Interview with Kayelle Allen

 

 Welcome, today we are talking with Kayelle Allen! I would like to thank you for taking time out of your busy writing schedule to answer a few questions.

First, I think it’s important for readers to get a little insight on an author that they don’t necessarily get from your professional bio. You’d be surprised at what readers connect to, and sometimes the simplest ‘I can relate to that’ grabs their interest where nothing else can. Don’t answer anything you feel uncomfortable with.

Can you share a little something about Kayelle Allen that’s not mentioned in your bio on your website?

What is your favorite:

Animal Panther

Food Chocolate

Movie The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies (because Thranduil!) / Thor (because Loki!)

TV show Lethal Weapon and Bull

Actor Lee Pace / Tom Hiddleston

Singer Really Slow Motion

Author JD Robb

 What are your pet peeves?

When someone asks you a question that you just gave them the answer to. Like, you say, “We’re open from 9 to 5” and they ask, “When do you close?” Seriously?

 Who is your hero?

I’m blessed to have a lot of heroes in my life. I’m going with my husband on this one. He’s romantic, giving, and supportive. He’s always got my back.

Give us one thing on your bucket list.

I want to visit Mount Rushmore and the Crazy Horse monument.

What would readers find surprising about you?

How many levels of detail I have for my characters and story world. I designed a galaxy full of empires and worlds and if I lived forever I wouldn’t be able to write down all the stories I have in my head.

Any bad habits?

No, of course not. I’m quite perfect and I never lie. *cough*

What’s the funniest thing that ever happened to you?

My husband and I were out walking one evening with our three children, who were quite young. As we were crossing the street, I somehow ended up being last. They all made it to the other side but halfway across, the heel of my shoe got caught in a small hole in the street. I tripped and fell. I was so embarrassed that I just stayed there, hoping no one had noticed and I could rise gracefully without fanfare. I might have made it, too, if my three-year-old son hadn’t wailed, “Mommy’s dead!” at the top of his lungs. A crowd gathered to help me up. I laugh now, but at the time I wished for the ground to open and swallow me whole. For years, my son referred to any shoe I wore that had a heel as “falling shoes.”

Now that our readers know a little bit more about Kayelle Allen, let’s get down to the business of your book, Bringer of Chaos: Forged in Fire which came out on December 29th. How long did it take you from beginning to end before your novel was completely finished, and how did you decide on the topic and title?

In a sense, I’ve been writing this book for decades. I first had the idea as a teenager, but have only started on it now. I began writing it in earnest in February of 2017 and published it in December. It’s part of a series, named after the main character, Pietas. One of his gifts is the ability to cast chaos — mental distortion — and he’s incredibly strong. His people call him the Bringer of Chaos. Each book could be read alone. I designed them to incorporate enough of the original story for the reader not to feel lost, but the stories together will tell a much bigger picture. Originally, the second book was subtitled Harvest of Blood, but it sounded like a vampire story or a horror novel. This book was neither. A friend suggested Forged in Fire and I immediately went with it. It’s a perfect title.

Please tell us a little bit about Bringer of Chaos: Forged in Fire.

In the first book, Pietas is trapped by humans and exiled on a barren world. His health has been shattered. He’s been imprisoned in an unpowered lifepod for over a year. It would have killed a human long since. Because he’s immortal, he cannot die no matter how much he might want to. But once freed, he’s a prisoner in his own body. He cannot move. Cannot feed himself. Six, a human who’d been abandoned on this world with him, ends up saving him. Over a period of weeks, Pietas begins to view the human as a friend. When Pietas undertakes the task of finding his people, also exiled on this world, Six goes with him. There is far more to the story than that, but this gives you a background on why Pietas hates humans.

In the second book, Pietas and Six find his people and discover they’re trapped inside their pods, imprisoned in such a way that they can’t be released properly. All half million pods will unlock at the same time. However, they’re stacked inside giant units in multiple layers. The people on top can free themselves, but none of the others will be able to get out. The sheer logistics of the set up means it could take months to save everyone.

After being imprisoned in a similar way himself, Pietas is desperate to find a way to free his people. Before he can save them, he has to take back command from a ruthless enemy he’s fought for centuries. His brutal, merciless father.

The tagline for this book is Immortals may heal, but a wound of the heart lasts forever.

What was your hardest challenge writing this book?

I had to get inside the head of Pietas and know what it would be like to face knowing his people would suffer the way he had. His love for his people knows no bounds. And because of how cruelly humans imprisoned all of them, his hatred for humans holds no bounds either. Beyond that, I had to figure out how the pods themselves would work, how they were transported, how they were stacked and in what order, and design something that would then enable them to be moved from a spaceship onto a planet. It was daunting work. I redid calculations numbers of time before I got a feasible plan. My youngest son (not the one who declared me “dead”, lol) helped me with the set up. He’s a banker and crunches numbers all day. He was a lifesaver.

What in your opinion makes good chemistry between your leading characters?

Pietas himself is a serious fellow. He was reared by a domineering father who tolerated no nonsense. Pietas was never a child. From the time he could hold a weapon, he was trained as a soldier. His father molded him into the most skilled fighter in the galaxy. Because of his genetics, he’s also a brilliant scientist with an eidetic memory.

Pietas permits himself no laughter. Such frivolity was never allowed as a child. When he meets Six, who doesn’t take life seriously, he begins to unbend a little. In one scene, his friends are astonished to hear him laughing. As the story develops, the ice around his heart melts more and more and Pietas moves from being a stiff-necked by-the-book soldier to being a “real boy.”

Showing how his friends and family react to the change let me reveal more of his character and back story. At one point, his sister absolutely refuses to believe he’s her brother and makes him prove it by telling her something only Pietas would know.

I think the key to the chemistry between these characters is the unfolding relationships and the respect each of them has for Pietas. His people revere him. A small group who were released from their pods early are folks he’s known most of his very long life. He’s comfortable with them — at least as much as he is able. But even with them, he needs to be perfect. Needs to be the best. He must be a king who makes no mistakes and has no weaknesses. This story is all about Pietas discovering that mistakes make us stronger. He has made huge ones, and one of them isn’t revealed to him until the end of the story. If Pietas has any fear, it’s the thought of failing his people.

Any other works in progress?

I have a third Antonello Brothers book in the planning stages. It would be the sequel to At the Mercy of Her Pleasure and For Women Only. I’m also writing Watch Your Six, the third book in the Bringer of Chaos series.

Any advice for aspiring authors?

Anyone can write. It takes a skilled writer to pull people into a story and make them feel like they’ve visited another world. If you want to be memorable, learn the craft.

Before we go, tell us a little bit about your blog. I hear that traffic there recently crashed the server and that you had to make some changes. That’s awesome, by the way!

Thank you. That happened on two sites. My personal site and Romance Lives Forever (RLF). The RLF blog is where I host guest authors each day. There are about 15 interviews to choose from and many opportunities for promotion. The blog has its own hashtag #RLFblog and thousands visit each day. To keep the sites from crashing, I had to move them both to bigger servers. Anyone wanting to find good books should come visit. We have about 5 years worth of posts, so hundreds and hundreds of book posts, all sorted by genre. www.rlfblog.com Authors can also go there to sign up. I use SignupGenius to let them pick their own dates. Handy for everybody.

Final words?

I’d love to have you join my Romance Lives Forever Reader Group. I send out a monthly email and if there’s a special event, I email about that as well. Plus, when you join, you get four free books right away. https://kayelleallen.com/bro/

Come follow me on Twitter and Facebook. Pietas has his own Pinterest board with multiple folders inside including one for dragons and one for panthers. He’ll eventually bond with a dragon in this series and he’s already bonded with his panther. Tiklaus is sentient and although the cat serves as the alpha of the panther tribe, this is one adorable beast. Ginormous, yes, but at heart, Tik just wants to be Pietas’s “kitty.”

Kayelle Allen writes Sci Fi with misbehaving robots, mythic heroes, role playing immortal gamers, and warriors who purr. She’s a US Navy veteran who’s been married so long she’s tenured.

Website/blog https://kayelleallen.com
Twitter http://twitter.com/kayelleallen
Facebook http://facebook.com/kayelleallen.author
Pinterest http://pinterest.com/kayelleallen/
Instafreebie https://www.instafreebie.com/discover/author/5186/kayelle_allen
Amazon Author page http://amazon.com/author/kayelleallen