Author Guest Blog & Contest with Jocelynn Drake!

I have a second author guest for you this week. Jocelynn Drake, I am sure, is an author you all know or have at least heard of. Her Dark Days Novels have made her a New York Times Bestseller and fans will be pleased to hear that not one but TWO new books in the series will be released this Summer.

Book four in the series, Pray For Dawn, is due out on June 29th and book five, Wait for Dusk comes out only a month later on July 27th. Aren't we lucky!!!

Oh and this is Jocelynn's third visit to Amberkatze's Book Blog! Jocelynn was here in October and back in 2008 when her debut book Nightwalker came out.

So enjoy Jocelynn's Guest Blog and make sure you enter the contest for your chance to win one of three copies of .......! You will have to read the blog first to find out ;)

------------------------

A Different Point of View by Jocelynn Drake

When writing a series or a single novel, a writer has a set of goals in mind that he or she wants to accomplish. Sometimes these are just a set of major and minor plot points that the person wants to reach while writing the novel. Other times, it could be that the writer wants to evoke a certain emotion from the reader such as anger, sadness, joy, and/or surprise.

Since I first started writing the Dark Days series with Nightwalker, one of my personal goals has been to tell one of the stories from point of view of Danaus. I have always considered the series as having two main characters: Mira and Danaus.

Mira’s voice has rattled around in my brain for years. She’s a strong character with a very strong voice. She is generally self-confident to the point of being cocky. She’s intelligent, witty, and just generally fu to play with as a writer. I’ve enjoyed telling the stories from her point of view because in many ways, the focus has been on her world – the nightwalkers.

However, Danaus is brought into the story as a very enigmatic character. For a long time, you don’t know his past or even what he is until the second book, Dayhunter. Furthermore, you only get hints of his feelings toward Mira besides him just wanting to kill her purely for the fact that she’s a vampire. The driving question when it comes to Danaus is: What’s really going on in that man’s head after everything that he has seen and done?

I hope to answer a lot of those questions in the fourth novel, Pray for Dawn, as this is the first book in the series that has been told exclusively from his point of view. This was more than a little tricky for me, because it mean trying to climb inside the head of a reticent and stubborn man that didn’t like to give away secrets about himself. It was also more than a little tricky trying to guess how a man thinks, when as a woman, I’m not naturally privy to those intimate thoughts. How would a man that’s nearly two millennia old think? What memories would come to mind that would haunt him during certain situations? Is there something that’s holding him back from finally coming around to understanding Mira’s point of view?

These are some of the questions that I strived to answer when I was writing from Danaus’s point of view. Furthermore, Pray for Dawn also gave me the opportunity to delve into the question of who was the actual owner of Danaus’s soul. This book becomes a fight for his freedom and raises the question of what you are willing to give up and/or risk for that freedom?

Meanwhile, one of my favorite moments in the book is the slow process of Danaus realizing how much Mira means to him. The nightwalker has a few interesting moments of her own as she makes a bad decision out of a growing fear that put both Danaus and Mira at odds with each other. It’s only under that growing strain that Danaus begins to realize that Mira has taken over a larger part of his life than he had previously known.

In the end, Pray for Dawn proved to be a great challenge to write, but of the six books that I have now completed for the series, it still stands as my personal favorite.



-------------------------

Contest Time

Jocelynn is very generously giving away three copies of Pray for Dawn which comes out on June 29th. So three lucky people will get a nice new copy of the fourth book as soon as it comes out.

How to Enter

Who are your favourite main characters? Male and Female? Eg. Sookie Stackhouse & Harry Dresden!

No Characters = No Entry

Earn more entries for each place you link this contest on the net. You can post on Facebook, Twitter & MySpace but make sure you add links here for me to confirm your entries! However please do not make individual postings for each entry. Please post all your info in one post.

You can also earn extra entries by emailing your friends about the contest. Just make sure you send a copy of your email or receipt to me at Amberkatzes_book_blog at gmx dot net.

Make sure you post your links here so I can confirm your entries.

Keep the contests going by using the Bookdepository.com links/Banners below and around the site!



The contest will stay open until Sunday 20th of June 2010 4pm CET and the winner will be picked by a randomizer. Entrants should check back to see if they have won. I do not hunt down winners and will pick new winners for any prizes not claimed within 7 days.