Welcome to the Blog Tour & Giveaway for Quest of Fire: Shadows at Nightfall by Brett Armstrong, hosted by JustRead Publicity Tours!
The shadows of Jason’s past have caught him. Having stepped into the Quest of Fire, Jason is pursued by a league of assassins formed of pure darkness. To his horror he discovers these creatures also were contracted to eliminate Anargen and his friends as they sought to understand the Tower of Light’s oracle. To unravel the mystery of who wants him dead and how he fits into the ages old quest, Jason must travel the lengths of the Lowlands. In the Ziljafu deserts a secret awaits him that will shake him to his core. He’ll have to move fast and cling fiercely to hope, as Anargen’s story twists down a bleak path to almost certain failure.
The creatures of darkness in the Lowlands have long waited for men to spurn the High King’s laws. With few concerned for the light and everything falling apart around them, Jason and Anargen will face the shadows of night’s falling as their world hangs in the balance.MORE BOOKS IN THIS SERIES
Bringing the Lowlands to Life: On Fantasy World Building
by Brett Armstrong
I’m going to do my level best not to ramble on for
too long about this, but world-building is something I’m pretty passionate
about. My view of crafting any story world—whether it’s cozy, contemporary
romance or a pulse-pounding space opera—is that each story has three primary
elements. A plot (events), characters, and the story-world (setting). Each shape
and inform the others as the story progresses. A setting should to a degree
dictate what events can and can’t happen (no one can hear you scream in space,
right?), likewise certain characters are more believable in a setting than
others (mermaids in the deserts of Tatooine wouldn’t be too happy). Over time
characters begin to shape the setting affecting it and events begin affecting
the landscape too (like the Field of Dreams). Those interactions
influence the tone, pace, themes and motifs, and direction the story takes.
Developing
a story world like the Lowlands starts with capturing a single instant from the
story mentally and scrutinizing the image. It’s more than just seeing what’s in
the background, because those characters in the foreground and midground are an
important part of building the story world. Who they are will impact what the
plot is and where it goes so I try to learn as much as I can about the
characters I imagine in an initial scene. In Shadows at Nightfall, there
were a couple scenes that really kept me anchored to the story and set up the
world. I can only share one because the second would be too much of a spoiler,
but the first is of a festival on a summer night. There are people reveling in
the balmy evening air and no one notices the little points of light that begin
to fill the space between the trees just beyond the festival’s perimeter. Not
until it’s too late and flaming arrows are loosed.
Within
that scene are several of the book’s protagonists, other characters they know
and care about, and the villains, all wrapped together in plotted conflict. Why
are the villains doing this? Who are they? Where do they fit into the bigger
world? I’m a history nerd, and feel very strongly that past has a heavy hand on
the present. In building the Lowlands, I want to imbue it with a rich history
that would help shape the cultures and thereby influence the characters and how
they relate with both their quest and those they encounter along the way. That
includes villains and their motivations and schemes. I have hundreds of years
of back history written up for the dwarves of Ordumair and men of Ecthelowall
that lead them in my mind to where they’re at for Quest of Fire’s
opening.
Very often
with world-building you want to populate the space with things people are
familiar with because it one saves you time describing things, but it also
makes the fantastic things, the unique things, stand out more. Quest of Fire
is a dual timeline saga with both strands of history being told simultaneously.
A big part of doing that is giving little clues to hopefully drive people’s
imaginations to fill in blanks. Mentioning a newsboy cap and flivvers hopefully
instantly conjures an early 20th Century landscape for people. Just
like the Knight chapter houses and baroque architecture along with bows and
early guns hopefully directing readers to imagine an early Enlightenment-late
Renaissance period.
To
compress my point that I know I’m meandering way to slowly towards, building a
fantasy world like the Lowlands is very much like building any other story
world. You let the characters, plot, and setting interact and shape each other.
You remember that everything and everyone in the story came from somewhere long
before page one and let that participate in crafting the landscape. And then
you populate the space with things that are familiar enough that readers can
fill in the backdrop with less detailed items so that the new and fresh stand
out starkly against that backdrop and hopefully make the story world like the
Lowlands come to life.
(2) winners will receive a $10 Amazon gift card, print copy of Shadows at Nightfall, and Quest of Fire digital exclusives (map, theme music, and digital making of the direnoir poster)!
Be sure to check out each stop on the tour for more chances to win. Full tour schedule linked below. Giveaway will begin at midnight September 20, 2021 and last through 11:59 PM EST on September 27, 2021. Winner will be notified within 2 weeks of close of the giveaway and given 48 hours to respond or risk forfeiture of prize. US only. Void where prohibited by law or logistics.
Giveaway is subject to the policies found here.
Follow along at JustRead Tours for a full list of stops!
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Sounds like a good read.
ReplyDeleteSounds like a good read
ReplyDeleteSounds like a good book.
ReplyDeleteIntriguing cover
ReplyDeleteThank you for joining the tour for Shadows at Nightfall and giving me the chance to talk with your readers about world-building. :)
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing!
ReplyDeleteThis seems very interesting! Thanks for sharing!
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