Today I’m excited to participate in the Creative Blog Tour for The Hollow Godsby A.J. Vrana! The Hollow Gods is book 1 in The Chaos Cycle Duology, where a maelstrom of ancient grudges, forgotten traumas, and deadly secrets loom in the foggy forests of Black Hollow. Published July 28th, 2020 by The Parliament House Press.
For the occasion, I’m excited to host this Q&A with A.J. Vrana where the author answers a few questions for us. Thank you so much, A.J. Vrana and MTMC Tours, for having me on this tour.
Interview – A.J. Vrana
Q: What inspired you to write this story?
A: I’m honestly not sure anymore! I feel like brains are just big ol’ compost machines for ideas, and you get little bits and pieces of ideas from all kinds of places. I was recently remembering (yes, I’d forgotten!) that I’d gotten part of the inspiration from The Silent Hill movie. I’ve also gotten quite a bit of inspiration form South Slavic folklore, and my own experience as an academic researching folklore.
Q: Describe your main character in 3 words.
Since I have three main characters, I’ll do all of them!
- Miya: wayward, insightful, open
- Kai: snarky, brash, intuitive
- Mason: inquisitive, guilt-ridden, well-intentioned
Q: What was the most challenging part to write in this book?
A: The beginning! I really struggle with first chapters, because they need to hit the reader just right. I tend to start my books off a bit slow, so it’s always a struggle for me to crank up tension and action without making the early parts of the book feel cluttered.
Q: What was your most favorite part and why?
A: Dialogue! I feel pretty confident writing dialogue, and it tends to just flow for me. Sometimes I will write out scenes like a screenplay, mostly with dialogue and action beats in brackets, and then flesh the scenes out later. This always goes way faster for me than descriptive passages.
Q: What’s a typical writing day for you?
A: Get up, dodder about for a bit. Drink some coffee. Sit down. Get distracted by cat. Sip coffee. Check twitter. Open document. Sigh, check twitter again. Alt-tab to document. Start writing, get stuck trying to think of a word. Go to Google or Merriam-Webster. Search for word. Find word but get stuck on metaphor. Yell at my partner to help me with the metaphor. Sometimes I’ll manage to get a few paragraphs down in one go!
Q: Where do you like writing and why? Favorite snacks and/or beverages?
A: I write at home! I like quiet, so the stereotype of the writer in the coffee shop is just an impossibility for me. My cats will often join me so I get to stare at their faces while thinking. For beverages—I definitely am a coffee person. I honestly can’t really snack while writing, otherwise I’ll just sit there and shove food in my mouth while staring blankly at the screen. I can snack while editing, though!
Q: What was your last 5-star read and why?
A: Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia! I actually loved how atmospheric it was. It’s not a conventional horror, but it’s really smart horror with a lot of social commentary, and I am all here for that!
Q: How would your main character fare with a stay-at-home order?
A: Miya would be fine, I think. She is a bit of a homebody and used to being alone, so I think she’d be okay because it’s already her status quo. Kai, in theory, would do terribly. However, because he’s a recluse who hates people and generally doesn’t spend a lot of time in crowded places, he’d actually be okay, because he’d find places to hide out away from civilization! Mason would suffer, I think. He’s already struggling with feeling kind of alienated and like he doesn’t have much connection to people, so I think quarantine boredom and existential dread would get to him really badly.
Q: What author or story inspired you growing up or inspired you in some ways?
A: To be honest I didn’t read much as a kid, but I really loved shows like Are You Afraid of the Dark. I was a ’90s kid, so much of my inspiration came from spooky shows like that.
Q: Is there anything you can tell us about the book that is not a spoiler and not on the blurb? Something you’d like to share with us?
A: Hmmm, well, there are a lot of heavily veiled references to South Slavic folklore, and some linguistic nuggets for people who speak Slavic languages. I also shared this in one of the other interviews for this blog tour, but there are some dream sequences in the book that I’ve personally experienced!
Synopsis – The Hollow Gods by A.J. Vrana
- Title: The Hollow Gods
- Author: A.J. Vrana
- Series: The Chaos Cycle Duology #1
- Publisher: Parliament House Press
- Publishing Date: July 28, 2020
- Genres: NA Contemporary Fantasy
- Purchase a copy: Amazon | B&N | The Chaos Cycle Website
- Add on Goodreads!
A perfect story for contemporary fantasy readers who love their narratives razor-sharp and their secrets dark and deadly.
Black Hollow is a town with a dark secret.
For centuries, residents have foretold the return of the Dreamwalker—an ominous figure from local folklore said to lure young women into the woods and possess them. Yet the boundary between fact and fable is blurred by a troubling statistic: occasionally, women do go missing. And after they return, they almost always end up dead.
When Kai wakes up next to the lifeless body of a recently missing girl, his memory blank, he struggles to clear his already threadbare conscience.
Miya, a floundering university student, experiences signs that she may be the Dreamwalker’s next victim. Can she trust Kai as their paths collide, or does he herald her demise?
And after losing a young patient, crestfallen oncologist, Mason, embarks on a quest to debunk the town’s superstitions, only to find his sanity tested. A maelstrom of ancient grudges, forgotten traumas, and deadly secrets loom in the foggy forests of Black Hollow. Can three unlikely heroes put aside their fears and unite to confront a centuries-old evil? Will they uncover the truth behind the fable, or will the cycle repeat?
Pre Order Offer
Bookbub Sale!
The Hollow Gods will be discounted to $1.99 via Bookbub on November 10!
Make sure to snag a copy – CLICK HERE
About The Author: A.J. Vrana
A. J. Vrana is a Serbian-Canadian academic and writer from Toronto, Canada. She lives with her two rescue cats, Moonstone and Peanut Butter, who nest in her window-side bookshelf and cast judgmental stares at nearby pigeons.
Her doctoral research examines the supernatural in modern Japanese and former-Yugoslavian literature and its relationship to violence. When not toiling away at caffeine-fueled, scholarly pursuits, she enjoys jewelry-making, cupcakes, and concocting dark tales to unleash upon the world.
Her published works include The Chaos Cycle Duology: The Hollow Gods (2020) and The Echoed Realm (2021) from The Parliament House Press, and a short supernatural horror story, These Silent Walls (2020), printed in Three Crows Magazine.
Website | Twitter | Goodreads | Instagram
INTERNATION GIVEAWAY
Enter the rafflecopter below for a chance to win a The Hollow Gods character poster!
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Tour Schedule: The Hollow Gods by A.J. Vrana
November 2 – Paperfury
November 3 – The Bookwyrm’s Den
November 4 – Bookishfairytail
November 5 – The Reader and the Chef
November 6 – Melancholic Blithe
November 7 – Mirkwoodbooks
November 8 – A Court of Books and Love
November 9 – Leosthetics
November 10 – L.M. Durand’s Little Book Corner
November 11 – Woven from Words
Hosted by MTMC Tours
This is such a great interview!! The lockdown question was perfect 😂🙌🏻 (I can imagine Kai would NOT be able to stay indoors.) And I always love reading about author’s processes. 😍
Thanks for reading! I love doing these Q&A. I feel like I’m always learning something new. 😊
Love everything about this!! Your photo is GORGEOUS! 📚✨❤️
Thank you so much! This interview was so much fun.