Blog Ring of Power--Sue Bolich

It turned out I was a bit premature last week when I announced the final Blog Ring of Power interview for the year. Please help me welcome Broad Universe member Sue Bolich to the blog. I just finished reading her fantasy novel, Firedancer, set in a world where four races each control (or attempt to control) a different element. I really enjoyed the world and the book, and I plan to read the sequel, Windrider, next.

This is the first of the BRoP five-part interview; here's the schedule for the rest of the week:

Tuesday, The Writing Life--Dean
Wednesday, The Creative Process--Terri
Thursday, About Your Current Work--Theresa
Friday, Words of Wisdom-- Emily

Now, let's get to know Sue a little better:


How long have you been writing?

My whole life. I can remember making up stories in my head before I could read or write. I won my first writing contest in the 6th grade. It’s just always the thing I’ve done to fill any spare minute I had. I remember writing on paper plates in the woods on woodcutting expeditions with my family as a teen.

 Tell us about your early works—what was the first thing you ever wrote?

I wrote a lot of short stories as a teen, and one really bad western novel. I got hooked on Tolkien at 14 and of course then had to write an epic fantasy. It’s still in the drawer. Deservedly so!

When did you first consider yourself a professional writer?

I sold my first non-fiction articles to national magazines in 1991, which encouraged me to think I wasn’t too bad, and then my first fiction in 2001. But I don’t think I considered myself a “professional” until I forced myself out of corporate world into fulltime freelancing and made it my primary occupation.

What genre do you write?

Fantasy mostly, with some light SF, a little steampunk, and lots of stuff with an historical slant. I am working on an alternate history series that begins in Salem 1692 and runs through “a” version of the Civil War and on into a very different Old West. I have a degree in history so I try to work in my interests wherever I can, and history is so endlessly fascinating!

What is your favorite theme/genre to write about?

I like examining the big old themes of duty, honor, and how people balance the conflicting passions of their lives to accomplish what must be done. What will they save? What will they abandon? How much can they take and still be the people they want to be?

If you couldn’t be an author, what would your ideal career be?

Working with horses. I’ve had them all my life. I can’t imagine life without them.




 What do you suppose that fire thinks about as it cooks your dinner behind its cage of containment stone? Jetta ak'Kal knows--but no one listens to a Firedancer who has failed to protect her assigned village from an assault by living flame. The Ancient, the strange, elemental fire imprisoned at the heart of the world, took her lifemate, her reputation as the most talented Dancer of her generation, and nearly her life. Now her clan demands she redeem herself, yet seem strangely indifferent to her insistence that the Dance itself that has always bound the Ancient seems to be failing. Assigned to Annam, a village with no previous experience of fire, Jetta and her new partner, Settak, find themselves battling the naive ignorance of the villagers, the hostility of arrogant Windriders whose mastery of air could kill them both with the flick of a finger, and occasionally each other as they struggle to find new and more powerful forms of the Dance. Pursued by fire crawling up through every crack, by a new love she does not want, and a nagging suspicion that there is more to her assignment than her clan bothered to tell her, Jetta must forge unprecedented alliances in this high and beautiful place before the Ancient breaks free--for if it does, there will no longer be anything left to fight for.
Links:

"Leave singing to the Hag to Fifth Ranks, lad, if you don't want to end up a witless madman shrieking to the storm from a cell in the Tower of Winds."

Good advice, all in all. Sheshan ak'Kal lives to regret that he did not heed it. Desperate to remember the windsong that once let him sing even the great storms off the sea to tatters, he forgets for one foolish moment of shared rage that Wind's gentle sister is the angry, vengeful--and quite insane--Hag.

With the Hag stalking him across Metrenna, singing a wild, terrible note that only he can hear, Sheshan discovers that weaving torrents of living air between his hands is no longer enough to keep her at bay. For his clan, his life, and a fragile new love he has found with the most unexpected of women, Sheshan must learn a new song, and become what none of his people have managed in millennia--a Windrider indeed.

Links to Sue's Social Networking Sites and Buy Links:
Blog:
Facebook page:
Twitter:
Amazon Author Page:
Firedancer buy link:
Windrider:
Smashwords:
B&N