Author S. L. Mason
MY BOOKISH LIFE
At six years old, I was told by a teacher I couldn’t read and then quickly shipped off to a special class for kids with learning problems. Me being me; I got mad. Things happen when I get mad. Not the incredible hunk mad, more like I must prove you wrong mad.
I could read.
I even told the new teacher I could, and she agreed with me. To this day, I don’t know if she lied. But that was the moment that set me on my path as a reader. I read everything, but horror, sorry I don’t like it.
However, I love everything else. This love of reading allowed me to teach myself many skills such as construction design, pattern making for sewing, painting, more than anyone without a degree in medieval history should know, along with crochet and many more.
FROM THE BEGINNING
I started writing when I was twelve. I even laced the pages together with yarn to form a book. Writing became the one place I could keep all my hopes, dreams, and nightmares. I have never stopped writing.
My love of music and the piano inspired me to incorporate music into my Fae series, These Hallowed Hills. I am a classical music nerd and can’t get enough of opera.
Having traveled around the world, I have an off the beaten path perspective on life. I’m also a big history buff. I joined a Renaissance Reenactment group for several years and gained a knighthood in Arts and Ministry. The group taught me about research and authenticity in clothing and behavior. Though I don’t write historical fiction, I incorporate much of the information I gleaned about manners, clothes, and most of all, weapons. If you read Killing Gods, you can’t miss that.
FAMILY FIRST
I’m a mom to two super cool kids and married to the love of my life.
Let’s face it, I got lucky. Of course, I have a dog, Rosie. She’s the best dog in the world, but aren’t they all? I’ve never met a dog that wasn’t. I live on the beach and can’t get enough of the salt air, which regenerates my superpowers.
The big blue out my back door inspires me every day.
THE START OF THE SERIES
If you want to know where my stories come from, to be honest, my daughter Gillian. She asks so many questions. I sometimes long for the days before she learned to talk. She makes me think in ways I’d never reach on my own. She asks questions I didn’t know I needed answers to.
In the case of Trick of Fae. Gillian asked, “Mom, what if fairies were real?” My knee jerk reaction was. “If fairies are real, we are so screwed.” Because fairies are mean, evil, and malicious.
They play tricks on you while using magic to steal you away for a hundred years against your will. I went to bed that night and dreamed the first three books, beginning to end. The next day, I woke up and wrote 15,986 words.
I actually wrote two books that month.
I love the magic system in the Hallowed Hills series. It is a cross between nursery rhymes and music. The vibrations created through song tapes into the power of sound to act on the physical world. It will change your point of view over every nursery rhyme you ever heard or sang. Come out, come out where ever you are.
But most of all, the stories come from my dreams. The land of dreams is a backward crazy place where you can fly and drown. Where dragons eat you for sport and gods lose their minds over mortals. Love blooms around every corner and heartache is a cliff you fall from.
Trick of Fae
You can read the blurb on any bookseller site, so I won’t bore you with it. you want to know about Sarah. Sarah is a pretty average girl and comfortable in her skin.
Most girls at 17 aren’t and I think that makes her stand out. Other than her bestie Arty.
Sarah is a bit of a maverick and they tent to be loners.
Unlike most Urban Fantasy stories where the teenager saves the world, this is more of a teenager get the crap end of the stick, while the Fae destroy the world. I wrote this as a dystopian Urban Fantasy. The world was never what humanity thought it was and the Fae came to prove that. Sarah just wants to save her friends and her family so she fights with every bit of knowledge she ever learned.
Janice, he is a different type of Fae. Then Sarah was prepared for. Fairies or Fae are schemers with more ties than a Gordian knot. Everything Janice does is to and end, thought Sarah doesn’t see it that way. Janice makes it clear from the start he wants to help Sarah. What his motive for actually helping her is, well that is in another book.
Sarah does meet others along her journey and I think a few of those characters will either make your blood boil or fall in love.
Sarah comes to the conclusion fighting without magic doesn’t save the day. She figures if she can use magic maybe she can escape These Hallowed Hills.