Guest Post: Misha Gericke!

The Book

Since the death of her parents, Callan Blair has been shunted from one foster family to another, her dangerous secret forcing the move each time. Her latest foster family quickly ships her off to an exclusive boarding school in the Cumbrian countryside. While her foster-brother James makes it his mission to get Callan expelled, a nearby ancient castle holds the secret doorway to another land...

When Callan is forced through the doorway, she finds herself in the magical continent of Tardith, where she’s shocked to learn her schoolmates Gawain and Darrion are respected soldiers in service to the king of Nordaine, one of Tardith's realms. More than that, the two are potential heirs to the Black Knight—Nordaine's crown prince.

But when the Black Knight fails to return from a mysterious trip, the realm teeters on the brink of war. Darrion and Gawain set out to find him, while Callan discovers there is more to her family history than she thought. The elves are claiming she is their princess.

Now with Darrion growing ever more antagonistic and her friendship with Gawain blossoming, Callan must decide whether to stay in Nordaine—where her secret grows ever more threatening—or go to the elves and uncover the truth about her family before war sets the realms afire.

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So. What’s my cover about?

When Ashley asked me to write something about my cover, I thought I’d do a post on what it all means.

Before I do, I just want to give the cover designer who did the image a huge applause. He/she nailed it!



The Imagery


The girl on the cover is Callan, who’s dealing with one serious issue that’s slowly been destroying her life for as long as she can remember. As the book goes on, the problem worsens. That’s the snake-shadow you see in the image. And the castle in the background is either the one in Cumbria which houses the doors to another world, or it’s the one in Nordaine, where she’s taken after a failed kidnapping attempt. Based on the stone’s color, I’m thinking it’s the Cumbrian. I think the darker stone framing the cover represents Nordaine.


When I look at the cover, I get a sense of mystery and foreboding, which hits the exact right note for the entire series. There’s a lot that Callan (and the other main characters) doesn’t know, and some of the stuff she needs to find out is dangerous.


The Pseudonym


I’ve been getting comments that using a pseudonym was silly of me because it’s so close to my name. There’s a reason for this. I knew from the beginning that I was going to use one, but once the book deal was signed and Etopia asked what name I wanted to publish under, I had to think.

The problem with my real name is that most people misspell it in some way, which would probably count against me in the early searches. At the same time, I was so dang proud of the story that I didn’t want to make the name unrecognizable as being me. So I basically simplified my surname and used M. instead of Misha, since I didn’t want new readers to shoot me down for being a girl.


The Titles


My series is called War of Six Crowns, because it deals with evens happening before, during and after a war between six kings.

Each book will be named for a major event in the war’s timeline, so The Vanished Knight comes from Nordaine’s only remaining blood heir disappearing at the book’s beginning.

So yeah, that’s pretty much my cover in a nutshell. Feel free to ask me any questions related to the book or writing it! Thanks so much for hosting me, Ashley!

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M. Gerrick (AKA Misha Gericke) has basically created stories since before she could write. Many of those stories grew up with her and can be seen in her current projects. She lives close to Cape Town, with a view over False Bay and Table Mountain. If you’d like to contact her, feel free to mail her at warofsixcrowns(AT)gmail(DOT)com, Circle her on Google Plus or follow her on Twitter. If you'd like to see her writer-side (beware, it's pretty insane), please feel free to check out her blog.


Links:

Goodreads

Amazon

Amazon UK

Barnes & Noble

Thank you, Misha! I love your cover, and the book sounds AMAZING! I cannot wait to read!