While Kristy and Elena are hard at work on draft two of THE REAPING, we’re excited to announce that our book tour for THE SOWING has begun. With an inaugural book review from Contagious Reads and an author interview with Elena of K. Makansi, we can’t wait to show THE SOWING off to the big, wide world of the internet.

Here are some of the posts we’re really stoked about:

On March 12, Amira will be posting a guest blog on Oops! I Read A Book Again about dystopian novels and why they’re relevant from the perspective of global politics.

On March 21st, in one of the posts we’re most excited about, we’ll be debuting our official playlist for THE SOWING. It’s a kind of soundtrack to the book that Elena and Amira put together using a variety of artists and genres to get to the musical heart of our story. You’ll be able to check that out at Bookwyrming Thoughts. 

March 27, Amira will be doing an interview with the blog Pieces of Whimsy, talking about collaborative writing, our favorite characters to write, and what really challenged her as a writer while creating THE SOWING.

And on April 3, Elena’s List Top Ten of Fictional Character Crushes will go live on Magick Inside Pages, where she’ll be spotlighting some of the fiercest and most admirable characters in all of literature. The kinds of characters we draw inspiration from on a daily basis.

Of course, interspersed throughout these interviews and guest posts, we’ll have a host of reviews coming out from tried and tested book bloggers. We can’t wait to see what they have to say about THE SOWING. We hope you’ll join us for the tour and follow along with us for the ride!

You can see the full list of our tour stops here.

As always, thank you for reading and for your support. We love our fans and readers! And here’s hoping for some warmer weather as we transition into springtime!

This is it. The moment when everything changes for Remy and Vale.

EPISODE THREE – THE SOWING is now live, which means that in the Okarian Sector, nothing will ever be the same.

Get your copy now from Amazon, Kobo, or Barnes and Noble.

In this Episode, Vale proposes the mission that will finally bring him a step closer to Remy, while Remy and Soren make a breakthrough on the DNA puzzle. But when Remy’s Resistance team goes on a seed bank raid searching for more information, everything goes to hell. They are confronted by an unexpected enemy, and Remy must face the fears that have haunted her for three years or risk losing everything she’s ever known.

This Episode contains one of the crucial moments in the book – the moment that inspired Kristy and Elena to sit down and start fleshing out a story. Can you guess which it is?

Lastly, if you’re in the mood for some comedy, check out this author interview with Amira on the blog Diesel Elephants, set in K. Makansi’s post-apocalyptic landscape. We got a good laugh out of it!

We always knew that we wanted to have some sort of poetic work written by Gabriel Alexander, Remy’s father and the Poet Laureate of the Okarian Sector, that would represent the spirit of each of the three books in our trilogy. However, none of us are poets, and we didn’t quite feel up to the task of writing something that would adequately represent the work of a “poet laureate.” So we decided to take the tradition of “borrowing” from other poets to a high art. While some of the lines are our own, we borrowed heavily from the works of other poets – everything from T.S. Elliot to the Psalms of the Bible. To give credit where credit is due, here is a more detailed analysis of the lines that we borrowed or paraphrased – and the lines that we stole directly from other poets.

Let us practice resurrection – Wendell Berry, Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front 
Let us sow our shadowed recollections – Wordsworth, Ode
Let us breathe life into these broken images – Eliot, The Waste Land
For there is glory in the flowering – Wordsworth, Ode
And we will dream a dream of spring. – Coleridge, Work Without Hope

In the Sowing is our memory
Of the dim vast vale of tears, the visionary gleam – Shelley, Hymn to Intellectual Beauty; Wordsworth, Ode
Of unremembered seasons, so solemn and serene. – Wordsworth, Ode; Shelley, Hymn to Intellectual Beauty

We are the way and the wayfarers – Gibran, The Prophet
As the lone and level sands stretch far away – Shelley, Ozymandias
But here at home we till and toil
Here we heed the song of the soil.

And so we collect our wingéd seeds – Shelley, Ode to the West Wind
With all the works and days of hands – Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
Scattered fragments of our spirit – Gibran, The Prophet
And like some distant ancient anointing – McCarthy, The Road
We are poured out like water – Psalms, 22.
We are sown throughout the land.

More information about borrowing from the works of other poets can be found here.