and most pressing problems. This is because the wizards are present only for council and wisdom and are prohibited from using magic to combat Sauron directly; otherwise, the free peoples of Middle-Earth would rely on the wizards to defeat Sauron instead of finding the strength to oppose their common enemy as a unified people. There have been countless authors who were inspired by Tolkien to write fantasy fiction, but I don’t think many of them understood this aspect of Tolkien’s philosophy. I felt they tended to add magic to everything like too much ketchup, confusing the rules of the world and diluting the stakes of the story. Tolkien was actually a deep lover of peace, goodwill, common sense, and simplicity. If his benevolent magical characters didn’t need to use magic, they wouldn’t, and if they did, they would use it subtly.
In the same vein, I gave the magic in my story very physical, sober, and workaday characteristics, like electricity or magnetism, which behave according to strict physical laws and are routinely harnessed for everyday purposes. I made the magic in Arsalan the Magnificent a type of universally accessible energy that only a few gifted individuals could effectively channel into a straightforward type of telekinesis, and I wanted the wizards to be able to imbue inanimate objects with magical properties that last a finite amount of time before degrading. On top of that, I gave the wizards in my story the wisdom to foresee the possible devastating outcomes of the use of magic for war and to vow to reserve magic only for constructive purposes. Since magical architects were so few and so powerful, they knew they had the leverage and unity to oppose governmental militarization of magic and to direct their abilities towards ends that would enrich society, in the process also making magical architects wealthy.
After all, regardless of whether a society chooses to use magic for military purposes, what society wouldn’t use magic to produce large public works? It’s a sensible, adult use of magic and would surely be a lot safer and more efficient.
What was one scene in the novel that you felt captured the morals and message you were trying to deliver to readers?
That would be the scenes involving Arsalan dealing with his exile on the mountaintop. There is a powerful and deeply internal transformation happening there. He is forced to confront himself and all the choices he has made in his life, in the process growing into the wiser and more resilient Arsalan we see toward the end of the story. I would say those chapters are the most important part of the book for this reason.
What is the next book you are working on, and when will it be available?
I have a work of philosophical fiction written that needs to be edited for publishing. It’s called The Sport, and it involves the efforts of a scholar to research the complicated rules to an obscure athletic game. I hope to have this out either at the end of 2024 or the beginning of 2025. Of course, if Arsalan the Magnificent proves successful, I plan a sequel that will involve the adventures of Arsalan’s offspring.
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Roles of Greater Responsibility
Dane Thorburn and the Stanthorpe Rebellion follows Dane and Princess Vanessa as they investigate who the unknown raiders are that are striking out across their land. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
As this is the fourth installment in the series, I wanted to progress the evolution of Dane, Vanessa, and others. Having dealt with mystical creatures in the previous book, I wanted this one to focus more on dealing with people, and to show how Dane and Vanessa would deal with a major tragedy that thrusts them into roles of greater responsibility, at a time when they’re not expecting it. In terms of the story arc of the entire series, it was also important to show Raegan recovering from his injuries and how Dane deals with the realisation that Raegan is still alive.
Is there anything about Dane that came from yourself or your life experiences?
Like everyone, I have had times when things haven’t turned out as I wanted and have had to adjust and adapt to that, and sometimes my initial reaction isn’t the right one. I’m also a determined person, like Dane. One thing I did put in directly from my own life was the scar on his chin, which happens in the first and third books – I split my chin open twice when I was a young boy.
How did you come up with the idea for the antagonist in this story, and how did it change as you wrote?
Right from the beginning I wanted a powerful and evil wizard as the main villain. The real change that occurred as I’ve written the books is when Dane unwittingly almost kills him in Dane Thorburn and the City of Lost Souls (Book 2) when Raegan is disguised as a wolf. This created a whole new development for both Dane, dealing with the uncertainty and guilt that he nearly killed him (and would have killed him had he known Raegan was the wolf), and Raegan’s disappearance and loss of almost all of his power and how the journey he takes while he recovers.
I hope the series continues in other books. If so, where will the story take readers?
There will be more books. With Raegan’s recovery, he is now ready to return and unleash himself on the land once more, and knowing it was Dane who almost killed him, he has a special hatred for Dane that will be explored in future books.
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But when it appears everything is returning to normal once more, a series of attacks by a group of unknown raiders strikes fear across the Stanthorpe region and beyond.
Who are they – and where did they come from?
Are they connected to Candahorn and the rebel forces – or is exiled wizard Raegan, despite his mysterious disappearance, somehow behind it?
Dane is trying to piece everything together alongside Vanessa, Will, and Lord Frederick, when a tragedy of epic proportions changes the land forever, thrusting Vanessa into a role she’s not ready for, where she has to make a fateful decision.
Can they find out who is behind the attacks and save the lives of many, or will they be too late?
This is where fact and fiction blur
The Souls of Witches follows a demon with a dark past and a witch that must challenge her assumption of soul mates after one passionate night. What were some sources that informed this novels development?
I’m not sure what you mean by sources. The characters always come to me fully formed in my mind so beyond knowing what their strengths and limitations are, I just set the stage and let the book play out. But as I was working on Souls of Witches, I did realize I had inadvertently echoed a previous book of mine, Surrendered Darkly. In that book there is the question of if you can fall in love with someone from your past after they’ve broke your heart. I say The Souls of Witches is an echo of that previous book because Rowan and Lars have sex in the beginning of the book, go their separate ways, and then find themselves thrown back together by circumstances or fate. So how do you now create a relationship from what was the definition of a one-night stand with a virtual stranger? Each book puts the cart before the horse and deals with the question of “now what” and “can this really work”.
As to sources, many years ago I went to a witches ball in Atlanta, Georgia. Much of what I put in those chapters occurred on that night. But not all. This is where fact and fiction blur. I also have personal knowledge of witchcraft, the holidays that are celebrated, and an intimate knowledge of kitchen witchery, hedge witchery, and what it’s like to work in a café. Concerning Lars, I had already laid out in book 3, The Dreams of Demons, what the limitations and demands a demon character would possess. Strict adherence to those world-building rules played a large part in the direction this love story took.
What were some challenges you set for yourself as a writer with this book?
I thought my biggest challenge was going to be creating a solid relationship between two characters that didn’t hinge strictly on their sexual chemistry, but it turned out that it was far more difficult to accurately portray Rowan’s magick and power as a witch, specifically a kitchen witch. You see, all of the supernatural characters that are represented in the fictional Pale are, of course, products of my imagination. The gods, demigods, werewolves, demons, shifters, and fae are based on myths. But witches actually do exist in our modern-day world. I’m one of them and have been for the past 30 years. I’ve also known other witches, all of whom get a little tired of the way witches as a group are portrayed in books and Hollywood. So when I decided to create this series, I was determined to represent witches in a realistic way even though this is fiction and all the other supernatural characters would likely dominate the series. Witches are human. They love nature. They have varying gifts and talents. Some are odd. Some are mean. And, the way each witch expresses magick in the world is different. With Rowan, I wanted to inform the reader as to how a kitchen witch experiences magick along with creating a cool love story. Describing energy, the taste and feel of it on the tongue and skin, turned out to be a difficult dilemma for me. I think after many attempts and edits, I came reasonably close.
I enjoyed Lars and Rowan’s relationship. What were some ideas you wanted to explore with their relationship?
This book’s plot, more than any other in the Legends of the Pale Series, was driven by the two main characters. Each of their arcs is a little different, Lars’s journey of self-awareness being the greater, but both Rowan and Lars had to overcome internal struggles and definitions of who they thought they were in order to gain a happy ending for the reader. Lars had to confront his past, learn who his mother really was, and in doing so accept that his father wasn’t the monster he’d always believed him to be. Rowan had to reexamine her life choices, learn to lower her protective walls, and accept that though she is a mere kitchen witch that she’s also powerful. Powerful enough to control Lars, a being who undisputedly sits at the top levels of the Pale’s supernatural hierarchy. And without giving away how she does it, Rowan also had to be the one to rescue Lars and their future together.
So the shorter answer to the above question is that in order to find true happiness and acceptance with someone else, we have to examine our own baggage.
This is the fourth book in the Legends of the Pale series. Will you continue the series, or are will you be focusing on different stories?
Yes, I love this series and have several more book ideas in the works. Because each is a stand-alone novel, I’m not tied to following just a few characters. Instead I have the entire universe of the Pale in which to play. I’m currently working on The Tears of Dragons and The Heart of Monsters. I hope to release one of them by the end of this year.
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Rowan is a solitary witch by nature and a kitchen witch by inclination. The life she has carved out for herself is a small one, but also deeply satisfying. Rowan loves nothing more than tending her herb garden, baking sweets for the local café, and spending time with her best friends. She is fiercely independent and has never truly felt as if she were someone’s other half. Yet after a single night in the arms of a dark and mysterious lover, Rowan is forced to reconsider her past assumptions about the existence of soulmates. And if she and Lars are truly destined for one another, then how can such drastically different people learn to share a life together?
LITERARY TITAN 