The Dragon's Brood Cycle Series by Josh de Lioncourt is on virtual book tour. The epic fantasy stops at Readeropolis with an author int...
The Dragon's Brood Cycle Series by Josh de Lioncourt is on virtual book tour.
Q: Can you, for those who don't know you already, tell us something about yourself and how you became an author?
A: I think becoming an author starts with being a reader, and I've been a voracious reader for my entire life. Whether it was Dr. Seuss as a small child, the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Stephen King, Anne Rice, or a thousand other series or authors, I can't remember a time when I wasn't a reader. Telling stories, whether that was through fiction, music, or what have you, grows out of that for a lot of authors. It certainly did for me.
Q: What is something unique/quirky about you?
A: I love toys! I collect Masters of the Universe action figures and enjoy building Lego/Mega Construx sets! Some of my love for these things is born out of being blind, I think. Fantasy fiction, comic books, and science-fiction lend themselves well to amazing artwork. I remember reading Masters of the Universe comics, (and others), watching Star Trek and Star Wars, and so on, before I lost my vision at age six. Now, I experience the artistic elements of the genres I love through more three-dimensional formats, like action figures.
Q: What inspired you to write the Dragon's Brood Cycle?
A: I had the basic idea for the series bouncing around in my brain for the better part of twenty years. During that time, I had a number of false starts—versions of the story that didn't quite work and generally fizzled out. Even as I wrote other things, I kept thinking about it.
At some point shortly before I started writing the novel that became volume one in the series, a few more things clicked, and I realized that Emily Haven (now the hero of the main series) was the character I really cared about and wanted to focus on. So, with the story's lens focused on Emily, everything started to fall into place.
Q: Do you have any “side stories” about the characters?
A: Harmony's Song and Treasures and Trinkets are two novellas that focus on the backstories of Daniel and Maddy respectively. They can be read with or without reading the main series, although they are meant to connect with and enrich the series as a whole. Treasures and Trinkets, in particular, is one of the things I've written that I'm most proud of. Exploring the characters, their motivations, and their histories is uniquely satisfying, and really helps flesh out the universe.
Q: Can you tell us a little bit about the main character in the Dragon's Brood Cycle?
A: Emily Haven is the protagonist of the main series. She is a high school hockey prodigy whose home life is horrific. She's managed to hold herself together for years through her love of hockey and her best friend, Casey. Her talents on the ice are partially fueled by something she called "the knowing", a kind of sixth sense that she trusts implicitly—until it fails her at a pivotal moment. As her story unfolds, she begins to discover that there is much about "the knowing" and her history that she doesn't understand or even suspect, and all of it is tied up in the destiny of another world.
Q: If you could spend time with a character from your book whom would it be? And what would you do during that day?
A: It's so hard to choose, but if I had to pick one, it might be Lessa, who appears in Treasures and Trinkets. She's a fun, mischievous sort of person, and she's a marvelous storyteller. I would love to just sit with her and listen to the stories she knows. I suspect she has a great many stories to tell. 😉
Q: Are your characters based off real people or did they all come entirely from your imagination?
A: I imagine that this is a tough question for any author. None of my characters are ever intentionally based off of anyone real, although sometimes, going back, I can see how there are hints of certain people in the characters. For the most part, though, characters are who they are, and they let me know what they think and feel.
Q: Do your characters seem to hijack the story or do you feel like you have the reins?
A: Oh, my characters absolutely hijack the stories! I think that is absolutely how it should be, too. Stories are meaningless if the readers (and the writer) don't connect with the characters, and the characters have to be given the space to breathe. That can sometimes make life difficult for the writer, but there is nothing better than when one of your characters surprises you along the way.
Q: Is there a writer whose brain you would love to pick for advice? Who would that be and why?
A: Stephen King, for sure. He's just an incredibly talented storyteller, and of all the advice I've read from various authors, his (offered in the book On Writing) has always been the most valuable to me personally.
Q: Do the characters all come to you at the same time or do some of them come to you as you write?
A: It's a bit of both. Usually, the main characters of a story are more or less fully realized before I actually start writing. This was very much the case with Emily, Celine, and Michael—three of the main characters from the main series. Very often, though, new characters arrive in the book as I'm writing and demand a more prominent roles that I'd expected. Both Maddy and Daniel ended up this way. I ended up exploring their backstories in Treasures and Trinkets and Harmony's Song respectively, and they've become even more crucial to the series than originally planned.
Q: What kind of research do you do before you begin writing a book?
A: Whatever is necessary. The Dragon's Brood Cycle plays with (and often subverts) history and mythology from around the world, with a focus on that of Britain and Ireland. While I will sometimes research something specific, it is actually more common for things to happen in reverse; I'll be reading about something interesting from history or mythology, and it will spark an idea or concept that makes its way into the series.
Q: What is your favorite genre to read?
A: I enjoy fantasy of all kinds, from huge epics to urban fantasies and everything in between. Some of my favorite authors in that genre are Stephen King, Anne Rice, Rachel Aaron, Annette Marie, and Molly Harper, just to name a very few. I read a bit of everything, though, with a focus on anything that involves the supernatural or scifi.
Q: What are you currently reading?
A: I'm between books at the moment. I just finished the latest installment in Annette Marie's Guild Codex series, which is a truly spectacular set of urban fantasy novels broken into several subseries. In terms of urban fantasy, it doesn't get any better than Annette Marie.
Q: What’s the most difficult thing about writing characters from the opposite sex?
A: Both growing up and as an adult, I've always had more female friends than male, and I have always tended to connect more with female characters in the books I read as well. As a result, I gravitate far more toward writing women protagonists in most of my stories, so this question made me laugh. I find writing characters of my own gender more challenging and far less satisfying in general. I guess that makes me an oddity!
Josh de Lioncourt is the author of The Dragon’s Brood Cycle, an epic fantasy series. He was born and raised in California and enjoys writing projects in a wide variety of fields, including fiction, music, software, tech articles, and more. He has written on Apple accessibility for Macworld and Maccessibility, hosts or participates regularly on several podcasts, and writes and records music with Molly, his wife. Josh enjoys the works of Stephen King, the music of George Michael, Masters of the Universe, home-roasted coffee, and Los Angeles Kings hockey. He also happens to be blind.
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Follow the tour HERE for special content and a giveaway!
Three prizes:
• $25 Amazon gift card
• Audible audiobook copy of Treasures and Trinkets
• Swag bag of Dragon’s Brood Cycle merch
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Love this cover 😀. Sounds like a great book.
ReplyDeleteBest of luck with the books and book tour! I included the tour in the Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2020 edition of The BookTube Your Shelf Daily Reader: https://paper.li/Readeropolis/1517059010#/
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