Cobweb Bride - 'Fiction Addiction'Blog Tour, Interview - and *G*I*V*E*A*W*A*Y*

COBWEB BRIDE

(Cobweb Bride Trilogy, Book One)

by Vera Nazarian

Release Date: July 15, 2013

Publisher: Norilana Books

Imprint: Leda

Trade Hardcover (First Edition) ISBN-13: 978-1-60762-112-6 ISBN-10: 1-60762-112-6

$24.95 US / 20.00 UK

Trade Paperback ISBN-13: 978-1-60762-113-3 ISBN-10: 1-60762-113-4

$14.95 US / 12.00 UK

Ebook (multi-format) ISBN-13: 978-1-60762-114-0 ISBN-10: 1-60762-114-2
Amazon Kindle ASIN  - B00DK02MHG 

$5.99

There are two giveaways on this tour:

1) a giveaway for 5 e-copies of Cobweb Bride.  To enter you just need to leave a comment with your email address, and follow this blog if you don't already.  Entrants must also sign up to the book announcement Cobweb Bride Mailing List  http://eepurl.com/vodcT

2)      Rafflecopter giveaway .  Please read the interview and enter the Rafflecopter contest at the end.

About Cobweb Bride:

Many are called… She alone can save the world and become Death's bride.

COBWEB BRIDE (Cobweb Bride Trilogy, Book One) is a history-flavored fantasy novel with romantic elements of the Persephone myth, about Death's ultimatum to the world.

What if you killed someone and then fell in love with them?

In an alternate Renaissance world, somewhere in an imaginary "pocket" of Europe called the Kingdom of Lethe, Death comes, in the form of a grim Spaniard, to claim his Bride. Until she is found, in a single time-stopping moment all dying stops. There is no relief for the mortally wounded and the terminally ill....

Covered in white cobwebs of a thousand snow spiders she lies in the darkness... Her skin is cold as snow... Her eyes frozen... Her gaze, fiercely alive...

While kings and emperors send expeditions to search for a suitable Bride for Death, armies of the undead wage an endless war... A black knight roams the forest at the command of his undead father… Spies and political treacheries abound at the imperial Silver Court.... Murdered lovers find themselves locked in the realm of the living...

Look closer — through the cobweb filaments of her hair and along each strand shine stars...

And one small village girl, Percy—an unwanted, ungainly middle daughter—is faced with the responsibility of granting her dying grandmother the desperate release she needs.

As a result, Percy joins the crowds of other young women of the land in a desperate quest to Death's own mysterious holding in the deepest forests of the North…

And everyone is trying to stop her.

PLEASE NOTE: Characters and content

The youngest Patty is thirteen, while the heroine, Percy is sixteen, and her eldest sister Belle is eighteen.  In addition, the Grand Princess Claere is sixteen.  There is some "undead" gruesome violence, but mostly it is offstage or PG-13. As for sexual situations, also PG-13 at worst (dream sequence in this book), and mostly the romance will be in the next two books.

***

INTERVIEW

HL:   I'm so excited to have  the author of Cobweb Bride as my guest today.

Welcome to the Flight Deck, Vera.  Grab a glass of something sparkling and refreshing from the replicator and tell us a little more about yourself, with three things not many people know about you. 

       

VN:  First of all, thank you so much for having me here! And, great question! Some of my readers might already know that I am originally from Russia. I was born in Moscow, back when it was the USSR, and immigrated first to Beirut, Lebanon as a little girl with my parents, my Armenian father and Russian mother, and then—after the civil war started there and missiles started to fall—we fled as refugees to Greece and finally arrived in the United States a month before I turned ten. However, here are some things that most people don’t know about me:

Fun Fact One—I spent every summer of my childhood except one, at my grandmother’s in Simferopol, the capital city of Crimea (now in Ukraine), on the shores of the Black Sea. My parents put me in the water as an infant and I could swim on my own by the time I was five or six.

Fun Fact Two—I started first grade in Moscow a year early, at the age of six. In Soviet Russia, kids normally started school at seven. However my mother was a teacher and there was no one to watch me, so she petitioned the school to let me attend a year early. And so I went to my first grade in Moscow School #671, while my mom taught the sixth and eighth graders there. About a year later, we transferred to Moscow School #30, until we left the USSR.

Fun Fact Three—I am a vegetarian, since 1985 when I first discovered the cruelties of factory farming, and I am now a lifelong proponent of animal rights. This is the one personal cause I believe in with all my heart.

HL:   That's fascinating - and it's always good to talk to someone who cares about animal welfare. Whilst I'm not entirely vegetarian myself, but I do try to ensure any animal products I eat are at least from sources where the animals were well looked after and had reasonable freedom; OK, my readers are always interested to know - what do you do for fun when not writing?

VN: I think the default easy answer is reading all kinds of books, including world literature, fantasy, science fiction, romance, and historical fiction, and watching guilty pleasure TV shows. However, these days I don’t have much time for anything but writing. I used to paint and sing and play guitar, and knit, and engage in crafts such as wood carving and dollmaking. But at present my artistic outlet is creating book covers and interior illustrations for my written works. You can see my most recent—it’s the hand-drawn interior Map of the Realm and the Domain in Cobweb Bride, and of course the cover design itself.

HL:   And it's just beautiful! When did you start writing?

VN: I like to say that I started writing as soon as I could hold a pen, but that would be so not true—first, I started drawing. Writing came a bit later. Okay, I wrote my fist poem, in my native Russian, when I was eight, and it was two four-line rhyming stanzas about a cat. Seriously, I am not a poet, so this kind of thing happened very infrequently since. I am definitely a prose writer. My first English-language creative work was a homework assignment in 5th grade in the United States, where I wrote a mini story that was a blatant ripoff of The Nutcracker.

HL:   LOL! So many great stories are spin-offs or adaptations of fairy stories! What comes first: the plot or the characters?

VN: That’s a tricky question, and usually it’s neither. First comes this brief, even nebulous idea out of the blue, often prompted by some ridiculous unrelated thing like an image on TV or something outside the window, or on the street. Sometimes it’s a striking image in a dream! Don’t laugh, I came up the word “Amarantea” and “the color red,” in a dream, and that was the basis of my novel Dreams of the Compass Rose.

Sometimes the idea comes as an overwhelming feeling, and then it takes the form of a powerful theme or high concept. A theme is something like “what if you first killed someone and then fell in love with them?” Or, “what if all over the world, in one instant, all death and dying stopped?” these two themes collided and became the basis of Cobweb Bride. And then, after this catalyst hits me, then I start coming up with characters and plot. Which comes first? The chicken or the egg? I have no idea!

HL:   Tell us about your latest release and what you think readers will enjoy about it

VN: Cobweb Bride is the first book of an ambitious, historical, magical epic trilogy that is based on the myth of Persephone and Hades and the underworld, and takes place in an alternate Renaissance Europe. If you’re looking for a fast-paced popcorn read, this is not it. This is a dense and rich book, and it will immerse you into a very different world, if you let it, and yes in places it will blow your mind.

There is a large cast of truly unusual characters, ranging from the poorest peasants to the loftiest emperors, fair maidens and noble knights, including Death himself. The story is very complex, with loss and mystery, with true love and grief and humor, and yes, wonder. And if you think you know what’s coming, it’s most likely you will be unable to guess. I truly cannot say any more without giving it away, so see for yourself, and read… Oh, and be prepared to uncover only the tip of the iceberg!

HL:   It sounds like a terrific read! Have you a favourite actor/actress/hunk? And if someone were to play one of your characters in a movie, which character and what actor would it be and why?

VN: Oooh, this is a tough one! Usually I visualize completely different characters in my head than any actors we all know, but for Cobweb Bride, if I had to cast the sexy Lord Beltain Chidair, also known as the black knight, I think Richard Armitage would be a fine choice.

One cannot have too many favorite hunks! Yes, Richard Armitage is in the top ten, and so is Viggo Mortensen, and Daniel Craig, and Will Smith and Alexander Skarsgård. And my newest hunky obsession is Ed Skrein who plays Daario in The Game of Thrones, and would be the perfect actor to play another favorite male character of mine, looking exactly as he does in that role—the sexy assassin lord, Elasirr, from my novel Lords of Rainbow.

HL:  Ooh, we must be kindred spirits.  Richard Armitage is one of my all time favorites, and I'm also soft on Viggo Mortesen and Daniel Craig.  So, this leads me on to my next question - Who is your favorite character in your book and why?

VN: No way! I can’t answer that without hurting my characters’ feelings! But seriously, I think whichever character’s POV I am in at the moment, is my favorite character, then and there.  However, I do have a particular soft spot in this book for little Jenna Doneil. And I think you’ll see what I mean when you read about her.

HL:  And finally, where can readers connect with you?

VN: I am happily all over the place online, and the links are below. But first, please be sure to subscribe to my Cobweb Bride Mailing List which is for new book announcements only (no chit-chat), and this particular list is only for Cobweb Bride trilogy books, so yup, it’s very specific!

Cobweb Bride Website: http://www.norilana.com/cobweb.htm

Official Author Website: http://www.veranazarian.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/VeraNazarian

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Norilana

Cobweb Bride Mailing List: http://eepurl.com/vodcT

General Mailing List (all other books): http://eepurl.com/hKaeo

See here for many more: http://www.veranazarian.com/contact-2/vera-nazarian-online/

HL: Thank you so much for taking time to visit my blog, it’s been a thrill having you here and learning more about you and your writing. I wish you much success now and in the future.

VN: And thank you so much for having me here and letting me talk about Cobweb Bride! It’s been a pleasure!

About the Author:

Vera Nazarian is a two-time Nebula Award® Finalist and a member of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. She immigrated to the USA from the former USSR as a kid, sold her first story at 17, and has been published in numerous anthologies and magazines, honorably mentioned in Year’s Best volumes, and translated into eight languages.

Vera made her novelist debut with the critically acclaimed Dreams of the Compass Rose, followed by Lords of Rainbow,. Her novella The Clock King and the Queen of the Hourglass with an introduction by Charles de Lint made the 2005 Locus Recommended Reading List. Her debut collection Salt of the Air with an introduction by Gene Wolfe contains the 2007 Nebula Award-nominated “The Story of Love.”

Other work includes the 2008 Nebula Finalist novella The Duke in His Castle, science fiction collection After the Sundial (2010), The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration (2010), and four Jane Austen parodies, Mansfield Park and Mummies (2009), Northanger Abbey and Angels and Dragons (2010), Pride and Platypus: Mr. Darcy’s Dreadful Secret (2012), and Pagan Persuasion: All Olympus Descends on Regency (forthcoming), all part of her Supernatural Jane Austen Series. And now, Cobweb Bride is the first book of her ambitious new epic fantasy trilogy.

After many years in Los Angeles, Vera now lives in a small town in Vermont. She uses her Armenian sense of humor and her Russian sense of suffering to bake conflicted pirozhki and make art. In addition to being a writer, philosopher, and award-winning artist, she is also the publisher of Norilana Books.

Vera’s links:

Official website:

http://www.veranazarian.com/

Norilana Books:

http://www.norilana.com/

Cobweb Bride Mailing List:

http://eepurl.com/vodcT

Twitter:

http://twitter.com/Norilana

Facebook (author page):

http://www.facebook.com/VeraNazarian

Facebook (personal)

http://www.facebook.com/Nazarian

Pinterest

http://pinterest.com/veranazarian/

Blogs:

http://www.inspiredus.com/

http://urbangirlvermont.blogspot.com/

http://norilana.livejournal.com/

Goodreads:

http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/186145.Vera_Nazarian

LibraryThing:

http://www.librarything.com/author/nazarianvera

Shelfari:

http://www.shelfari.com/authors/a1628414/Vera-Nazarian/

Red Room:

http://www.redroom.com/author/vera-nazarian

SFF Net Newsgroup:

http://webnews.sff.net/read?cmd=xover&group=sff.people.vera-nazarian

Austen Authors:

http://austenauthors.net/

Vera Nazarian’s Amazon Author Central page

http://www.amazon.com/author/nazarian

The Official Book Website: http://www.norilana.com/cobweb.htm Kickstarter page: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2027984632/cobweb-bride?ref=live

Praise for Other Vera Nazarian Books:

Trade References:

"...a clever concoction of vignettes and short stories knitted into a morality tale about the temptation of illusion and the price of truth.... an exotic setting reminiscent of Tanith Lee's Flat Earth series.... The author's sumptuous language will resonate with Lord Dunsany and Clark Ashton Smith fans.... Nazarian's vital themes and engaging characters are sure to entertain."
— Publishers Weekly on Dreams of the Compass Rose

"Nazarian's story cycle treads the borderline between the episodic novel and the short-story collection, recalling the work of contemporary fantasist Charles de Lint, early-twentieth-century fantasist Lord Dunsany, and even, reaching way back, The Thousand and One Nights....her imagery is rich, vivid, and memorable, not to mention being remarkable because she realizes it not in her native language, Russian, but in English.... Indeed, this is a singularly appealing book by a new voice in fantasy."

 — Roland Green, ALA Booklist on Dreams of the Compass Rose

"In a world devoid of color, the woman warrior Rahne swears herself to a mysterious nobleman traveling to the exotic city of Tronaelend-Lis, the City of Dreams, where a decadent brother and sister rule as co-regents in the absence of the land's true ruler. When an evil being representing true Darkness threatens the safety of the colorless world, Rahne is drawn into a spiritual journey in search of a legendary phenomenon known as Rainbow in an attempt to find a way to defeat the dark. The author of Dreams of the Compass Rose brings to life a unique fantasy world in which lost colors hold the key to salvation. Nazarian's fluid storytelling and vividly drawn characters make this unusual fantasy a good choice for most libraries."

 — Library Journal on Lords of Rainbow

"Nazarian creates a unique civilization and populates it with heroic archetypes who stand on their own. Extravagant language reminiscent of Dunsany and even Tolkien adds to the legendary feel.... an innovative premise, consistent world-building, and appealing heroes mark this as the work of an emerging talent... readers may find themselves heralding a new star of fantasy fiction."

— Romantic Times Book Club on Lords of Rainbow

"Sixteen cautionary, sensual stories of love, reversal and revenge upend fairy tale conventions in Nazarian's lush collection (after 2003's Lords of Rainbow). Some pieces retell classic stories: "Absolute Receptiveness, the Princess, and the Pea" compellingly subverts the cliché of the tender princess into a disturbing rape fantasy. "Beauty and His Beast" recasts the beast as an ugly but perceptive princess. Other stories approach myth. In "Sun, in Its Copper Season," the avatar of the sun falls in love with the man who brings the four seasons, and in "Lore of Rainbow," a wife seeks her missing husband, only to discover that he is the personification of a color. Adventure stories skirt the edges of the expected: in "The Slaying of Winter," a woman seeks revenge on a god for her family's destruction, only to find forgiveness; and in the near-future "Rossia Moya," a woman and Russia itself both rediscover their heritage. Sumptuous detail, twisty plots and surprising endings lift these extravagant tales."

— Publishers Weekly on Salt of the Air

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Cobweb Bride is touring with Fiction Addiction Book Tours throughout August.  The following dates Vera