Julia Defiant by Catherine Egan (Blog Tour Interview & #Giveaway)

I'm continuing this week full of interviews by welcoming Catherine Egan to my blog today.
She's sharing about her Witch's Child series. Read that and enter the giveaway below...

Julia Defiant

(Witch's Child #2)
by Catherine Egan

YA Fantasy

Hardcover & ebook, 464 Pages

June 13th 2017 by Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers

Summary

Fans of The Rose Society, Graceling, and Six of Crows will thrill to the masterful world-building and fiercely flawed heroine in this heart-pounding follow-up to Julia Vanishes, book two in the Witch's Child trilogy.

Adventure, murder, romance, intrigue, and betrayal with a 16-year-old heroine that is both fierce and flawed at the same time. Hypable.com

Julia and a mismatched band of revolutionaries, scholars, and thieves have crossed the world searching for a witch. But for all the miles traveled, they are no closer to finding Ko Dan. No closer to undoing the terrible spell he cast that bound an ancient magic to the life of a small child. Casimir wants that magic will happily kill Theo to extract it and every moment they hunt for Ko Dan, Casimir's assassins are hunting them.

Julia can deal with danger. The thing that truly scares her lies within. Her strange ability to vanish to a place just out of sight has grown: she can now disappear so completely that it's like stepping into another world. It’s a fiery, hellish world, filled with creatures who seem to recognize her and count her as one of their own.

So . . . is Julia a girl with a monster lurking inside her? Or a monster wearing the disguise of a girl?

If she can use her monstrous power to save Theo, does it matter?

In this riveting second book in the Witch s Child trilogy, Catherine Egan goes deep within the heart of a fierce, defiant girl trying to discover not just who but what she truly is.

(Affiliate links included - I receive a small kickback if you make a purchase using my links.)

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Praise for Julia Vanishes

Egan’s debut novel sparkles. A beautifully rendered world and exquisite sense of timing ensure a page-turning experience. Publishers Weekly, starred review

Readers will find themselves immediately immersed in the narrative and invested in the fate of Julia, who is both feisty and flawed. Booklist, starred review

Julia’s a wonderful, fully realized heroine. . . . For those readers waiting for the sequel to Marie Lu’s The Rose Society, a well-realized page-turner in the same vein. Kirkus

Interview

Would you tell us a little about this series for those not familiar with it?

Julia is a 16-year-old thief and spy with the ability to step out of sight while in plain view – she describes it as being “behind the membrane of the visible” – in a city where all forms of magic are illegal. When the series opens, Julia is posing as a maid in the household of the wealthy and eccentric Mrs. Och and reporting back to a mysterious client. What started out as a fun and highly paid job turns darker and more frightening as she uncovers a connection between the household and a serial killer stalking Spira City’s frozen streets. The more she finds out, the more she begins to wonder if she is working for the wrong side, but she’s in too deep to get out. Backed into a corner, the serial killer turning its attention toward her, Julia does something terrible to save herself - and discovers that her ability to “disappear” goes much farther than she’d realized.

The series is partly about atonement – if you have done something evil, does that make you an evil person, and can you ever balance the scales? It is also about self-reinvention – can you choose who to be, or are you trapped by certain fundamental truths about yourself? In the sequels, Julia is committed to protecting the child she nearly got killed in the first book, and they are pursued across the world by the client she betrayed. Her vanishing now enables her to cross right over into a hellish reflection of the world, where monstrous, shadowy creatures seem to recognize her as one of their own. At first she revels in her new power, even as she is afraid of what it means, but then the creatures populating that other realm begin to reach back into her world. Finding out the truth about her background and why she can disappear becomes a matter of survival.

Mostly, the series is a big fantasy adventure story, with witches who do spells by writing, immortal siblings locked in an ancient conflict, a fragmented book of untold power, an innocent child who holds the key to it all, revolution and magic and layer after layer of lies that Julia must peel away to find the truth.

What was different about writing this second book?

The biggest difference was that my younger son started preschool and so I was no longer trying to write during naptime and desperately seizing fifteen minutes here or there. I had a chunk of time every morning to devote to writing, and that made everything so much easier!

The other difference, of course, was that I’d built the world and developed the relationships in the first book and now I got to go further with them. I’d built the playground, and in writing the second book, I was free to play on it!

What is your favorite part of the story?

I absolutely loved writing the closing scene of JULIA DEFIANT. I knew what point I was going to end with from the very start and it was such a joy to write the final pages that had been fixed in my mind for so long.

Mostly, I really enjoyed taking relationships established in JULIA VANISHES in new directions. Julia now has to work with the people she betrayed in the first book – and with her ex-lover, who betrayed her. Trust is big theme of all three books, and I loved working with these complicated, knotty relationships.

What are some of your favorite fantasy books?

As a child, I adored everything by Diana Wynne-Jones, and her Chrestomanci books in particular. Some of my favorites now (I think these all fit under the “fantasy” umbrella) are Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, N.K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season and The Obelisk Gate (third in this phenomenal trilogy coming this summer!), Kristin Cashore’s Graceling, Fire and Bitterblue, Alaya Dawn Johnson’s The Summer Prince (OK that’s more sci fi than fantasy, but so good it must be included in any and every list of faves), Kiersten White’s gender-bent Vlad the Impaler retelling And I Darken, and Zen Cho’s utterly charming, hilarious and yet high-stakes Sorcerer to the Crown.

What are some other things you enjoy besides reading and writing?

Now that my kids are school-aged I’m rediscovering the joys of uninterrupted and wide-ranging conversation with adults. It’s amazing! I’d almost forgotten! Before I had kids, my great passion was travel, and though I don’t travel the way I used to anymore I still love being somewhere new. I think I must have a hard time sitting still inside my non-fictional self, because writing & reading provide a huge sense of relief, always, and if I’m not doing one of those things, I’m happiest in motion. Maybe if I keep moving / reading / writing, the Real Me will never catch up.

Would you give us a teaser for the third book, such as what to look forward to, or what you’re working on next?

The third book will take Julia & co. back to Spira City and straight to the center of a burgeoning, witch-led revolution. In order to save her brother’s life, Julia is forced to accept Casimir’s contract – a live creature inserted at the wrist, creeping up her arm toward her brain. She has a matter of weeks before her mind belongs to him completely, and must use that time to save her brother, protect baby Theo, and navigate the morally tangled terrain between the revolution and its enemies – all while falling for the new heir to the Fraynish Crown. This is the final book in the series and will answer the questions posed by the first two books – what is Julia, and why can she vanish? Also, since a reader asked, the little owl-cat Strig from JULIA VANISHES will be in the third book as well.

I’ve been working on a few new projects since wrapping up Julia’s story, including a high fantasy revenge story set in a world based very loosely on the Mongol Empire under Genghis Khan, about a girl determined to kill the warlord-turned-emperor who destroyed her family and married her sister, and a spooky historical fantasy set in the Shetlands (with a touch of Moby Dick and The Tempest as seasoning), where a teenage girl befriends the children of her father’s rival in his lifelong, obsessive quest to catch a magical, shape-shifting creature. I’ve got a bunch of other things on the back burner that aren’t far enough along to describe yet J.

Other Books in the Series

Julia Vanishes

(Witch's Child #1)
by Catherine Egan

YA Fantasy

Hardcover, Paperback & ebook, 400 Pages

June 7th 2016 by Knopf Books for Young Readers

Summary

This page-turning fantasy thriller introduces Julia--a thief and spy for hire. Witchcraft may be illegal in her world, but magic still rules.

"The first book in the Witch's Child trilogy has adventure, murder, romance, intrigue, and betrayal with a 16-year-old heroine that is both fierce and flawed at the same time. Catherine Egan is an exciting new talent." --Hypable.com

Julia has the unusual ability to be . . . unseen. Not invisible, exactly. Just beyond most people's senses. It's a dangerous trait in a city that has banned all forms of magic and drowns witches in public Cleansings. But it's a useful trait for a thief and a spy. And Julia has learned--crime pays.

She's being paid very well to infiltrate the grand house of Mrs. Och and report back on the odd characters who live there and the suspicious dealings that take place behind locked doors.

But what Julia uncovers shakes her to the core. She certainly never imagined that the traitor in the house would turn out to be . . . her.

(Affiliate links included - I receive a small kickback if you make a purchase using my links.)

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About the Author

photograph by Isabel Chenoweth www.icportraits.com

My books: JULIA DEFIANT, JULIA VANISHES, Shade & Sorceress, The Unmaking, Bone, Fog, Ash & Star
My superpowers: high-kicking, list-making, simultaneously holding two opposing opinions
My weaknesses: fear of flying, over-thinking and then making bad decisions, excessive list-making
My allies: my made-for-walking-in black boots, Mick, the English Language
My enemies: decaf, low blood sugar, the passage of time
My mission: the coexistence of ambivalence and joy.

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