Risingshadow has the honour of publishing a guest post by Alex Bledsoe. Alex Bledsoe is the co-author - with Tara Cardinal - of Sword Sisters.
Information about Sword Sisters:
Cast aside by her mother, tormented (literally) by her father, feared by humans and despised by most of her own kind, AELLA is determined not to carenot to care what they think, not to care if they like her, not to care about anything or anyone. Just so long as no one tries to touch her or imprison her again, Aella couldn't care less.
Until... he pulled an arrow from Aella's back and kissed her cheek.
Until... she carried Aella home and stood between her and a giant spider. And a rioting mob.
Until... they came to Aella looking for help.
Aella, daughter of demon and witch, must find herself once again, as she forges her own route to a destiny she doesn't want to believe. At first a hero in name alone, Aella soon discovers she has the strength and the heart to control her demonic lineage and truly assume the mantle of HERO. In her struggle, she also finds something even more valuablefriendship, as the youthful and spirited AMELIA isn't just a friend worth dying forshe's Aella's true "sword sister" and worth living for.
Based on actor/director Tara Cardinal's LEGEND OF THE RED REAPER motion picture, SWORD SISTERS is the prequel to the film, now available on DVD and download.
Click here to watch the trailer of Sword Sisters.
Information about the authors of Sword Sisters:
Alex grew up in west Tennessee an hour north of Graceland (home of Elvis) and twenty minutes from Nutbush (birthplace of Tina Turner). He has been a reporter, editor, photographer and door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman.
He now lives in a Wisconsin town famous for trolls, writes before six in the morning, and tries to teach his three kids to act like they've been to town before.
Click here to visit his official website.
Tara Cardinal grew up on a small farm in Indiana, the daughter of a psychic and a musician. Cardinal moved out on her own at age 16 and worked three jobs in order to initially support herself. She was discovered in a shopping mall and acted in her first movie in 2006. Tara frequently appears in horror and fantasy films and likes to perform her own stunts. Moreover, she has not only acted on stage, but also modeled for various comic book characters, performed at Renaissance Festivals, and even done live shows as a professional wrestler.
A dedicated humanitarian and staunch advocate for children's rights, Tara co-founded the non-profit peer counseling organization C.L.U.B. (Children Living Under Blindness) at age 12 and has toured middle schools in both America and Canada educating children on their rights and resources since the age of 15. Cardinal has a Bachelor's Degree in Psychology.
In addition, she writes poetry and fiction, as well as for websites such as the IndependentCritic.com and NerdRemix. She currently lives in Los Angeles.
Click here to visit her official website.
On the Writing of SWORD SISTERS by Alex Bledsoe
One of the challenges of co-writing SWORD SISTERS was that, unlike my other books, it didn't take place in a world I created. I had no input in the civilizations, mythologies, societal interactions, gender roles or any of the normal aspects of world-building. I didn’t even get to pick many of the names. That had all been done by my co-author Tara Cardinal for her film, LEGEND OF THE RED REAPER.
Of course, lots of writers work very successfully in existing mythologies, but this was the first time for me, and I wasn't completely sure I could do it. In fact, it took me a while to decide I even *wanted* to do it. My writing time is limited by my real-life responsibilities, and I had plenty of my own stories I wanted to tell. I'd never written much fan fiction, so I didn't have that experience to fall back on. I was used to my own process, and created my worlds in a very specific way. I had no idea what process Tara used, and it didn't matter: the world already existed. My job was to play in it.
So the first challenge was to absorb the character of Aella, the Red Reaper, as she was depicted in the film, then extrapolate backwards from that, since our novel was a prequel. What events in her past might've led to the person we see in the movie? When I write my own characters, I have their entire pasts in my head, so in a sense, every moment is the present for them. But with Aella, I was retrofitting.
And also, Aella is a woman in the film, and a girl in our novel. I have no first-hand experience being either of those. Both my respect for Tara, and the fact that I have a daughter, made me want to get that aspect right, though. Luckily, I'd learned a very important lesson writing my own novel THE HUM AND THE SHIVER, which featured a female protagonist: if you're true to the character, then gender doesn't matter. Writing a woman is no different than writing a man, as long as you stay honest about the kind of *person* he or she is. And I had Tara, definitely a woman and once a girl, to backstop me when needed. I don't recall (and I'm kind of proud of this) her ever saying, "That's not what a girl would do."
As the title implies, a central aspect of the story is the friendship between Aella and Amelia, a teenage girl who lives in a small village. As both a writer concerned with crafting good stories and, as I said above, the parent of a daughter, I wanted to avoid the way typical teenage relationships are depicted. There would be no fighting over a boy, no great amount of time spent talking about clothes or jewelry, no overly emotional breakdowns in a crisis. And of special importance to both Tara and me, at no point would any man or boy swoop in to rescue them. These girls would save not only themselves, but the day.
This was all subtext, of course. The main point, and my main job, was to help Tara tell an interesting story in an entertaining way. SWORD SISTERS is not a fantasy epic; it's a tight, small-scale story of characters and relationships that also includes monsters, humor (I hope!), sword fights and horror. It's both an introduction to the world more fully depicted in LEGEND OF THE RED REAPER and its own thing, a standalone novel. Tara and I had a blast writing it, and we certainly hope readers enjoy it, too.