Hello readers! How are you?
Today's article is special because it's a little bit different from our usual ones. In Spill the Book you can usually find reviews, top lists, bookish topics, wrap-ups, new releases and also cover reveals. Now, we add something new that I hope to offer you again.
What am I talking about?
Well, you've already seen the cover and synopsis reveal of Ilahara : The Last Myrassar, written by C.M. Karys, the author name of two Italian sisters, Maria Elena and Chiara (or if you've missed it, you can find the article here), so I thought it would be interesting to contact them and have a little chat together and they kindly reply me with no second thought.
I hope you'll enjoy it so much as I did 💓
Hi girls!
First of all, congratulations for the release of your first novel, Ilahara : The Last Myrassar. Now we have an official date, how are you feeling? Are you excited?
Thank you! Yes, we’re very excited. Even though the date is so close, we still can’t believe it. We try to face everything with a positive mindset and to not think about things that give us anxiety, like how people are going to like the book once it’s out and stuff like that. The love of the Bookstagram community is very helpful in that regard!
Where does the idea of Ilahara come from?
Everything began with a flash Chiara had. She had a sort of vision of this girl jumping out of a shadow with a dagger in hand. Everything else slowly came from there.
Writing an entire novel is not an easy work and there’s two of you. How has been working together on this project? Pros and cons?
Indeed
Ilahara was the first novel we ever finished, so that makes it even more
special to us. We’ve been writing together for eleven years now, and we
wouldn’t want it any other way. At first, Maria wrote on her own, and Chiara
had fun giving her advice until we decided that writing together would be even
better. For starters, we have more fun. Sometimes it happens that we’re writing
separate chapters and it’s torture. We like writing character dialogue as if it
were role-play, passing the computer back and forth between us as if we’re
having a conversation. Besides, writing that little bit of plot we need before
starting a book and building the characters is more entertaining when there’s
two of us. Other authors look for writing buddies online to find that
relationship that we have. We read the same books, we have the same interests,
so we’re always in sync on what kind of story we want to write. The only
problem is when we don’t see eye to eye on how to continue a story. For the
moment it only happened once. No, not for Ilahara. That week was very difficult
and our brother hated us by the end of it.
Which was the most challenging thing you faced in the writing process?
Some parts of the editing process were difficult, especially the first round where we had to rewrite half the book because of some details we had to fix in the beginning. We don’t regret it because our editor gave us some sound advice that made the book even better, but doing everything within the deadline given to us by our publisher was hard. But we succeeded! And then there’s the infamous Copy Edits phase, where we basically have to comb through our book word by word to hunt down overused expressions, and words like “that”, “was”, “and”, or ending in “-ly” that are redundant. It has to be done because it lightens the word count by a lot (and we really mean a lot) and it makes for smoother reading, but it was also the most boring part.
And which one you loved the most?
We love the initial plotting and we especially love writing the scenes between the characters. In a way we also had fun during the first editing phase because once we had to rewrite some parts of the book, it was like writing it for the first time—albeit with the knowledge of all those technical things our editor pointed out.
You’re Italian, but you’ve decided to write in English. That’s a peculiar choice I’m sure lots of readers will be curious about. Is there a particular reason? I know you spent some years in America, so I guess English is a sort of second mother tongue for you.
The
love of reading and writing was born thanks to our American teachers. Teachers
there give a lot of weight to reading, or at least that’s what they did in our
school. We had an hour of Reading Class, and after lunch we were given a
half-hour break to read whatever we wanted. Some lessons also became an excuse
for creative writing exercises. Once we returned to Italy, we didn’t stop
writing in English. But we’d be lying if we didn’t say that one of the main
reasons we turned away from Italian publishing is the perception we have of
Fantasy in our country. Lately it seems like there’s a rebirth of the genre,
but if we enter a bookstore the majority of the books in the Fantasy section
are still translations of books originally published in English. There’s still
not much in Italian, and this is because a lot of people in our country who
think they’re experts look down on Fantasy.
How was working with a publisher? ( Ilahara : The Last Myrassar will be published by Literary Wanderlust - @literary__wanderlust on Instagram)
It was nice. They provided services like an editor, a fabulous cover and printing that we wouldn’t have been able to afford on our own at the time.
Back to Ilahara, what can we expect in only 4 words?
Your personal favorite character?
Mykal Todrak.
And the one you loved the most writing about?
We’ll tell you two, one written by Chiara and the other by Maria, but we won’t tell you who writes who because we’re evil: Shara and Cassia. They were the hardest for different reasons, but they’re also very strong women who are very different from one another.
Last one: I’ve heard there will be some incentives related to the pre-orders, ehehe.
Yes, there are. We’ll share more information as soon as we have all the details, but let’s say our followers had plenty of sneak peeks on what they can expect.
And that's all readers!
I have to say I've loved this little interview so much I have already planned something more, so stay tuned on this blog 😏. Thanks again to Chiara and Maria for being so nice to reply all my questions (and to my two partners in crime Erika and Camilla to indulge and support me in this kind of particular projects). I had lot of fun and I think this reflects clearly the two adorable and helpful people they are.
So, if you won't miss any further information related to Ilahara (and C.M. Karys' future projects!), I warmly suggest to follow them on their social media:
And if you want to pre-order Ilahara you can check also those links:
Amazon.com (paperback)
Amazon.com (Kindle)
Book Depository
See you to the next interview💓
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