by Cherry Adair
The two factions viewed the world and the people in it in completely different ways. Black and white. Them and us. One side believed that wizards, due to their undiluted blood directly from a god, were superior to mere mortals and as a result were deserving of the right to rule via their birth. To them they were at liberty to rule with might and magic. Mortals were mere cattle to serve them, disposable and meant to be used. The others group believed that mortals were part of the balance in nature. To destroy them or over indulge in their powers would create an imbalance in the world and within themselves. The Great Divide occurred a thousand years ago after most wizards were killed in the ensuing wizard wars.
With their numbers dramatically reduced the wizard community broke in two. In the end 120 wizards who supported the idea of wizards being superior and natural born rulers, broke away. They elected 12 members to represent them. This became the Omnivatic. The Omnivatic were both immortal and amoral, able to assimilate the powers of all those they killed. They cannot breed. No children have been born to an Omnivati in a thousand years. There are three ways for the Omnivatics to restore their powers; by killing another wizard and absorbing his powers, by rejuvenation every thirty-three days, and the biggest source of their power comes from the Earth’s magical Leylines.
They are almost indestructible in human form, but in snake form they are easier to kill, but since they are indistinguishable from other reptiles, they are almost impossible to identify. Only a wizard with similar or stronger power levels can kill them.
The other 120 wizards, believing in balance above all, and knowing that the total destruction of the Omnivatic would cause an imbalance (for there can be no light without the dark), formed the Aequitas (impartiality in Latin) choosing to become mortal, and forever giving up their snake heritage. This secret, mystical society, governed by the Wizard Council, is known only to a select few. They are summoned by Council Elders to maintain balance in the world only when it is imperative that they intervene,
The Wizard Wars happened so far back in time, that the story has passed into the realm of legend and mythology. For the Aequitas, the Omnivatic are the snake-like wizards told about in bedtime stories to scare little wizards straight. They are legend, but no one knows that they still exist. Until the magical imbalance in the world begins to grow. . .and no one in the Council knows how to stop it.
Q&A Interviews
QUESTIONS by—Over the Edge Book Reviews-Cherry Adair
1. Question: What is the best part of being a writer? What is the worst?
The answer to both is: Finishing a book.
2. Question: Name one eye-opening thing you learned from your book research.
While doing the research for I learned that snakes have two penises. (The fact that they even had ONE was a news flash! Lol)
3. Questions: Do you have a favorite motto?
Sit your butt in the chair and write!
4. Question: Do you have a favorite fictional hero? Favorite fictional heroine?
Always the characters in the book I've just finished. So, Jack Slater and Sara Temple in DARK PRISM are currently my favs.
5. Question: Which fictional character would you hang out with?
Sara Temple - we'd discuss what it's like to be an Interior Designer, and I'd try to persuade her to give magic another try.
6. Question: What is one of your favorite book covers, your own or someone else’s?
My favorite cover hands down was my cover for WHITE HEAT. One really has to look to get the full impact of a man's hands on the small of a woman's back. Sensual and sexy in black and white with red text. Worst was the cover where the girl seemed to have a large. . .goiter growing out of her neck, or the one where the couple has red ectoplasm coming out of the top of their heads. (being beamed back to the mother ship perhaps?!)
7. Questions: What would readers be surprised to learn about you?
I'm originally from Cape Town South Africa, I used to be an interior designer, I have a passion for motivating unpublished writers to achieve their goal. (sometimes with the application of my shoe to their bottoms if necessary! Lol)
8. Question: What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever learned by Googling your name?
I'm a stripper. A fruit. A blossom. A bomb. And a rude connotation.
9. Question: If you could go backward or forward in time which would you chose? Why?
Back, because I'd know what was coming next.
10. Question: Cherry, please tell us more about your recent release, “DARK PRISM Enhanced”
This book was originally titled Black Magic, a title the editor loved, but which had zero to do with the book. I've changed it back to my title of DARK PRISM which has everything to do with the book. Lol
I wanted to veer out of my comfort zone (and did I ever!) and write a straight paranormal. Since I already had an affinity for wizards (albeit T-FLAC/psi kick butt-take-no-prisoners-wizards) I decided to start there.
The Aequitas and the Omnivatics have been bitter enemies since the beginning of time. There's a lot of history and bad blood between them. Fortunately, the Omnivatics died out hundreds of years ago. . .Or did they? (Of course not, or I wouldn't have a book, I'd have a page!)
Jackson Slater is an Aequitas warrior, but foremost, he's a geologist. (this isn't a T-FLAC book for those who are asking ) He's sexy, driven, focused and fabulous. His life's work is the tracking of mystical leylines which give(my)wizards their powers. I fell in love with Jack, and because I loved him, gave him my biggest fear. Snakes.
Sara Temple is also a wizard. A non practicing wizard. When she tries spells they always go horribly wrong. She thinks the whole wizard thing is stupid and dangerous, and she leaves well enough alone. She's living her life happily and magic free. Sara is focused, driven and sexy. (see how these two are exactly the same but completely different?! Lol) And because I adored Sara I made her an interior designer (which I used to be )
11. Question: Which do you find is most important to you as a writer, voice or story? Why?
Both. One can be learned (story) but voice is something that not only can't be learned, it has to develop (like a fine wine ) over time. You can have one without the other and still have a great book. But having both makes the reading experience richer and and more satisfying.
12. Question: Cherry, please tell us where we can find you out in cyber world. For desperate readers like me, we just have to know…
Thanks for asking My cyber world is www.cherryadair.com. There people can find excerpts, fun slide shows with scenes from each book, and a gallery of my guys. I can also be found chatting away on Twitter and Facebook.
13. Question: I know this is a difficult question with there being so many amazing authors out there to choose from but who are some of the GOT-TO-HAVE authors in your TBR pile?
Not in any order and by no means all of them! Ann Stuart, Suzan Elizabeth Phillips, Linda Howard, Elizabeth Lowell- and a 100 more! Unfortunately I don't get to read nearly as much as I used to, or want to. But I like to keep my favs close, for when I do have a spare couple of hours to indulge myself.
I’d like to thank Cherry Adair for stopping by and spending time with us, it’s been a blast getting to know more about you and your books. I wish you all the best and much success in everything you do.
Thanks for inviting me in to chat. Since I'm holed up in my office 24/7 I don't get out much. Lol I love hearing from readers, so feel free to come by and say hi via my website, or on Twitter or Facebook.
Oh, and if you want a bookmark or personalized bookplate send a SASE tot Cherry Adair bookmarks, P.O. Box 8591, Covington, Washington. And I'll pop those in the mail to you asap.
Thanks, this has been fun.
Cheers
Cherry
Q&A with Cherry Adair by Kindle Editors
Amazon Romance expert Lena Cohen spoke with author Cherry Adair, RITA award winner for "Gideon", about her transition from interior design to writing, her plo
tting process, and her experience writing an entire book with one finger.
Lena Cohen: How did you get your start in writing?
Cherry Adair: I read voraciously. I love to read. I used to try to finish off a book. I started with Gone with the Wind when I was about eleven and I had about 200 endings to it. I loved it passionately; I read it like 400 times so I was kind of obsessed with it. I always wanted to write and I used to be an interior designer so I had long waits between clients coming in. During those waits, I’d just scribble stuff down, which would have been great if I could have read my own handwriting, but I couldn’t, so then I started typing it and eventually sold my first book without an agent.
LC: That’s an interesting transition from interior design to writing. Are there parallels between the two for you?
CA: There aren’t really parallels. I wrote seventeen books before I actually published my first book so I had a lot of practice, or I was a slow learner, one or the other. I don’t know. It took me many years to not describe every room that my characters were in as if I was an interior designer because I wanted to say, “And the fabric is from this company, and the wallpaper is from…” and nobody cares. It didn’t need that much detail, so it took a while. Everything for me is about the color. My books are filled with color even if readers aren’t aware of it.
LC: You clearly dive deep into your character development. Is there a character you’ve written that was inspired by someone in your life?
CA: No, not a particular person. All of my characters are a little bit of different people. I’ll find something fairly interesting in somebody I’ll meet, a tick, something that they do with their hands, or a certain pattern of speech. I won’t even think about it consciously until three books later and that person will sort of come into that book a little bit in that way.
LC: Can you tell me a little bit about the process you use for setting plots?
CA: I used to not plot. I used to just start the book and hope that it went somewhere. Then, when I sold, I realized I that didn’t have that kind of luxury of deleting three quarters of the book to get to the meat of it, so now I plot intensely. I plot from beginning to end and I plot by color. I do everything in post-in notes on a grid; 3M loves me. Each chapter is a grid and each thread of the book is a color.
LC: You also led a workshop this year at RWA, are you active in terms of coaching other writers or instructing?
CA: I have an absolute passion for mentoring new writers. I love it. I do a ‘finish the damn book contest’ every October because people tend to write the first three chapters and polish it and send it to a contest, and they win a little prize and go “woo-hoo.” Then they re-write it and they tweak it and they send it to another contest, but they don’t actually finish the book. So I have a contest and I give fabulous prizes and I kick their butts every week. They have to report to me every week how many pages they’ve done, if they’ve met their goal, and I just keep kicking until they actually achieve it. Last year I won RWA mentor of the year because a lot of people wrote in which was fabulous. It’s my favorite award that I’ve ever won. So, yes, I do that. I also discovered I really love teaching so I teach my plotting and I did a workshop at RWA on career planning for people who are just starting out or people whose careers have stalled. And I love it. I really love it.
LC: I hear you have a story about writing a book with one finger. Are you able to share?
CA: I can, yes. I had surgery and somehow something happened to the nerve in my right elbow. I could not move my right hand and I had a book due. As it is, I only type with two fingers; one finger on each hand. That’s how I type because when I was going to typing school when I was a kid, I had a boyfriend who lived nearby so I missed every single typing class. [laughs] My mother could never figure out why I was such a bad typer and it’s because I wasn’t attending the class. So I type with two fingers as it is. Because I couldn’t move my right hand and I had a book due, I did the whole book, which was actually Dark Prism, with one finger.
LC: Wow.
CA: So now when people say “I can’t do it, I don’t have time,” I say “Hey, you know that book? One finger, people!”
LC: Do you handwrite before you type?
CA: No. I can’t read my own handwriting. You know, I’m a mess apparently. I thought I was pretty cool but apparently I’m not. I can’t read my own writing so I can’t take written notes for anything because I can’t read my writing so I type everything.
LC: Although it sounds like you pretty much know what’s coming because of the process you use to set plots.
CA: Well, I know everything about my plots so, yeah, I know exactly what’s coming.
LC: That’s so great. Thank you so much!
CA: Thank you!
Dossier Jack Slater Jr.
MAIN STORY: Dark Prism
HEIGHT: 6’ 2” tall
HAIR: Dark
EYES: Dark blue
BODY DESCRIPTION: Strong jaw, Long legs
DRESS: Agate-faced watch, Favorite cowboy boots
MARITAL STATUS: Single
PARENTS: Father: Jackson Slater Sr. died of heart attack
when he was 23 Mother died when he was 6, from Lupus
EMPLOYMENT: A geologist
POWERS:
Invisibility
Teleportation
Protection spell
Mindwipe ability but NOT a mind reader
Trace-teleportation
Uses the big ass Slater watch to amp his powers
Conjures hailstorms and materializes razor sharp shards of ice
Cold has been the Slater family power to call for 7 generations
SKILLS:
A fast healer
Speaks Spanish
A masterful lover
Excels at analyzing information
An accomplished mimic and really good with languages
Not proficient in blowing things up but perfectly capable of
following directions
EDUCATION: Wizard school
PERSONALITY & ATTITUDE:
Not social A loner by nature
Laid back
Incapable of standing still
Internal intensity drives him
More comfortable in a desert than a city
Passionate about everything he is interest in
Never tranquil in the bedroom, he is unleashed
New discoveries feed his soul and fuel his imagination
QUIRKS & HABITS:
Naps when it rains
Grinds his teeth when stressed
The more aroused he is, the deeper and more gentle his voice
becomes
LIKES & DISLIKES: Likes to be in the know
Ley hunting is his life’s work
Likes country better than city
Prefers going by the seat of his pants
Loves geology, Leys, and solitude best
Dislikes jungles
HATES snakes
WEAPONS: Ka-Bar and Sig Sauer
CHILDHOOD:
Father beat him as a child. Nose broken as a kid by his father.
Scar on his thumb was from his father hitting him with a
fireplace poker
Worked odd jobs for a construction company at age 16
Scar under his chin from falling off his skateboard at age 8
Learned the nuances of French kissing from Rachel Thomason
at 16
Scar on his shoulder was caused by a kid at school throwing a
psionic spear at him and him not dodging fast enough
At age 10 had a run-in with a disgusting ball of mating snakes
in Africa, fell in a ravine and was swarmed with writhing
snake bodies
HOME: Has a house in Lake Tahoe
BACKGROUND: Full Aequitas wizard
CURRENT BACKGROUND:
The last of his line
Killed Grant Baltzer aka Sarulu
Lifemate of Sara’s, they are more p
owerful together
Won the Wollaston Medal in London, for proving the
existence of British Leylines
The search for the mysterious energy lines (leylines) linking
vortices of the earth have always been his personal quest
Sara Jeannette Temple
MAIN STORY: Dark Prism
NICKNAME: Sara-mine (by Jack Slater Jr.)
HEIGHT: 5' 9"
HAIR: Glossy, blonde-streaked
EYES: Velvety brown
BODY: Slender. Chic. Red polished toes
Smells of the girl next door citrus coupled with the ginger
flower of a siren
DRESS: Love high designer shoes.
VOICE: Soft voice
MARITAL STATUS: Engaged to Jack Slater Jr.
CHILDREN: Baby on the way
PARENTS: Father: Deceased Mother: Deceased
Father was Omnivatic
Mother was Aequitas
Father was a wizard but not Aequitas
Alberto Santos is her foster father
