Part II Interview with David Litwack and International Giveaway

Welcome back, everyone, to Part II of this awesome interview with David Litwack, the author of, 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 II.

  

1. What was the most rewarding and most difficult aspect of writing this novel? What surprised you?

I didn’t want superheroes. I believe that history is changed by real people full of doubt, who get caught up in a moral dilemma and make a choice. What makes them so heroic is that they choose something that may not be in their best interest but is the right thing to do.

2. For our aspiring writers, dystopian YA books are a dime a dozen. How did you work around the fact that the genre is so inundated with these books and keep your ideas/characters so fresh so they wouldn't immediately be seen as a copy of something else?

So much recent dystopian fiction relies on violence for its conflict. By starting with a dystopia based on non-violence, I completely changed that equation. I think the choices Orah and Nathaniel have to make are more difficult and compelling than the threat of physical violence or death.

Dystopian fiction has actually been around a long time. The most recent wave you mentioned has a copycat element to it. But what has always made dystopian fiction so interesting is the ‘what if.’ What if there’s one aspect different from our own world that makes life worse? That one thing doesn’t have to be a power-mad, corrupt government. I think any regime that limits the human spirit is problematic. If such a regime, like the Temple of Light, has come to power with the best of intentions, that makes the story less black and white. A great example of this is Arthur Clarke’s The City and the Stars.

3. What do you have on the horizon? Will we ever see our friends Nathaniel, Thomas, and Orah again?

I’m currently well along on two new books. The first is called The Daughter of the Sea and the Sky and is about a world divided between The Blessed Land, where people believe in the Spirit, and The Republic, which worships at the altar of reason. The second novel is a mix of fantasy and reality, titled Along the Watchtower. It’s a story of a badly injured Iraq war veteran, who returns home with Post Traumatic Stress and Traumatic Brain Injury. He was an avid player of World of Warcraft with his squad in Iraq, and now, while recovering from his wounds, lapses in and out of a video-game-like fantasy as a way to find the will to live. When I’m done with those, hopefully in the next few months, I just might return to Orah and Nathaniel and see how they’re making out in the new world order they’ve created.

Thanks to David Litwack for joining us to talk about his terrific book! Sign up to win!

 

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