Interview with Morgan Rhodes and a Giveaway!

Hey y'all! I have Morgan Rhodes here today to talk about GATHERING DARKNESS, book 3 in the Falling Kingdoms series and also she gives an answer about how many books there will be in the series. Check out the excerpt below and then come back for the interview. Oooooh and make sure to stick around and enter the epic giveaway! 
Haven't heard of GATHERING DARKNESS Check it out!

GATHERING DARKNESS

Morgan Rhodes

Release Date: December 9, 2014

Hardcover: 416 pages

Publisher: Razorbill

ISBN: 978-1595147059

Goodreads/Amazon/Barnes & Noble
If you want to read an excerpt from GATHERING DARKNESS click HERE!

In GATHERING DARKNESS, book three of the New York Times bestselling Falling Kingdoms series, the stakes have never been higher as three teams push forward on a race to find the Kindred, the four elemental crystals possessing ancient all-powerful magic, first:

TEAM WATCHER relies on King Gaius’s cruelty and Lucia’s powers to unlock the Kindred.
TEAM CLEO slays with sweetness and the secret that they hold the key to controlling Lucia’s overwhelming magic.
TEAM KRAESHIA will stop at nothing—including deceit and betrayal—to seize the Kindred and claim Mytica as their own.

Whoever wins will control the fate of Mytica—but fate can be fickle when magic is involved…

SERIES OVERVIEW

In the three kingdoms of Mytica, magic has long been forgotten. And while hard-won peace has reigned for centuries, a deadly unrest is simmering.

As the rulers of each kingdom grapple for power, the lives of their subjects are brutally transformed…and four key players, royals and rebels alike, find their fates forever intertwined. Cleo, Jonas, Lucia, and Magnus are caught in a dizzying world of treacherous betrayals, shocking murders, secret alliances, and even love.

In AURANOS, privileged Princess Cleo is forced to confront violence for the first time in her life when a shocking murder sets her kingdom on a path to collapse.

In LIMEROS, the king’s son, Magnus, must plan each footstep with shrewd, sharp guile if he is to earn his powerful father’s trust, while his sister, Lucia, discovers a terrifying family secret about her birth that will change everything.

In PAELSIA, rebellious Jonas lashes out against the forces of oppression that have kept his country cruelly impoverished—and finds himself the leader of a people’s revolution centuries in the making.

Witches, if four, are put to death, and Watchers, immortal beings who take the shape of hawks to visit the human world, have been almost entirely forgotten. A vicious power struggle quickly escalates to war, and these four young people collide against each other and the rise of elementia, the magic that can topple kingdoms and crown a ruler in the same day.

Now on to the interview!

I was pleasantly surprised to hear that the series was going to have more than 3 books. Was it always your intention to write 6 books?

From the beginning, it was my hope and my wish for Falling Kingdoms to be six books, which seems to me like a perfect number for a high fantasy series. However, as a writer, nothing is ever guaranteed. So much depends on sales, reader interest, and publisher commitment. I sold the series two books at a time. By the time I started thinking about book four, I had to know – since the other books end on a cliffhanger – will there be the chance for two more? Or do I have to (try to) wrap up everything up with a neat bow by the end of the fourth? Happily, my publisher (Razorbill Books) agreed that we needed six books to tell the complete story in a wholly satisfying way. So…YAY!

So can you tell us a little bit of what we can expect in GATHERING DARKNESS?

The book picks up about a week after the end of Rebel Spring. Jonas is trying to find information on what happened to his lost rebels and meets a new recruit who could be a game-changer, and Magnus is dealing with the jarring news he learned about his father and what exactly to do about it. When a beautiful princess from the Kraeshian Empire arrives to join her brother Prince Ashur as (not necessarily welcome) guests of the king, Cleo begins to wonder if they could be friend or foe to her. A lot happens in this book and I hope readers are ready for a wild ride!

Were any of the characters in the book inspired by people from your real life?

Not directly. But I think for any writer, their characters are Frankenstein monsters of everyone they’ve met or heard about, little pieces here, little pieces there.

What is your favorite passage/scene from the series so far and why?

The first one that comes to mind is a scene near the end of Gathering Darkness between two characters who start speaking very dangerous truths to each other – about themselves and their own hearts. I’ll admit I’m a sucker for a tortured romance!

What are you reading right now? Or what do you have on your TBR that you’re dying to read?

I am a compulsive book buyer, so my TBR shelf is the size of a small mountain. Currently, I’m reading DUST by Joan Frances Turner, since I needed a zombie fix. Next up, I’m going to read LOLA AND THE BOY NEXT DOOR by Stephanie Perkins. ANNA AND THE FRENCH KISS is one of my favorite books ever, so I’m looking forward to finally reading the follow up!

Who is your ultimate Book Boyfriend?

My YA Book Boyfriend is Adrian Ivashkov. My adult Book Boyfriend is Jericho Barrons. Please don’t make me choose between them! ;)

What inspired you to write YA?

I joke that I may be a *cough*adult*cough* but I am forever sixteen at heart. The troubles we all face in high school, be it difficulties with our parents, our first love, dealing with frenemies, peer pressure, facing the future…are timeless themes that can be dealt with in any genre: contemporary, fantasy, paranormal, horror. Maybe I’m just trying to find the answers the eluded me when I was a teen? All I know is I love writing YA and I have no plans of stopping any time soon! :)

Thanks for stopping by Morgan I can't wait to read the rest of the series!

About Morgan:

photo credit Shanon Fujioka

Morgan Rhodes is the New York Times bestselling author of the FALLING KINGDOMS series. As a child, she always wanted to be a princess—the kind that knows how to wield a sharp sword to help save both kingdoms and princes from fire-breathing dragons and dark wizards. Instead, she became a writer, which is just as good and much less dangerous. Along with writing, Morgan enjoys photography, travel, and reality TV, and is an extremely picky yet voracious reader of all kinds of books.

LEARN MORE

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Giveaway Details:

BACK TO MYTICA, WISH YOU WERE HERE.

One (1) winner receives:

·         Falling Kingdoms postcard set,

·         Falling Kingdoms t-shirt,

·          plus copies of Falling Kingdoms, Rebel Spring and Gathering Darkness.

Prizing & samples courtesy of Penguin Young Readers

Giveaway open to US addresses only

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