Blog Tour, Guest Post & Giveaway: Cinderella’s Inferno by F.M. Boughan

Crushed on by kelly, on June 7, 2018, in Blog Tour, Giveaways, Guest Post / 0 Comments

Blog Tour, Guest Post & Giveaway: Cinderella’s Inferno by F.M. Boughan

Cinderella’s Inferno by F.M. Boughan was released last week and today’s tour stop I am bringing you a guest post from the author about world building! Check it out and be sure to enter the tour-wide giveaway!

Cinderella’s Inferno (Cinderella Necromancer #2) by F.M. Boughan

Purity cannot abide the darkness.

It’s been two years since Ellison defeated her stepsisters and sent her evil stepmother back into the Abyss.

Though she’s learning to control her dark magic and has spent time traveling with Prince William and bringing peace to the kingdom, one fact remains. She is a necromancer and he is a paladin of light. And so, the king refuses to give his blessing for them to marry.

To appease his father, William has begun to avoid her. But when even her younger brother Edward grows distant, Ellison learns her mother’s spirit has been visiting Edward in secret, threatening to overwhelm him with her own loneliness and longing. When Ellison accidentally touches her mother’s spirit, her tainted touch condemns her mother’s spirit to eternal damnation.

Ellison resolves to descend into hell to save her mother’s soul and bring her physical body back to the world of the living. William hopes this good deed will bring Ellison into favor and finally allow them to be wed.

But the journey through hell is fraught with peril. Temptations abound and the demons Ellison sent back to the Abyss are thirsty for revenge.

Evil cannot be defeated without sacrifice—but when that sacrifice means choosing between the ones Ellison loves and her very own life, how far is she willing to go to make her family whole again?

Series:

Cinderella, Necromancer (Cinderella, Necromancer #1) by F.M. Boughan

Publication: September 5th, 2017; Month9Books
Purchase: Amazon

Cinderella, Necromancer is Chime meets Anna Dressed in Blood and was inspired by a real medieval grimoire of necromancy from 15th-century Germany.

Ellison lost her mother at an early age. But since then, her father has found love again. He’s happy and doesn’t quite notice that Ellison does not get along with his new wife or her mean daughters. When Ellison discovers a necromantic tome while traveling the secret passages of her father’s mansion, she wonders if it could be the key to her freedom. Until then, she must master her dark new power, even as her stepmother makes her a servant in her own home. And when her younger brother falls incurably ill, Ellison will do anything to ease his pain, including falling prey to her stepmother and stepsisters’ every whim and fancy.

Stumbling into a chance meeting of Prince William during a secret visit to her mother’s grave feels like a trick of fate when her stepmother refuses to allow Ellison to attend a palace festival. But what if Ellison could see the kind and handsome prince once more? What if she could attend the festival? What if she could have everything she ever wanted and deserved by conjuring spirits to take revenge on her cruel stepmother?

As Ellison’s power grows, she loses control over the evil spirits meant to do her bidding. And as they begin to exert their own power over Ellison, she will have to decide whether it is she or her stepmother who is the true monster.

Guest Post:

The World of … (World Building)

The upside of writing a sequel is this: Most of your ground-level world building is already done for you.

The downside of writing a sequel is this: Most of your ground-level world building is already done for you.

Allow me to clarify.

In book one, the author sets the rules and the parameters of the world in which the characters exist. It may not be comprehensive—usually, it isn’t, because there’s not enough time for that without boring the reader—but the framework is there. The reader now has an understanding of the world and a bargain is struck between writer and reader that This Is How Things Work.

If the writer deviates from this, the reader may feel frustrated and betrayed. But what if the writer realizes she wants to do something incredible in her story but it doesn’t fit within the parameters she set in book one?

Well, that’s where the challenge lies. There are various techniques and tricks a writer can use to make this viable (within reason), but it’s certainly an upside and a downside to have most of your world building already done for you. In my post about world building for CINDERELLA, NECROMANCER, I discussed my two-fold approach to crafting that story. All of that discussion still holds true for book two, because my characters exist within the same world—to a degree.

I guess you could say I also took a two-fold approach to world building in CINDERELLA’S INFERNO, because I used both the existing world from book one and added to that elements from The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri—more specifically, the section known colloquially as Dante’s Inferno.

CINDERELLA’S INFERNO loosely follows the structure of that 14th-century Italian epic poem. I studied the text for details, read essays on interpretation and word studies, and thought about how the theological understanding of hell in Ellison’s time period and cultural context (15th-century Germany) would affect characters within the world I’d established. Then I took my characters from book one, added two years to their lives and to the world in which they lived, and pulled the story out from there.

While reading the sequel, I want readers to be able to point directly to elements of the world and then find those parallel elements inside Dante’s epic poem. Of course, I took some creative liberties—I’m telling a story, after all—but hopefully readers will be able to see where Ellison’s world and the world of the Divine Comedy collide, while enjoying an extension of the story begun in book one.

Was I successful with my world building? That’s for readers to decide!

Author Bio: F.M. Boughan

F.M. Boughan is a bibliophile, a writer, and an unabashed parrot enthusiast. She can often be found writing in local coffee shops, namely because it’s hard to concentrate with a cat lying on the keyboard and a small, colorful parrot screaming into her ear. Her work is somewhat dark, somewhat violent, somewhat hopeful, and always contains a hint of magic.

Links:
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