Saturday, December 15, 2012

The Next Big Thing

I am excited to announce that I have been nominated by Yolanda I. Washington to participate in The Next Big Thing Blog Hop. For those of you who don't know about it (and don't feel bad, this was the first I had heard of it, also), The NBTBH is, essentially, a pay-it-forward blog hop for writers, wherein each nominee nominates two other authors to participate. We pass on a series of ten questions to answer about an upcoming book, and post our answers to our blogs.

In the pay-it-forward spirit of everything, I'm nominating J.S. Chancellor and Jeremy C. Shipp.

 So, without any further ado, here are my ten answers, about my upcoming book Deucalion, Book 9 of The Noricin Chronicles (don't worry, my answers are fairly spoiler-free if you haven't read the first eight books).

1. What is the working title of your book?
 Deucalion: The Fallen Angel of Vengeance (The Noricin Chronicles #9)
2. Where did the idea come from for the book?
Well, this is the ninth book in my series, The Noricin Chronicles. The entire series stemmed from basically a conglomerate of ideas that all kind of suddenly came together about seven years ago to form this one, epic story. While the primary idea from that conglomerate does relate directly to this installment, I can't really talk about it without completely spoiling the first eight books in the series, so I'll focus on the idea that became the first eight books, which at its essence was a dark version of Harry Potter, combined with the X-Men and The DaVinci Code. If you can picture that admittedly eclectic mashup of thematic elements, then you should fit right into the Noricin world.
3. What genre does your book fall under?
Primarily science-fiction, although it does have some crossover elements from horror and fantasy, as well.
4. Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
The primary character in this installment is Deucalion, who is a very complex character that has to play many different angles of his personality throughout the series as a whole, and in this installment in particular. He's sort of the Darth Vader of the series - we go through most of the books hating him, but here we get to see his origins and what made him into the villain he later became - and even, hopefully, feel a bit of pity for him on occasion. As such, the actor to play him really needs to be extremely versatile - someone who can one minute make you quiver in  your boots with fear, and the next cry for him. Due to that duality, my top pick for him was Michael Clark Duncan, prior to his death, of course. My second pick would probably be Michael Fassbender (his Magneto performance in X-Men sold me), and third would be Daniel Craig.
5. What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book? 
In this, the ninth installment of Mark Sheldon’s epic Noricin Chronicles saga, journey back to the very beginning and witness the origins of the madman who, after a life of societal rejection, would go on to become the most dangerous sociopath the world has ever known: the Scorpion.
6. What is the longer synopsis of your book?
The Norcinites, a secret race of super-humans, have been hiding in the shadows of civilization for over a hundred years. No one knows how the first of the Norcinites, Steven Noricin, came upon his powers, but they all fear what would happen if the Old Race - the Commen - were to learn of their existence. In the 1960's and 1970's, the Norcinite world was torn apart by a genocidal maniac known only as the Scorpion. The Scorpion was defeated in 1979 by Nevar Loeren, but his spirit - unbeknownst to the Norcinites - endured. Now, twelve years after the fall of the Scorpion, the warlord is regaining strength and it appears as if the fates of the Old and New Races rest on the shoulders of one twelve year-old boy, Daniel Regal, an orphan who shares a mysterious bond with the dreaded Scorpion.
7. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
For now, I am a self-published author.
8. How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?
I spent about three years drafting out the detailed plots of all twelve books in the series. Once that groundwork was completed, it took me about a year to complete the first drafts for all twelve. My team of editors and I have been going through each book and editing prior to the publication of each installment.
9. Who or What inspired you to write this book?
I have often said that if JK Rowling, Dean Koontz, and Dan Brown were to get together in a time machine, and travel back to early 1982 in order to have an impassioned night of drunken recklessness with Douglas Adams, that it is entirely possible that I might have been the lovechild result of such a coming together of literary minds.
10. What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?
I often tell people that if you're an older reader who is a fan of book series like Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, Percy Jackson, etc., and want to find a new series to get into that's targeted at a slightly more mature audience than those series, then The Noricin Chronicles is the series for you.

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