Hello friend! Today I am chatting with author, Roz Evans, about her fantasy novel, The Centaur Wars. This is the first book in The Beast Makers series and it is on my TBR. 🙂
Get to know the authors: Roz
Welcome to Armed with A Book, Roz! Tell me and my readers a bit about yourself!
Of course, I grew up reading. I fell in love with the Animorphs series in fourth grade, followed by Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, and then Harry Potter. (I was the perfect age, fourteen years old when HP 4 released; the same age as Harry in the books. I still remember cracking open the cover of Goblet of Fire and thinking to myself – before I even started – “I should delay this. I should have willpower. I already don’t want it to be over and I haven’t even started. I’ll have to wait an entire year for the next one.” Then, as now, I had zero willpower. I read through the night and was useless the next day, as I still am whenever I find a good book.)
The common thread in all the stories I’ve loved are characters and humor. If it’s got incredible vulnerable characters and good humor, I am all in – though magic is always preferable.
I live in Montana and have a Masters in Architecture, but much prefer designing stories to buildings. I carry my laptop out into the garden to write whenever weather permits, and can often be found typing away amidst the shrubbery. Indoors, I write on a bikedesk, which keeps my body moving and really helps ideas to flow. My writing office setup looks utterly ridiculous: I pedal on a bikedesk, typing on a laptop but not looking at it, because my laptop connects to a projector which displays on the wall, so my eyes don’t get screen fatigue. Also, I wear massive bulky headphones, have a fan blowing because I cannot stand stagnant air, and have grow lights and a small jungle of indoor plants beside my writing area. It’s completely ludicrous, but it works great.
To any writers or work-from-home professionals who struggle with eyestrain, back pain, or brain fog: I’d highly recommend bikedesks. (I have the FitDesk 3.0, and the thing is incredible, durable, and a lifesaver. You can type while biking and not get stiff from sitting still.) I’d also highly recommend trying a projector instead of always looking at a screen. This. Saved. My. Eyes. For some reason I’m highly sensitive to screens and emitted light, regardless of special glasses or whether the screen is inverted to black. I use a ViewSonic PA503S (any projector with resolution ranked ‘appropriate for business powerpoint presentations’ works) and the headaches and eye strains and irritability are gone.
Aside from the eye issues and low tolerance for sitting still, I’m relatively normal. I love coffee, dark chocolate, and red wine; if I could I’d spend the whole year traveling. Next on my list are Malta and the Azores.
What inspired you to write this book?
When I first dreamed up the town of Angwis and the plot of The Centaur Wars, I was nineteen, maybe twenty. I knew I wanted to write but had utterly despaired of ever thinking of anything as brilliant as Harry Potter. I’m sure many aspiring writers of my generation felt the same. That series did everything so well – the humor, the characters, the magic system, the adventures, the mystery. As a young and woebegone aspiring writer, I thought every good idea was already taken. Then one day, I was thumbing through a cookbook: an old, faded, hand-me-down cookbook with yellowed pages. It was originally my grandmother’s. And I thought, What if there were recipes that made animals? What if there were recipes that brought extinct beasts to life? What might be missing from our modern world? What could be resurrected? It was a great idea for a magic system, which required a whole LOT of work to become an actual story and plot, but that was the seed: an old yellowed cookbook, and the idea for recipes.
How long did it take you to write this book, from the first idea to the last edit?
Oh my word, so long. The first draft was written thirteen years ago, and looked nothing like the story does now. The core ideas and characters were there. The writing was quite terrible. The Centaur Wars was the first book I wrote, but I finished three other different novels between then and now, and put many test readers through a great deal of suffering. I think the ‘10,000 hours to mastery’ rule is absolutely accurate. I have a box filled with all the pens I ran out of ink. I wore the lettering off the keys of three laptops.
I got discouraged, sometimes, hearing about authors who are faster. It’s so easy to compare ourselves to others and feel completely inadequate. That’s ridiculous, of course. But it happens all the time inside our own heads. I was really helped by the blogs of other writers, particularly Laini Taylor and Kristin Cashore. I love Kristin Cashore’s books, and was really surprised to learn that she struggles with such severe arm and hand pain that typing really hurts. She dictates every draft, revises long-hand on paper, and takes a very long time to write each book. In the end, the time it takes to get it right doesn’t matter. Stories are eternal, and good books are passed down through generations. I find this extremely powerful, and there is nothing I’d rather be doing.
What makes your story unique?
A town of sailing ships, pet sea serpents, and recipes that bring beasts to life. Also, a temperamental centaur who has a soft spot for humans, despite his better judgement.
Who would enjoy reading your book?
Readers who love to find magic hidden in our modern world. And, anyone who loves adventures with plenty of witty banter.
The Centaur Wars
First of The Beast Makers YA Fantasy series
A rollicking modern fantasy!
Rule one: don’t trust the centaur.
Sixteen-year-old Dee knew something was imprisoned in the crawl space beneath the motel, but she never expected this. The centaur is shackled. He’s injured. He’s furious at being captured by humans. And he’s exactly what she’s spent her whole life searching for.
Rule two: don’t talk to the centaur.
Dee needs answers. Her family has a dark history and she has to know why. She’s grown up next to a haunted forest, with mutated creatures that modern science can’t explain: flying newts. Winged snakes. However, a centaur is far beyond anything she’s spotted in the trees.
Rule three: don’t free the centaur.
If he wasn’t chained he’d have killed her already. Dee knows this. But she strikes a bargain with the half-crazed centaur: in exchange for his freedom, he’ll give her answers.
His herd is murderous. Even worse foes lay beyond the haunted forest. But the epic voyage Dee embarks on leads to far more than the source of winged snakes, as she uncovers the greatest secret ever hidden from humankind… if she can survive it.
Content Notes: None declared by the author.
Book Excerpt from
The Centaur Wars
The shackle gave a pained flinch.
Dee watched the spoonful of mashed potatoes rise through the air, uneasily. It was very difficult to care for an injured centaur when he insisted on vanishing from view. “Cef. Let me see you.”
“No. I thank you for the food. It is very… soft. Soft is good.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Cef—”
He sucked in a breath. The spoon trembled. “Go,” he whispered, “If she attacks you for helping me… that is the only thing that could deepen my shame.”
“My mom’s not going to attack me, she—”
Dee faltered. The sledgehammer had moved. The leg shackles all lay in different places. Something shiny and sticky coated the fourth shackle, the one that had bound his last unbroken leg.
“Oh, no,” she breathed. “Let me see you. What happened?”
He refused. He kept refusing, stubbornly, until Dee stood and felt slowly forward through the air, stepping over the chains, murmuring, “Don’t hit me, remember I’ve got soft skin… no hitting…”
She felt a strange tingle in her fingers when she touched his arm. She brushed his shoulder. He winced. Then she touched his face; he let out a hiss, and blinked into view. He appeared in an instant, hair hanging over his face, shoulders hunched, horse legs folded painfully on the gravel.
His jaw was swollen. Bruises spread across his cheekbone.
Dee pulled her hand carefully away. “Did my mom…”
“She learns swiftly. She shone a light in my eyes so I could not see the hammer. I think I lost a tooth. Soft potatoes are good.”
“My mom? Are you sure it was my mom?” Dee felt sick. Worse than sick. She felt hot and furious, and disgusted, and if her mother really was sleeping at the office desk Dee wanted to drag the sledgehammer up and smash everything in sight. His fourth leg was now broken above the shackle, as badly as the others.
He turned his face away, head hanging.
“I have lost. She is certain a herd of us hides in this forest, though I never spoke of them. She somehow knows of our invisibility, though she found me visible on the office floor.” He covered his face with his hand. “This is my fault and I cannot undo it. There are so few of us left in the world. We must not go extinct.” His voice turned ragged. “Go. Leave me.”
Dee slid backward a few inches. Quietly. Gently. No fast movements.
“I’ll leave later, Cef. Not quite yet.”
She bit her lip, gazing at him, his face utterly human and yet… not. He wouldn’t quite pass, if someone saw his face in a window. His eyebrows stretched back across his forehead almost to his hairline. His nose was too flat. His hair had patches of light and dark coloring, and his skin on half of his cheek and jaw was slightly mottled, as if his skin’s coloring echoed his horse coat. On the other side of his nose, and his other cheek, ordinary freckles speckled his skin, like the chestnut-brown spots across his pale hindquarters.
The mundane cardboard boxes and old broken tricycle seemed shockingly out of place, with a centaur in their midst.
She reached for her backpack. She batted Peanut’s paw away from the jewelry box. The cat had crept closer, toward the rustling inside.
Dee said, softly, “There’s something I have to ask you and something I have to… show you.”
If anyone knew anything, it was Cef. Bernard forbade her to speak of vials or carriages but he hadn’t sworn her to secrecy about the snake he’d made. The small ribbon-winged creature was wondrous.
The jewelry box rustled. Peanut hissed. Inside the box, the snake gave a distinctive series of clicks.
Dee cleared her throat. “I wanted to ask you about—about impossible creatures from the forest, and about flying newts, and about this flying snake, because Bernard doesn’t know what it eats. But if you’re not allowed to talk about any of those things with humans it’s—it’s okay, Cef. Don’t get mad.”
Or violent. Or depressed.
It wasn’t okay, actually. She desperately wanted him to talk. This was more important than anything she’d ever done in her life. But he looked ashamed whenever he spoke to her, as if this broke some code of centaurkind and disgraced him even further. His moods seemed increasingly… unstable. She had to find a way to free him, but he could not walk with broken legs, and he was too heavy to lift from this basement.
Peanut batted the box. The snake inside gave a particularly loud burst of clicks and hisses, annoyed at being confined.
Cef blinked.
Another distinctive series of clicks rose from the jewelry box.
He said, “Where did you get a lessim serpent?”
“A what?”
“Where?”
That was hard to explain without mentioning Bernard’s secret carriage. “It’s a… long story. I was going to ask you—”
“Lessim serpents rarely escape. Where did you get it? How deep into the forest have you gone?”
“Not—not far at all, ever—”
“Lying human. Was it you who killed Indrissor?”
“No!”
“Where did you get this?”
“I—I didn’t—”
Cef lunged toward her, spoon skittering, chains rattling. He jerked his torso forward until his arms stretched behind him, chains taut. He stared at her, inches from her face. “Where?”
“Bernard—Bernard made it! It’s not from the forest, he made it, Bernard Voose, but now he can’t figure out what it eats!”
She clamped her mouth shut.
Cef’s eyes narrowed. His lips repeated the word. Made. He inhaled slowly, as if to sense whether she was lying.
“Rain.”
The snake’s nose nuzzled the corner of the box open; Dee pressed it closed. “What?”
“It eats rain. Preferably during a high wind.”
That would explain why it didn’t want Bernard’s food. What sort of creature ate rain? During a high wind?
“Though in times of drought,” Cef murmured, “The dampness in breath will suffice.” He inhaled. His human chest and horse belly expanded. He blew, straight toward the box, and this time when the snake nudged the corner open, Dee held Peanut back and let it go. The ribbons down the snake’s sides rippled. It rose straight over the cat’s claws, floating forward on the gust of Cef’s breath like a gull riding an air current. Cef raised one hand and caught the snake on his shackle.
As the snake clicked and hissed, Cef squeezed his eyes closed. “Do not joke about this, Drucilla Markappen. You said the Voose made it?”
She fidgeted.
“Uh… yes. Except that’s sort of his big secret, so how about since I told you that, you tell me where you’ve seen lessim serpents before?”
“How did he make it?”
“He, uh…”
Cef lurched forward. “How?”
“He has this carriage with vials inside! He mixed them with normal stuff and it came to life!”
Dee flinched. Worst secret-keeper ever. But this was a centaur, and he stared at her like he’d die if she kept silent. Cef inhaled again, scenting. His face was mere inches from hers. He stared at her face, scrutinizing her.
At close range, he must see clearly. “The Voose carriage still has vials?”
“Uh…”
“Which colors?”
He knew there were colors.
“I—I can’t say.”
“Which colors?”
“Three! Blue, and green, and gray!”
“All three?”
“Yes, there’s three, how many are there supposed to be?”
Cef was breathing hard. He sagged. In a low voice he murmured, “Unbelievable. The Voose family must truly have kept their vow, and used the vials for nothing else, nothing but three drops a month.”
At least until Bernard came along.
Three drops a month. Cef cast a dark look toward the trapdoor as he said it. Perhaps he knew her mother drank from them. And he now wore the guilty expression that meant humans could not be trusted, and that he’d disgraced himself by speaking in her presence.
Gently, Dee thought. Gently. His guilt turned to depression and silence very quickly.
She said, “What do you mean, the Vooses’ vow?”
He shuddered. “Drucilla Markappen, swear you are not lying. Do not joke that you brewed this serpent if you only found it near the forest.”
“‘Brewed?’”
He raised his head. “You could brew a batch of bone menders. You could heal my legs.”
His starved arms trembled.
Dee waited. He said nothing more.
“I… don’t know what a bone mender is, Cef.”
His horizontal pupils narrowed. “A species used in healing. They repair broken bones. I could give you the recipe. I’d be breaking a thousand codes. I’d be dooming myself to exile. But if you swore never to follow me home or speak of me to anyone, and if I did it only to return to warn my herd… I have heard more here than I could report in a week of constant councils. I must warn them. It is not for selfish reasons I wish to heal my legs, only for the good of the herd, I swear…”
His voice choked off, shoulders hunching.
“There are actual recipes?”
At this, Cef frowned. “Did you not have a recipe for this lessim serpent?”
“No. I think Bernard just mixed things together for a week. He made a smaller snake too. And an eel.”
Slowly, Cef’s shoulders began to shake. She wasn’t sure if he laughed or cried. He still smiled. But tears spilled from his eyelids, leaving trails through the dust on his cheeks. The lessim serpent cocked its head, then slithered eagerly toward his tears. “Of all the odds. I suppose, it is a bloodline, even diluted over generations. Human brewers are rare. To think the knack survived in his family, when it died out in so many others… and to find a brewer, here, with vials enough to save me…” He raised his eyes to her. “And you. You would have been a tamer, in the old way. Able to soothe the most vicious beasts.”
Dee raised an eyebrow. Actually, she was terrible with animals.
“A… knack?”
Cef looked away, and shuddered again. “If you agree to help me, Drucilla Markappen—”
“Of course I agree to help you.”
“If you choose to free me—”
“Of course I choose to free you. If there’s a way to make those bone things, you’ll run again, I swear.”
“Then you must also swear not to follow me when I go.”
Dee closed her mouth.
“Or else,” he said, turning his face away, “Do not heal me.”
“But—”
“No. Every tree in this forest grows over bones of the fallen. The last age of brewing ended in disaster. Never again. Forget I spoke of it. Better that I die here.”
He couldn’t be serious. Of all the melodramatic…
“What was the age of brewing?”
“Silence.” He snorted. The sound chilled her. Moments ago he’d been smiling; now he seemed volatile. Explosive. Right. No more questions, not when he was in this mood. And his moods changed extremely quickly.
She tried to look agreeable. She held up her hands.
“Let’s just fix your legs, Cef. I—won’t ask about any of this. Let’s fix your legs, and I won’t follow you when you escape.”
“No human can leave an unanswered question.”
“I can.”
“You won’t.”
The lessim serpent rippled along Cef’s shoulder. A centaur, holding a flying snake. Impossible.
She whispered, “I will.”
Interested?
Find this book on Amazon, Goodreads and IndieStoryGeek.
Thank you so much for hanging out with us today! Connect with Roz on her website, Goodreads and Amazon.
If you are an indie author and would like to do a book excerpt, check out my work with me page for details. Check out other book excerpts here.
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