Interview with an Author: Angie Grigaliunas

Welcome Adventurers! Today I have a special treat for you. I have guest blogger and fellow author Angie Grigaliunas.

Tell my adventurers the name of your book and about the world you created.

Hi! My book is Sowing (The Purification Era, Book One). It’s dystopian fantasy…so it’s basically a dystopian society in a fantasy world. Power belongs to the Hulcondans, a military regime (think Nazis in brutality and ideals). The Hulcondans profess to protect the other humans from a humanoid creature race called itzalin. Some people see the Hulcondans as the good guys, the saviors. Others see them as corrupt, ruthless soldiers who get away with pretty much anything and everything. It’s a dark, violent world; oppression is a daily occurrence (even if most people don’t recognize it as such), forced marriages are increasingly common throughout the nations, even the slightest hint of opposition is met with execution, and there seems to be little hope of any rebellion attempt lasting long enough to make a difference, let alone overthrow them. Yet those who refuse to live under totalitarian rule keep trying to fight back, which is kind of where the story starts: with a rebellion brewing in the city where my two main girls live.

The story switches perspectives between these sisters – Rabreah and Ariliah – who view the world in opposite lights. Rabreah is a rebel and committed to overthrowing the Hulcondans; unbeknownst to her sister’s involvement in fighting back, Ariliah trusts the Hulcondans and thinks their presence keeps everyone safe. Through the two of them, we start to see that things might not be as black and white as it may seem…and the enemy may not be the ones we expect.

What inspired you to write about this character?

For this, I’ll talk about Rabreah, because she truly started it all. There’s this song, “Under a Killing Moon,” by Thrice. It gave me an image of a group of people killing someone – burning them – and someone else standing nearby in the darkness, watching, knowing that it was wrong, that the doomed person was innocent. But they also knew that if they spoke up to defend the doomed, they themselves would meet the same fate.

The murders became the Hulcondans while the watcher became the character of Rabreah: a girl who sees the wrongs happening in her society and desperately wants to stand up…but who also knows that it may cost her everything.

~How long has this character been in your thoughts?

Oh, goodness. This is going to be a long story, haha! Let’s see… I started the very first incarnation of this story 2003, but I forgot about it until late 2008. I think once I found it again, Rabreah was a pretty quick idea – though the original plan was that she was killed for her rebellion, and the story followed Ariliah as she dealt with the aftermath of seeing her sister die and not being able to save her. (It was so horrible. Ugh. So sad.)

In 2010, after struggling between this story and another, I switched my focus entirely to this one. So kind of from 2010, she was definitely there with her death as the inciting incident…but she also wasn’t really a character. She was dead from the start, so I didn’t know anything about her apart from her rebel involvement, her protectiveness over her sister (their mom is abusive), and her dying far before her time. I wrote what I thought was book one, but my editor advised me to start earlier in the story. In going back in time to write a new book one, I found that I needed to actually write some of Rabreah’s side of things. And in doing THAT…she decided she didn’t want to be dead anymore. Which changed almost everything.

Silly characters. How dare they take over?

So she’s been sort of floating around since 2008, but it was 2014 that she actually became a character in the story, gained her own voice, and put down the first real roots of what she’s become.

~What is the one trait you wished you shared with your main character?

Rabreah is, in my opinion, an amazing girl. She can be such a jerk, so mouthy, so distrustful and angry…but at the end of the day, she is such a selfless young woman. She puts herself between her sister and their terrible mom, she is willing to fight corruption and what she views as evil, and she’s willing to die for what she believes. For as frustrating as she can be sometimes, she is a fighter, and I love that about her. She doesn’t let anyone push her around, she doesn’t bow to pressure, and she wants nothing more than to see her sister and her people living in freedom. So…her heart, her selflessly brave heart…I would love to be more like that.