Good morning my dearest stalkers! Monday is a wonderful day, is it not? The beginning of a new week and so on...
Anyway, I've prepared a little surprise for you today. It comes in the form of an author introduction, a character interview, and then.... A GIVEAWAY!! Yes! Of 2 copies of Pledged, book 1 of the Soul Wars Saga by Gwynneth White.
Who's Gwynneth White you may ask... well, she's a pretty nice woman with a love for books. Here's what she has to say about herself:
I
have spent my entire life living in a parallel universe of
make-believe characters, only coming back to reality for long enough
to check that no one burnt the house down in my absence. A few years
ago I decided to commit some of those ‘friends’ and their stories
to paper. The Soul Wars
Saga is the result of
those efforts. Before that I co-authored two non-fiction travel books
– The Complete Guide
to 4x4 Trails and The
Ultimate 4x4 Guide.
Both books became instant best-sellers in South Africa where I live.
And before that even, I studied a degree in African History and
Politics at the University of Stellenbosch. When I’m not writing, I
am a wife to Andrew and a mom to Stephanie, Erin, and Kate, our
teenage daughters. My family and I live in a small town outside Cape
Town with two dogs, a cat, a horse, and some neglected fish. Now that
you know a little about me, I would love to get to know you. Please
befriend me at:
Twitter:
@GwynnethWhite
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Gwynneth-White/172095512890074
Goodreads:
http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/7360328-gwynneth-white
Email:
gwynnethwhite@4xforum.com
Gwynneth's current book, Pledged, has been around the blogging world in the past couple of weeks, and will continue to circulate our internet worlds until it's official release date in September. Here's the summary, if you haven't been able to read it yet:
Everyone
has a soul mate. But what do you do when your soul mate would
rather
give his soul to the demons than be with you?
Seventeen-year-old Erin has a
problem. Seth has been hers forever, but now an ancient promise is
tearing him away. And Reuel, the demon to whom the promise was made,
will stop at nothing to force Seth to forsake Erin and to worship
him.
How can Erin win against a pledge
so binding that it has damned countless others to the same fate she
and Seth will face if Reuel wins – an eternity alone?
The answer
lies in the past. To find it, Erin and Seth must risk all, travelling
back in time to a dangerous world where love is forbidden, and life –
and death – hang on a promise.
Follow
Erin and Seth as they travel to ancient Shenaya to break the pledge
that has plagued their families for millennia. Caught in a war
between the Angelic Guardians and the Gefallen, the disembodied dead,
they must fight to keep their souls in tact and their love untainted.
And, since I'm a sucker for good romance and the soul mate concept as a whole, I thought I'd ask the characters, Seth and Erin, some very very personal questions. Stick with me to learn the answers :)
Vanya: Hello
Seth and Erin. I'm so glad to have you at my blog for a quick
interview.
I'd really like to know what it means to have a soul mate. What does
it feel like? Because honestly, the idea of a soul mate is somewhat scary in my opinion. I mean, having one
person to compliment you to the littlest detail... it must be sort of
creepy.
*Seth
and Erin exchange looks*
Erin:
“Seth, you can go first.”
Seth:
“Gee, thanks. And Erin, you’re not allowed to hit me if you don’t
like what I say.”
Erin:
*grins*: “As if I would . . . in public!”
Seth:
“Trust me, you would.” *takes deep breath* “Vanya, having a
soul mate is
scary. Very. Sure, the idea sounds cool that you’re bonded to the
one person designed to make you happy forever. But what about freedom
to choose? Where does that come in? That’s what I struggled with at
first. I don’t like being told what to do – or who to love.”
Erin:
“Seth, I hate to point this out, but you’ve just answered
question two. I think what Vanya wants to know is how we even know
we're soul mates, and . . . and how we felt about each other. Like
when we first met.”
Seth:
“Then you tell her.”
Erin:
“It was the Guardians – they’re angels by the way – who first
showed us that we were soul mates. Let me tell you, that was pretty
amazing, discovering we’d known and loved each other for . . .
well, like forever before we were born. And that we even chose to be
together again once we were born.”
Seth:
Yeah
. . . it sounds great in theory. The trouble is, unless you can
travel back in time to before you were even born, you have no memory
of it. So that makes life pretty interesting when some angel pops up
and tells you the girl you’ve just met is your one and only.”
Erin:
But,
Seth, we did travel back in time. And the angels did explain to us
that we might feel an echo of our past relationship when we met up
again in mortality. And, on some level, when I first met you, I did
instinctively know you’d be very special to me.”
Seth:
“No, you didn’t! You were too busy checking me out in the present
to be thinking of crazy echoes from the past.”
Erin:
*giggles* “Well, I admit, I thought you were gorgeous. The classic
tall, dark, sexy stranger. And those eyes! Vanya, you should see
Seth’s eyes. Brown with gold flecks – I’m not kidding. And he
has this crooked smile-thing going-”
Seth
interrupts:
*looking embarrassed* “Okay, so you had a hormone rush. Big deal. I
thought you were pretty cute too. But it wasn’t love at first
sight. Not for either of us. Although, if it hadn’t . . .”
Erin:
*leans forward* “What? You can’t just break off in mid-sentence
like that.”
Seth:
“Let’s just say, if I hadn’t discovered you were my soul mate,
and that I’d made promises to you before we were even born, I think
I would have liked you a lot more. So to answer your second question,
Vanya. Yes, I did find it creepy to be told that I have a soul mate
and that I had to choose her, or else I would be miserable for
eternity. That was very tough for me because I already had a loyalty
to someone else.”
Erin:
“In case you are worrying, this isn’t a love triangle. It was
Seth’s brother who I was fighting against. Imagine how that made me
feel? A brother! Now I could understand if it had been some really
intelligent, beautiful girl, but a brother! And not a very
trustworthy one either. After all, he kind of set the demons on us.”
Seth:
“And Erin will never let me forget it.” *nudges Erin* “And if
you say anything else about him, you’ll give the story away.”
Erin:
“True.
So to finally answer your question, Vanya. . . even though we’re
soul mates, It’s not like we are two jigsaw puzzle pieces that fit
perfectly together. We are actually very different. I’m out-spoken
– often too blunt – and a bit of a fighter, while Seth is more
guarded. He’s actually very gentle. And he hates conflict. Not
always such a useful trait when you’re fighting a war.”
Seth:
*shakes head* “But we do like the same music. So that works. And
movies. We have a connection there. Erin wants to act when she leaves
school, and I want to do CGI for movies. So we do have some stuff
going for us. Even if I am not some kinda maniac who just want to
kill everyone.”
Erin:
“Not that I am either. A killer maniac, I mean.”
Seth:
*musses Erin’s hair* “Just move onto the next question.”
Vanya: You guys are so cute together! *smiles knowingly* So I'm curious - if there was a possibility to
choose your soul mate, would you actually choose each other?
Erin: "I'd choose Seth every time. No doubt about it. And you, Seth?"
Seth: *cracks a wry smile* "Given a choice? In a heart beat. But I wasn't given a choice, was I? And that really complicated things."
Vanya: You would think so, wouldn't you? Would you mind sharing what it feels like to lose the person who's soul holds your other
half?
Erin:
I think I’ll handle this one. Terrifying. Honestly, it felt like a
part of me had been sawn off when Seth rejected me. I wanted to
believe that he would come back, but I was so filled with doubt, and
anger, and fear . . . Oh! A thousand emotions. I could hardly think
straight. Loosing a soul mate? I wouldn’t inflict it on my worst
enemy. Except maybe Reuel, the demon who stole him from me. Focusing
on destroying Reuel gave me the strength to fight to get Seth back.”
Vanya: Good thing Erin is the bad-ass fighter chick then! :) Seth, if things were reversed, would you really go to the ends of the
world just so you could save Erin from the demons?
Seth:
*long pause* “With what I know now, yes. Definitely. But then, when
we were starting out our story in Pledged?
No. Since then, I’ve learnt that there’s love and then there’s
LOVE. Or maybe a crush versus love. A crush would not make me go to
the ends of the earth for her. When you read the next book in our
Soul
Wars Saga
trilogy, you’ll discover that it took a huge amount of sacrifice
and heaps of pain to get me to the point where I would do anything
for her. I guess even soul mates have to be earned.
Erin:
“And
that’s why I love him. Vanya, thank you for having us on your blog
today!”
Seth:
“And
if you guys would like to get to know us better, you can visit us at
our blog: http://todayinshenaya.blogspot.com”
Erin:
“Or
you can read our book. Pledged has its official release on the 1st
of September 2012 on Amazon, Smashwords etc. We’d love you to read
it.”
Vanya: Oh, it was my pleasure! I'll be spreading the word, you two! Like, with this giveaway right here: a Rafflecopter giveaway
This book sounds amazing! Thanks for the giveaway!
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