Title: Garden Of Ashes
Series: The Legend of Eden #2
Author: Kate Cowan
Release date: September 1st 2014
Publisher: Anchor Group
Synopsis via Goodreads:
After four years as a prisoner in her parents' attic, hidden away from the Catchers, Eden never dreamt the very people she was hiding from would be the beginning of such impossible things. She's found freedom on the island like she never imagined.
Eden is a sorcerer, with the power of the world in her fingertips. She is determined to never be helpless like she once was, and spends every minute of her spare time training to fight back. As she discovers more of her own power, she and her friends continue to uncover the secrets of the Council. Deadly secrets, hinting at something far larger than the island and the Catchers. Before they can find out exactly what the Council is hiding, Eden's magic begins to spiral out of control, and she loses it for just a second. Just half of a second, and it's enough to change everything.
Suddenly, lives are put at stake, and Eden and her friends must do something no one else has ever dared. They have to escape the island, or they have to die trying.
Guest Post :
Research is a fickle thing.
When you're writing a book, sometimes you need it. Sometimes, you don't. Sometimes, the things you research frighten your mother, and make her question your sanity. Well, maybe not the sanity bit, but she certainly questions my mental stability at times.
For Garden of Ashes, the research was minimal. It is a fantasy book, and for the most part, I drew inspiration and facts about this fantasy world out of my own mind. Mostly, research came in the forms of names, meanings of names, or things like the inner workings of castles, lakes, islands and ships, geography and folk legends. Specifically, the most research for Garden of Ashes came in the form of the novella featured in the back of it, called Seventh Island. For that, I spent multiple days researching the best ways to make a bomb with limited resources, how to make a flaming arrow, military training regimes... the like. Trust me, it all makes sense when you read the book!
There is a point for every book, though where research must come to an end, and you have to just sit down and write. For me, Garden of Eden and Garden of Ashes weren't big research books; that came later, in the following books of the series, where research came in the form of geography, buildings, folk legends, history, horses, and a lot of other things. I feel like are many authors who sit down with the notion to write a book, come up with their ideas, and do so much research it almost loses the aspect of fiction entirely. There still needs to be elements that are fictitious. And then, there are authors who so so little research you just know they didn't do their homework. Say you're writing a book that takes place in Feudal Japan, and you put all of the characters in Medieval style clothing and have them eat turkey legs and swing broad swords. It doesn't work that way! You'd need to know the weapons, the clothing, the houses and architecture, the food, travel, words they might've used, and - especially!! - the names of the characters. Having an Anna or a Wilfred run around in Feudal Japan just won't work. Unless it's a time-travel... or Anna and Wilfred came to Japan on a ship. You get my drift, though. If you don't get things like these right, your book just won't work. It'll be flat and one sided, and everyone - everyone - is going to know you didn't do your work, which will just make them think you simply don't care enough.
Not to sound harsh! There IS a point where you have to stop researching and just write, but you need to know the balance between research and fiction. Even though things do have to be researched, you need to know your own boundaries and know when to stop.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kate Cowan is an artist, an animation student, a black belt in karate and now, an author. She didn't discover writing until mid-high school, when she began writing an (unintentionally) hilarious novel involving a teenage girl and a magic necklace. Her current novel series, The Legend of Eden, began as a story of Arthurian magic, but quickly transformed into something much different.
Kate currently lives in Ontario, Canada, in a zoo of a house. When she isn't writing, she's drawing, cooking, or browsing the Internet for new music.
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