Finding
Perdita
by
April Grey
Genre:
Dark Urban Fantasy
Fairy
Tales can come true, it can happen to you...Run!
Down
on her luck and out-of-work, actress Cindy White's life changes for
the worse when her roommate kicks her out. Landing in new digs in an
old Chelsea tenement Cindy discovers a tunnel to the land of Perdita,
a place she'd thought her father had made up in the fairy tales he'd
once told her.
A
dangerous, ruined place of fairies, demons and captives, like her
father who she thought was dead.
In
this dark fantasy, a young woman discovers her true self and must
align it with the old in leaving the world she knows behind in an
effort to free her father.
April
Grey's short stories are collected in The Fairy Cake Bakeshop and in
I'll Love You Forever. She is also the author of two urban fantasy
novels: Chasing the Trickster and it's sequel, St. Nick's Favor.
She
edited the anthologies: Hell's Bells: Wicked Tunes, Mad Musicians and
Cursed Instruments; Hell's Garden: Mad, Bad and Ghostly Gardeners,
Hell's Grannies: Kickass Tales of the Crone and last year's, Hell's
Kitties and Other Beastly Beasts.
She
and her family live in Hell's Kitchen, NYC in a building next to a
bedeviled garden. Gremlins, sprites or pixies, something mischievous,
lurks therein. Someday she'll find out. Please visit
www.aprilgrey.blogspot for her latest news.
GUEST POST
What inspired you to write this book?
I call Finding Perdita “Barbarella
goes to Narnia.” I still remember the wonderful anthropomorphic
creatures from The Lion, the Witch and the Warlock read to me
as a child. My father had died just a few years before Perdita was
written and part of the book encompassed my longing to find him. Also
the main characters are actors involved in careers which involve
commercial endeavors such as soap operas and action films, but their
hearts are still in the Shakespearean productions of their college
years. My background is in theater so I pulled on my history in that
field to write this novel.
How did you come up with the title of
your first novel?
Originally it had a very different
title and was written in two parts with two different titles.
Eventually I saw that Perdita, a character from Shakespeare’s A
Winter’s Tale, symbolized all that the main character Cindy White
was looking for. Finding Perdita, was Cindy finding her lost
self, and I think it’s a journey of discovery all young women
should take. The triple goddess: Maiden, Mother and Crone, has some
influence in the writing of this novel.
Who designed your book covers?
I used artwork provided by Dirk
Strangely for several of my Hell’s anthologies but with Finding
Perdita the cover art was created by Dawne Dominque of Caliburn
Press. After Caliburn crashed and burned I bought the artwork since I
really loved her style. You can find her covers at Dusktildawn
Designs. https://dusktildawndesigns.com/book-cover-art-portfolio/
If your book was made into a film, who
would you like to play the lead?
Either a young Kaley Cuoco or Anna
Faris. Though a dark fantasy, Cindy White is off-beat with a snarky
sense of humor.
Do your characters seem to hijack the
story or do you feel like you have the reigns of the story?
Oh, the characters are in charge. I
don’t plot my books unless I get stuck. Originally, Finding
Perdita was all in first person from Cindy’s POV, but they Josh
wanted equal time so I changed it all to third person to allow a
second viewpoint. The romantic through line then became much stronger
because Josh had a say in the matter. He really fought for his
relationship with her. That’s what happens to me, a secondary
character wants more time and fights for it.
Convince us why you feel your book is a
must read.
I think we all have a Perdita, a lost
self, that needs to be re-discovered. Puberty is a bitch and so often
women start to take second place in their needs to whomever they are
in a relationship to. So there is a lesson in Perdita, helping women
to see more in themselves than they thought they had, and to go for
it.
Have you written any other books that
are not published?
There’s The Lycanthrope’s Tale, a
Regency Gothic, and Griffit City (working title) a ghost city book.
They are both still WIPs so I won’t say much more.
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