Blog Tour- THE BURNING SKY by Sherry Thomas a Deleted Scene and a Giveaway!

Hey y’all! I’m really stoked to have Sherry Thomas here today as a part of THE BURNING SKY Blog Tour! I LOVED this book! One of the things I loved was its High Fantasy but, it has a foothold in the real world. Actually a good portion of the book takes place in London and while I loved the Mage Realms I thought I’d like to know why Sherry decided to write this book with both a Fantasy World (Which is amazing and I want to live there!) and a real world aspect.

What brought about this post was I wanted to know what part of London was (my new book boyfriend sorry Iolanthe lol) Titus’s absolute favorite place so we get a deleted scene! Haven’t heard of THE BURNING SKY? Check it out and then stick around for the guest post and the awesome giveaway!

Title: THE BURNING SKY (The Elemental Trilogy #1)

Author: Sherry Thomas

Pub. Date: September 17, 2013

Publisher: Balzer + Bray 

Pages: 480

Find it: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Goodreads

It all began with a ruined elixir and an accidental bolt of lightning…

Iolanthe Seabourne is the greatest elemental mage of her generation—or so she's being told. The one prophesied for years to be the savior of The Realm. It is her duty and destiny to face and defeat the Bane, the greatest mage tyrant the world has ever known. A suicide task for anyone let alone a sixteen-year-old girl with no training, facing a prophecy that foretells a fiery clash to the death.

Prince Titus of Elberon has sworn to protect Iolanthe at all costs but he's also a powerful mage committed to obliterating the Bane to avenge the death of his family—even if he must sacrifice both Iolanthe and himself to achieve his goal.

But Titus makes the terrifying mistake of falling in love with the girl who should have been only a means to an end. Now, with the servants of the Bane closing in, he must choose between his mission and her life.

Now on to the awesome guest post!

Jaime has asked me to write a post about Titus’s favorite place at the nonmage boarding school he attends.  To do that, let me first give you a little background on the school itself.

I always knew that The Burning Sky was not going to be high fantasy in the manner of The Lord of the Rings.  It was always going to have one foot firmly in the real world and that real-world footing was going to be a boarding school for boys.

At one point, a friend asked why I didn’t make up a fictional boarding school. My answer?  I wanted more authenticity.  But also, I wanted a world I didn’t have to construct from scratch.  Not to mention, while freedom to create is wonderful, I’ve always felt that limits and restraints are what truly spur creativity to flourish.

So I put my mage protagonists at Eton College, a real school for boys located some twenty-five miles east of London, which still exists today—both Prince William and Prince Harry are Old Etonians.  And by doing that, I am bound by the seasons and traditions of that school. 

A huge part of student life at Eton is sports.  The school has three academic terms a year, called Halves—a name obviously made up by someone who couldn’t do fractions. J  Each half is dominated by a couple of signature sports.  And the signature sports of the Summer Half, which runs from April to July, are cricket and rowing. 

(The Burning Sky’s timeline runs the length of Summer Half, 1883.)

Iolanthe/Fairfax is a cricketer.  Titus, on the other hand, rows.  And that venue for rowing, the Thames River, is Titus’s favorite place at this school.

They stood some distance from the house, near the banks of the brown and silent Thames. Titus had rowed on the river for years. The repetition, the perspiration, and the good, clean exhaustion quieted his mind beautifully.

It’s interesting to me, because rowing is the ultimate team sport.  Everyone’s motions must be exactly synchronized, and the slightest slippage would cause a team to lose the competitive edge.  You would think Titus would hate something like this.  And I posit that perhaps he had, in the beginning, since he is a lone wolf accustomed to doing everything by himself.

But underneath that aloofness is a boy who wanted to belong to a wider humanity.  And he grew to enjoy rowing precisely because of the teamwork—and because it is teamwork that does not require him to speak or otherwise communicate. 

Titus could totally get down with that.

I usually don’t do deleted scenes for my books, cuz deleted scenes are deleted for a reason. But there are always exceptions. And I think the passage below, which is not in the final text of the book, is such an exception.

“Let’s go see what the wet bobs are doing,” said Sutherland, at the end of the day’s cricket practice.

Students who played cricket in summer half were called dry bobs; rowers were wet bobs.  There was quite a hierarchy of rowers.  The school boats had ranks—the nuances of which largely escaped Iolanthe.  And every rower aspired to be one of the eight who rowed for the school in the Henley Regatta. 

On the Thames, three boats were headed upstream, two downstream.

“That’s St. John,” said Sutherland, spotting a boy from Mrs. Dawlish’s house on a four-man scull.  “Put your back into it, St. John!”

“You row like Mrs. Dawlish!” shouted someone else.

The boys laughed.  St. John stuck his tongue out but otherwise made no response. 

Iolanthe was curious to see the prince row. She found it difficult to imagine him, with his restless, clever mind, doing something so repetitive.

Two more boats passed them, carrying no one from Mrs. Dawlish’s house.  A third boat appeared, headed upstream. 

“Is that Titus?” asked Rogers. 

It still jarred her to hear the prince called by his name.  She almost turned to Rogers to admonish him not to be so familiar.  Instead she squinted her eyes.  “No, that’s not him.”

Another four-man scull rounded the bend.  The rowers had their back to her, but she immediately recognized the prince, seated second from the front.

“How good is His Highness as a rower?” she asked.

“His build is wrong for rowing—not brawny enough,” said Kashkari.  “But he has extraordinary techniques—or so the captain of the eight tells me.”

It was odd to see the prince in a team endeavor, he who probably didn’t even want to partner with her.  Yet he was very much one of the team.  The crew rowed as one, their pulls strong and smooth, the blades of their oars slicing into water with perfect unison, in exact alignment. 

Rowing was honest and simple—precisely what his life was not.

And there you have it, the Thames River, Titus’s favorite thing about Eton.

Eeeeeeppppp ok that was awesome thanks so much for sharing Sherry! Also Prince Harry *Swoons*

About Sherry:

Sherry Thomas is one of the most acclaimed romance authors working today. Her books regularly receive starred reviews from trade publications and are frequently found on best-of-the-year lists. She is also a two-time winner of Romance Writers of America's prestigious RITA® Award.

English is Sherry's second language—she has come a long way from the days when she made her laborious way through Rosemary Roger's Sweet Savage Love with an English-Chinese dictionary. She enjoys digging down to the emotional core of stories. And when she is not writing, she thinks about the zen and zaniness of her profession, plays computer games with her sons, and reads as many fabulous books as she can find.

Sherry’s next book, THE BURNING SKY, volume one of her young adult fantasy trilogy, will be available fall 2013.

Author photo by the lovely and talented Jennifer Sparks Harriman at Sparks Studio.

Website /Blog/Twitter/Facebook/Goodreads

Check out the Book Trailer!

Giveaway Details:

For First Place (US Only):

1 Hardcover of THE BURNING SKY a tote bag, and handmade balm, scrub, and bath tea.

Runners Up (US Only)

 3 Hardcovers of THE BURNING SKY and a tote bag.

3 runners up will get swag packs (stickers, bookmarks, signed bookplates)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Tour Schedule:

Week 1

9/9/2013- Bewitched Bookworms- Guest Post

9/10/2013- Jenna Does Books- Interview

9/11/2013- Fiction Fare- Interview

9/12/2013- Readers in Wonderland- Review

9/13/2013- Working for the Mandroid- Interview

Week 2

9/16/2013- Two Chicks on Books- Guest Post                      

9/17/2013- Fiktshun- Guest Post

9/18/2013- Seeing Night Reviews- Review

9/19/2013- Supernatural Snark- Interview

9/20/2013- Michelle & Leslie's Book Picks- Review