Rogue Skies: Meet the Authors

Shannon Pemrick

1. Tell us a little about yourself.

Hi, I'm Shannon. I'm from the southeast corner of New Hampshire where I live with my overly sarcastic husband and 5 four-legged critters. I write fantasy and science fiction with strong heroines, bold heroes, and romantic subplots (sometimes main plot) and in my freetime I collect novelty mugs and shiny things (my husband says I have a problem), and geeking out over rolling dice in D&D or getting lost in my favorite RPGs. I also maybe be... most definitely am, dragon obsessed.

2. When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer?

My path to being an author was a gradual one. And one that I didn't intentionally pursue at first. I struggled with reading and writing comprehension as a child (and still affects me to this day), so writing books was never something I ever once dreamed I'd end up doing. I always thought I'd do something in the arts, not realizing writing was an artform all its own.

I loved telling stories to my friends. We'd all sit around and come up with something on the spot and sometimes even craft crazy stories together. As I got into my early teen years I started writing the stories down, and would exchange them with friends. It was such a casual progression, I hadn't even realized how much I did it until someone made me reflect in my last year of high school. This person was a teach of mine, who'd been so impressed by my writing skill for an assignment (the hero's journey). I'd quite enjoyed the project, and it made me realize how much i'd come to love writing. But even with that love, I never thought I could write a good book like the ones I'd read.

Until I was in college and I'd finished my first book. My boyfriend (now husband) read it, and insisted I needed to get it published. I resisted the idea at first, but as he persisted I changed my mind. And I've have quite the wild ride ever since.

3. Have events or people in your life ever inspired scenes or characters in any of your books?

Oh, so much inspiration. From my own experiences (abusive relationships, depression, etc...) to hardships I've seen others go through. There's so much inspiration out there to craft 3-dimensional characters and events, but my trick is to rarely take from one single instance. This has helped me craft up a special uniqueness to the character or situation.

4. What is your favorite under appreciated novel?

Dragon's Bait by Vivian Vande Velde. This book inspired me to write would would later become my first published book and series. There was so much about it I love, from the interesting take on maiden sacrifices and saving one's self, to revenge, to relationships between humans and non-human characters. And every time I mention this book, very few have ever read it or any of her work.

5. How did you come up with the title for your book?

The title of each book in the series follows the oracle and divine vision theme, particularly around prophecies, as that drives Aviana to start her journey and keeps her going, among other things. And while Aviana's gift is still relatively new in the prequels, I ran with this theme still, though tweaked it in ways to show not only were the prequels what they were, not part of the main story sequence, but to also showcase that stage of her life as an Oracle.

Coming up with the title themes wasn't easy though. I ran through so many different ideas that didn't resonate with the story. I had to sit down and think about the story as a whole and part of the individual books and the themes I'd be exploring. One common theme was the prophecies because of Aviana's gift and suddenly the ideas came to me. There were many titles that weren't great, but it didn't take long to come up with many for the main series, and then deviate a few for the planned prequels