Bonnie S. Calhoun

spills the beans about life and

Lightning

YA Dystopian

Revell

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I grew up in… Scranton, Pa, a medium sized city in Pennsylvania coal country where everyone was equal, and worked hard. At 25 I moved to the Binghamton, NY area…the home town of Rod Serling, which leads into the next answer below.

I was inspired to write my first published novel by… watching the Twilight Zone. I was taken by all the “what if’s” and how spooky they could get. I started dreaming up my own spooky stories and at the age of 10, I would write stories that took up a whole legal pad page and I sold my first stories for a whole nickel a piece!

The books that have most influenced my life are… that’s a really easy one…the Bible, but beyond that absolute reality and on to the fiction realm I’d say the most influential was the Left Behind series because it started me writing again after a 20-year hiatus.

My biggest challenge when writing is… keeping my butt in the seat. I know quite a few other authors who’ve said the same thing…”My house is at its cleanest when I’m writing a novel.” That’s because we will procrastinate as the day is long. I find so many things that need to be cleaned when I should be writing, that as soon as my husband sees me whipping around with a scrub bucket he says, “Writing a new book, huh?” I answer, “Yep.” *sigh*

One of my favourite authors is… I don’t particularly have a single favorite author because my tastes run from Tom Clancy and Clive Cussler to Robert Liparulo, Davis Bunn, and Brandilyn Collins and on to Suzanne Collins and Veronica Roth. They are all action adventure, suspense, or futuristic…my favorites.

If I wasn’t a writer, I would be… LOL, I was…a seamstress and clothing designer before I came back to writing, and continued on through it until I retired last year.

The superhero talent I would love to have is… Alas, any one I think of would wind up getting me in trouble somehow…I’m just that kinda girl. So I think the Lord was absolutely correct in not giving me any extraordinary abilities like x-rays shooting out of my eyes so that I didn’t blow up that car in front of me that was going only 35mph in 50 mph zone when I had to get where I was going!! Yeah…see…we’ll just keep the superpowers away from this gal!

Lightning

After she found her real father, life for Selah should have felt settled. But the horrors have just begun. In her broken world of toxic earth and tribal clashes, Selah must
battle the forces of nature alongside those in the Mountain who are calling for her blood.

Haunted by the pain of mounting losses, she forges on, seeking her lost family and
uncovering new mysteries. But the ultimate betrayal of her own body may soon make her quest impossible as it becomes apparent that what has made her new could also drive her to a life of madness.

My latest novel can be described by these 5 adjectives… exciting, mysterious, suspenseful, surprizing, adventurous

My main character is… (eg. Appearance, motivation, quirks, desires…) marked. The Stone Braide Chronicles series begins with Selah Rishon Chavez waking on her 18^th birthday to find that she’s been marked below her collar bone with the mark of a Lander. You get a good idea of the mark on the cover of Thunder, the first book in the series.

My main character resembles…the girl on the cover of the series. My description of Selah was interpreted well. Another good example of my main character is the girl you see at the end of The Book of Eli, with the dark hair, sunglasses, and the machete slung over her back.

A previously unknown fact about this novel is… There are no angels, half angels, hybrid angels…or any other kind of angel in the book or series and there is also nothing supernatural going on either…but I can’t tell you what IS going on…until the third book 🙂

My story’s spiritual theme is… It’s an allegory. Just like in the Garden of Eden when God told the serpent that the woman’s Seed would bruise the serpent’s head, this is another story of how God always works with a long term goal in mind.

While writing this novel I learned/was challenged by… creating a proper allegory to go with the theme. Most of it will only be seen in hindsight but that’s part of the mystery.

The title was chosen by… Me! Both the first and second book titles were my originals, and the upcoming third title is a synonym for the word I chose, but I’m very happy because it gives me broader leeway for use in the book.

As an author, the hardest scenes for me to write are… Romance type scenes because I’m not a romance writer by any stretch of the imagination.

The story I’m currently working on is… Storm! The final book in the series where all is revealed and the secrets and future are laid bare!

You may not know this about me, but I… have 10 other characters living in my head and each of them want their own book!

If I could be a character in any novel, I would want to be… Lara Croft, from Tomb Raider. Okay…so that’s a movie and not a book…but that’s the only character I’d like to be.

Thanks Bonnie!

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