11 October 2013

Blog Tour - Guest Post from Jessica Shirvington, author of the Embrace Series!

Title: Endless (The Embrace Series, #4)
Author: Jessica Shirvington
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire, 470 Pages (October 1st, 2013)
Add to: Goodreads
Order online here: Amazon, Barnes and Noble, The Book Depository, Amazon UK

Check out my review for: Embrace (The Embrace Series, #1)
Check out my review for: Entice (The Embrace Series, #2)

Synopsis: LOVE WILL KILL US ALL
Violet Eden thought she was getting things under control. Then all hell breaks loose-literally. In the war between angels and exiles, she's about to face the biggest baddie of all time. Except she's not nearly ready.
The dark exile Phoenix is still messing with her head-not to mention her heart. And her undeniable attraction to Lincoln has gotten downright dangerous. When Hell unleashes its worst, Violet must embrace every facet of her angel self to save the people she cares about and the world as she knows it. But death is not the worst thing she will face...

Guest Post: Mythology of the series

The mythology of the series is really something that has deepened and evolved with each book. I never had a set rule on how I was going to approach each book, so I felt quite at ease with exploring different mythology each time I began a new story. For me, that was very liberating and in turn became an important element of giving each book its own independent story. As a result, I let the research take me in directions I would have otherwise never travelled in.

In EMBRACE, the story centered around the tales of the Great Flood, of stories from The Book of Enoch, about a time when angels roamed freely amongst humans until they grew bored and started to want for human things. Eventually they took humans as wives and had children. This angered God so much that he sent a legion of fierce angels in the form of a great flood to wipe out the abominations and almost all humanity and to open the pits of hell in the Red Sea - sending the angels to eternal punishment.

In ENTICE, I was able to focus of the story of Judas and the other interpretations of that story. I loved being able to turn biblical folklore on its head in this way and from a fictional point of view. I also was able to delve into other folklore such as the stories of the Stigmata, the Ten Commandments, and the Arc of the Covenant.

In EMBLAZE, I went into more mythology with the All Seeing Eye and stories of the lost city of Atlantis and the Minoan society. I absolutely loved researching this history and mythology and coupling that with what we did know about the explosion of the volcano at Thera whilst also linking that back to the biblical signs of the end of the world. I stumbled across a lot of fantastic material and in the end, it became about peeling it all back to what I absolutely had to use.

In ENDLESS, it is a bit different because it is about the culmination of the previous three story lines, so whilst I use the mythology and delve deeper into the tales of Adam and Eve and those of Lilith and her deceptions, ENDLESS is very much a focus on the characters and what is happening to them. So I tried as much as possible not to introduce to much more by way of mythology. Although, of course, I couldn’t resist completely so I took the opportunity to play around with some ancient Egyptian mythology and tales of the afterlife and its ‘first breath’.

And through all of the books, they have centered around the concept of the angelic hierarchy - something that fascinated me from the very beginning.

All in all, I just have a lot of fun with my research. It is one of the things I love the most about writing and with this series, I had so much scope to work with.

Thanks for stopping by again Jessica! I always love hearing more about the research and back story to the actual writing of a book or series and your post gave me that and so much more! Looking forward to the next visit with you, so please feel free to stop by anytime!