I am happy to participate in The Bookminder blog tour by M.K. Wiseman. Many thanks to Xchyler Publishing and M.K. for inviting me on the blog tour. Below is an interview with M.K. If you are interested in The Bookminder, be sure to checkout the description, enter the giveaway below and follow the blog tour!


How did you come up with the concept of your story?

  In 2004 I had a very vivid dream that, afterward, wouldn't leave me alone. Said dream basically detailed out one scene from the story, something so different and captivating for me that it stuck. Now, it must be noted that I was not writing at that time, nor did I intend to write in any professional capacity. But as this one nugget of an idea would not let me be, I started to form a story around it – Why were these people doing what they were doing? Who were they?

I think that working in the Preservation Dept of the campus library system had bled into my subconscious and that is where the magick system that rules The Bookminder developed.




Please provide some insight into or a secret or two about your story.

The locations in Bookminder are real. Parentino truly did fall to ruins, while its twin fortification flourished. And while the town known as Dvigrad in the story did have another name, Moncastello, in keeping with the attitude of the characters in the story, I dropped the name from their fortification and merely called it Dvigrad. Call it a decision of character politics, if you will.

The tales of what actually happened to Dvigrad are a little muddled but history has the town mixed up in the middle of the Venice and Austrian conflict of the sixteenth century. And the town truly was abandoned due to plague—though history has that date at 1630 and Bookminder has it coming some 50-odd years later.

What was the most surprising part of writing this book?

The more I write (and this is, by far, the most writing I have yet done) the more I have come to realize that stories like to take on a life of their own. I used to hear that and scoff. But, in penning Bookminder, I found that sometimes an element would sneak into the narrative and then prove to be a stroke of brilliance in how it either foreshadowed a thing, or simply played a symbolic role. I kept looking at how things turned out going “but I'm not that smart!” or maybe “I've gotta just be lucky . . .” or “ . . . the story is asserting itself!” So I'm a convert to that philosophy, now.

What was the hardest part of writing your book, and how did you overcome it?

Point of View. Point of View. Point of View. I really love an omniscient narrator. I almost exclusively read omni POV. So to have to convert over to 3rd Person in service of the voice and narrative was a bit of a square peg / round hole issue for me. But the story is better served cutting out that distancing narrator that I so love. As to how I overcame it, I figured that as I'd put myself in the hands of professionals who wanted my book out there for the world, I had better do my part and learn and grow.

Who is your favorite author? Who has most influenced your work?

Two questions. Two answers:

Fav author? Have to go with Douglas Adams. His humor is superb. And while my brain tends to go a little sideways when reading his stories, that's part of my enjoyment of his very unique work. I appreciate that there really is no other author with his touch.

As for who has most influenced my work: Brian Jacques. While this may not seem the most obvious choice, hear me out. His Mariel of Redwall is the very first book that I remember being completely in love with. I read, of course, before that. Quite a bit. But this one book seemed to change reading for me. It became more than merely enjoyable. Stories could be transcendent, not mere personal experiences. Reading could link you to others. Maybe it was just the right book at a certain moment in my life. But I was a lucky enough kid to meet Mr. Jacques on more than one occasion at bookstore readings/signings. He became my author rockstar and it was his stories that changed how I thought of books which, in turn, has influenced my writing at a very deep level.


What's up next for you?
Hopefully we get to hear what happens next for the characters in Bookminder. Else I'd like to put the finishing touches on a couple of steampunk manuscripts I've been kicking around. But I'll keep writing for now. There are still a lot of stories in my head, a lot of characters.

Buy the book at: Amazon | Barnes and Noble | Indiebound

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 We're celebrating the release of THE BOOKMINDER by M. K. Wiseman with a blog tour and Rafflecopter give-away! Visit each blog each day for more chances to win lots of great prizes. If you like epic fantasy, you'll love this coming-of-age tale of magic and wizards set in the Renaissance era.

January 9-16, 2016

Saturday, 01-09	Bookwhizz
Sunday, 01-10	M. K. Wiseman
Monday, 01-11	Perpetual Chaos of a Wandering Mind
Tuesday, 01-12	Are You Afraid of the Dark?
Wednesday, 01-13	Belart's Book Reviews
Thursday, 01-14	Dreams to Become
	Semi-short Chic
Friday, 01.15	JD Spero
	Books in the Spotlight
Saturday, 01-16	Creativity from Chaos
	Rambling Reviews

Don't forget to enter our blog tour Rafflecopter give-away below, on the blogs above, on our Facebook page, or on Rafflecopter, with daily chances to win!