Part I Interview with David Litwack, author of There Comes A Prophet and International Giveaway

Welcome back, everyone! Here's my Monday post a little early. I am pleased to be part of the blog tour promoting this wonderful book by David Litwack, There Comes a Prophet.

Goodreads Book Description: Who among us will cast aside a comfortable existence and risk death to follow a dream?

A world kept peaceful for a thousand years by the magic of the ruling vicars. But a threat lurks from a violent past. Wizards from the darkness have hidden their sorcery in a place called the keep and left a trail of clues that have never been solved.

Nathaniel has grown up longing for more but unwilling to challenge the vicars. Until his friend Thomas is taken for a teaching, the mysterious coming-of-age ritual. Thomas returns but with his dreams ripped away. When Orah is taken next, Nathaniel tries to rescue her and ends up in the prisons of Temple City. There he meets the first keeper of the ancient clues. But when he seeks the keep, what he finds is not magic at all.

If he reveals the truth, the words of the book of light might come to pass:

“If there comes among you a prophet saying ‘Let us return to the darkness,’ you shall stone him, because he has sought to thrust you away from the light.”

Book trailer: http://youtu.be/43girNzSFsw

 
My rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

My Amazon Review: There Comes a Prophet Review

Author Blurb:

The urge to write first struck when working on a newsletter at a youth encampment in the woods of northern Maine. It may have been the night when lightning flashed at sunset followed by northern lights rippling after dark. Or maybe it was the newsletter's editor, a girl with eyes the color of the ocean. But he was inspired to write about the blurry line between reality and the fantastic.

Using two fingers and lots of white-out, he religiously typed five pages a day throughout college and well into his twenties. Then life intervened. He paused to raise two sons and pursue a career, in the process becoming a well-known entrepreneur in the software industry, founding several successful companies. When he found time again to daydream, the urge to write returned. There Comes a Prophet is his first novel in this new stage of life.

David and his wife split their time between Cape Cod, Florida and anywhere else that catches their fancy. He no longer limits himself to five pages a day and is thankful every keystroke for the invention of the word processor.

Author Website: www.davidlitwack.com

Author Interview Part I.

1. I am fascinated by the world you create in There Comes A Prophet. Can you tell us a little bit about your world building process and your journey to writing about this world?

Two things came together to create the world of The Temple of Light. One day I was walking along one of my favorite beaches near my home on Cape Cod. To my right was Martha’s Vineyard rising up from the fog and to my left were inlets common to the Cape’s ragged coastline. The first and smallest was called Little Pond, with just a few homes around it. The next was the much bigger Great Pond. For some reason, I started imagining a young man, newly come of age, who grew up in the smaller village, longing for more from life, but feeling limited. 

At the same time, on this long walk, I was thinking about the news of the day, about the rise of a fundamentalism around the world that distrusts science and is adverse to modernism, wishing a return to a simpler time. Yet these same folks were the first to use cell phones and the internet to organize and to seek modern medicine when they became ill—all inventions that would never have happened if they’d had their way.

The two concepts came together, and the world of There Comes a Prophet was born.

2. I loved your characters, and in particular, had a tumultuous relationship with Thomas, who in the end probably became my favorite character. Please tell us a little bit about how you develop your characters, and which character was the most fun to write. Just out of curiosity, did you get some inspiration for Orah from Hermione of Harry Potter fame?

I also really like Thomas. I had an editor suggest that I shouldn’t be ending a book with a point-of-view scene for a secondary character. But while Orah and Nathaniel were the revolutionaries, Thomas was the reason for the revolution. As Orah says: “Innovation reborn.”

As far as Orah, sure, she’s a bright, strong character like Hermione Granger, but I didn’t need to go to Harry Potter for that model. I’m married to a woman who is one of three strong-minded sisters, all with degrees and careers in math and engineering. The one distinct characteristic I really liked about Hermione was her insecurity. She was this enormously talented young woman, and all her friends expected her to have the answers. But she was always filled doubt. All good characters need flaws.

3. I don't want to give too much away, but I noticed that puzzles and rhymes played a large role in your novel. Can you tell us a little bit of how you developed this aspect of your novel, what sources helped you to develop it and how this affected the pacing of your novel?

I spent a lot of time on the rhyme that’s not a rhyme. It was an interesting problem because the founders of the keep needed to come up with something that was timeless yet hard to solve, especially by a people that had forgotten how to think on their own. Then I put puzzles within the puzzle, creating the equivalent of false summits, so whenever the protagonists thought they had it solved, there was more to go. 

Stick around tomorrow for the rest of this fantastic interview and enter to win this wonderful book!

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