Why Do I Write Fantasy? by Rhiannon Paille

I didn't grow up with it. I grew up with the Babysitters Club and Sweet Valley High. I wanted to write about sisters and young girls like Nancy Drew. I used to write love stories and horror stories when I was twelve. Some of the earliest titles of those short stories were: "Sunshine Lovers" and "The New Doll" and "Luke and Ivy"

They were really bad.

After that I stopped writing, but I began learning about metaphysics and meditation. I suppose to me it didn't occur to me that my book was epic fantasy because in theory, I could visit Avristar physically. If I had the right parameters, I could do it. That's how I've always felt about epic fantasy, sure some worlds were made up, but it's no different than Bon Temps being a made up town in Louisiana. Towns like Bon Temps really do exist in Louisiana, and similarly places like Avristar really do exist across the mists.

When I was studying Druidism, we called them the other realms. One of the requirements was to perform an immramma to these places, which is like an out of body experience to an otherworld. Very intense, but very informative. One of the reasons this was a requirement was because it was a practice that the Druids of 500BCE performed. They gained a lot of their knowledge from the otherworlds.

The real reason I wrote Flame of Surrender was because of the story itself. I never set out to write a fantasy novel. I set out to write a tragic love story between Kaliel and Krishani. The fantasy elements simply came as part of the story.


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Flames of Surrender Book Summary :

The boy who follows death meets the girl who could destroy the world.
Krishani thinks he’s doomed until he meets Kaliel, the one girl on the island of Avristar who isn’t afraid of him. She’s unlike the other girls, she swims with merfolk, talks to trees and blooms flowers with her touch. What he doesn’t know is that she’s a flame, one of nine individually hand crafted weapons, hidden in the body of a seemingly harmless girl.
Nobody has fallen in love with a flame until now. She becomes Krishani’s refuge from the dreams of death and the weather abilities he can’t control. Striking down thousand year old trees with lightning isn’t something he tries to do, it just happens. When the Ferryman dies, Krishani knows that he’s the next and that a lifetime of following death is his destiny.
And Kaliel can’t come with him. The Valtanyana are hunting the flames, the safest place for her is Avristar. Krishani can’t bear to leave her, and one innocent mistake grants the Valtanyana access to their mystical island. They’re coming for Kaliel, and they won’t stop until every last living creature on Avristar is dead. She has to choose, hide, face them, or awaken the flame and potentially destroy herself.