I’m happy to introduce author M.A. Guglielmo as I interview her via email. M.A. is a neurosurgeon, mother of two awesome daughters, and a life-long fan of speculative fiction. Her Italian grandmother may or may not have been able to cast the evil eye on difficult neighbors, and Maria loves telling a good story, especially if magical curses and witty villains are involved.
Her interest in Middle Eastern politics and culture inspires her use of mythology and folklore from the region in her writing projects. After having the wits scared out of her by ghost tales told to her over a campfire in the Moroccan Sahara, she’s come up with a plan to travel to all the potential settings for her novels. Since those include the mountain-ringed home of the Jinn and a modernized version of the Greek Underworld, some items on her bucket list might be harder to achieve than others.
SS: Can you share a bit about your background?
M.A.: I live in Rhode Island with my two daughters, a goofy poodle and a snarky cat. In my day job, I’m a neurosurgeon in academic practice. So I can say with some authority that writing fiction isn’t brain surgery. Some days it feels harder, though!
SS: What did you want to grow up to be as a child? Has that child’s desire appeared in your work?
M.A.: I wanted to be a marine biologist, and I still love the ocean and reading about the amazing life forms that live in it. Of course I love sharks—who doesn’t?—and one of my characters in the From Smokeless Fire series is a flying cyberpunk Great White based very loosely on a cult favorite SF movie. Spoiler alert: Clifford the Red-Eyed shark does make an appearance in my upcoming novel in the series, Price to Pay.
SS: Have you always been driven to write? Or did you begin writing in response to a particular stimulus?
M.A.: I’ve always loved reading and words, but I didn’t start seriously writing until about seven or eight years ago when I was reading a fantasy novel out loud to my daughters, and began to make up some alternative endings. I decided to start writing an outline for a full novel and it went on from there.
SS: What is your most recent book? In twenty-five words or less, tell me why a reader should start your book next.
M.A.: The third book in the From Smokeless Fire series is coming out on June 17th! A not-so-evil jinn has to save the world from one fallen angel and her heart from his brother. Swoon-worthy Moroccan riads, Persian desserts, and sword battles to the death—what’s not to like?
SS: Who is the protagonist in your most recent work? Describe him/her in ten words or less.
M.A.: Zahara: party girl of the paranormal and disaster bisexual.
SS: If you were describing your writing to someone who hasn’t read anything by you before, what would you say?
M.A.: I write happy, funny stories about dark and twisted fantasy worlds.
SS: Writers are often believed to have a Muse, your thoughts on that?
M.A.: There’s a tradition of the jinn—beings of smokeless fire not at all like Western depictions of genies—serving as inspirations to poets in Arabic and Islamic culture. Some sources even describe romantic relationships between the jinn muse and the writer. I have yet to meet my sexy jinn muse, but I’m not giving up hope yet!
SS: Khaled Hosseini (The Kite Runner) feels he discovers a story rather than creates it. Are you a plotter? Or do let the novel develop organically?
M.A.: I try to plot it out, but then my characters come along and ruin everything.
SS: At what point did you come up with the title? Did your publisher change it?
M.A.: The original title for book one, From Smokeless Fire, comes from the traditional description of the jinn as beings created by God from fire. Angels were created from light and humans from mud, which sounds a lot less exciting. After From Smokeless Fire became the series name, the first book’s title was changed to Summoned. There’s some grand theft auto going on in book two, so that became Soul to Steal. The last book in the trilogy had a name change to Price to Pay—but you’ll have to read it to find out what Zahara has to sacrifice to get what she wants.
SS: Can you share with us a bit about the moment when the idea for your novel first popped into your head? Did the idea come to you all at once, or did different pieces of the story come to you over time?
M.A.: The mythology behind the novel is the story of Harut and Marut, two overly proud angels—or jinn in some versions—who are sent down to earth to show humans how to resist temptation. They fail, in rather spectacular fashion, and are punished by being hung by the feet until the end of the world. According to some sources, the two gave the gift—or curse—of magical knowledge to humanity.
My writing never comes to me with a solid timeline and plot. The From Smokeless Fire series grew up around Zahara, a character who is in every sense an anti-hero, and fits the trickster archetype. Her love interest, Harut, is her polar opposite in almost every way, and the push and pull between their conflict and attraction became one scene, and then another. Finally, there was a gigantic mess of a first draft to clean up, and that’s how it started.
SS: What is your writing process like?
M.A.: I often write first drafts fairly quickly, and for a number of years I’ve participated in NaNoWriMo, the November on-line writing challenge to get in fifty thousand words in thirty days. Editing, unfortunately, takes me a lot longer, since my characters love to run away from any outline I’ve come up with. That leaves me with a lot of revision work to do. Recently I’ve been adopting a new technique of ‘touching’ my WIP every day if possible. If all I do is open it up and clean up a few typos, I count that as a win. I’ve found that this makes me less anxious about hitting a certain word count goal and I end up writing more.
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She’s gone from party girl of the paranormal to the world’s best hope against a deadly fallen angel.
Zahara‘s tired of saving the world from imminent doom, and her enemy to almost-lover Harut’s “no hanky-panky before marriage” rule is driving her crazy. To take the fight to his evil brother Marut, Zahara returns to the land of the jinn to cobble together an alliance between the peoples of the Mountains of Qaf to defeat the fallen angel. Everything that can’t go wrong does anyway, and after dealing with a malfunctioning magic carpet and killer unicorns, Zahara has to steal back an enchanted feather from a feared necromancer and face down the father she’s never known.
As more of the jinn join Marut in his plan to destroy humanity, Zahara needs Harut’s help more than ever—to save the world and her heart. But when the final confrontation comes, defeating one brother may mean Zahara loses the other forever.
Price to Pay is available for pre-order through this universal pre-order link. It will be on the shelves on June 17 , 2021.
Summoned is available through this universal link.
Soul to Steal is available through this universal link.
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A brief excerpt from Price to Pay:
Chapter One
IT WAS ZAHARA’S first date night ever with Harut, and she shouldn’t have been surprised his evil brother Marut managed to ruin it so successfully.
The summer evening in Marrakech had started out so promising, too. After spending hours exhaustively planning for the upcoming war against her worst enemy, Zahara had found herself in the unusual situation of being alone with Harut when they weren’t trying to kill each other, avoiding being killed by someone else, or putting aside their many differences to stop one of their relatives from killing a large number of people.
By the end of the night, all three of those decidedly un- romantic situations would come back with a vengeance. And it had all started out so well.
“A date.” Harut furrowed his dark eyebrows, his green eyes regarding Zahara with some confusion. As always, she had a good deal of difficulty focusing on whatever he was saying when the two of them made eye contact. He was, quite simply, the most beautiful man she had ever seen. Tall, with black hair, arched cheekbones and the physique of an ancient Greek statue of a young god, he made every part of Zahara tingle when she was with him. Even when they were fighting and the tingling came from her spasms of rage. But not tonight. Tonight was going to be different.
“Yes, a real date.” Zahara tucked her arm into the crook of his elbow and pulled him through the door leading out of their room into the crimson-draped hallway in the Moroccan riad she had selected as a base for their council of war. “We’ve been working hard on stopping your brother from ending the world. Again. I think we’ve earned a night out.”
“I planned to explain more about the dangers of magic to our human companions this evening.” Harut allowed Zahara to lead him past a series of striking black-and-white photo- graphs of people from different walks of life in the North African country. The soulful eyes of a traditional water seller, his copper vessels and serving cups at his side, stared out at them from one wall. From the other, an Amazigh bride wearing beaten silver earrings and a headdress topped with decorative conical spikes gave them a knowing smile.
The pictures had been what had sold her on this particular riad. They had needed a comfortable and centrally located place to stay in Marrakech, the location of Marut’s first deadly foray into the human world, and Zahara had taken charge of selecting the perfect property. Harut had then surrounded it with protective wards and spells, so Marut’s allies couldn’t easily attack them. As for big, bad brother himself, he had fled to the Mountains of Qaf, the world of the jinn, and discussing how to use the curious magical talents of the humans in the group to keep him there had taken up most of the day.
“We have precious little time to plan for the upcoming conflict, and the three of them know little about the powers they’ve been given, and the risks using them will bring.”
“We all might have precious little time to live if your brother Marut and my deadbeat dad Edris have anything to say about it.” Zahara had never been one to delay gratification, and facing the imminent risk of death from both of those so-called angels only made her value her hedonistic ideals more. “Zaid’s here to keep an eye on our little mud children, so I say we deserve a romantic evening out.”
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