Keira Michelle Telford was born and raised in Britain, and moved to British Columbia, Canada in 2006. She now shares a townhouse on the west coast with her husband and 10 guinea pigs, yes 10 guinea pigs. Keira shares her new release Silver: Acheron (A River of Pain) and why she loves to write.
Click on the image to visit Keira's Meet & Greet on VBT Cafe.
Louise: Keira, welcome to my blog! I’m so excited you could
join me for a chat. When did you first decide to submit your work to be
published? Tell us what or who encouraged you to take this big step.
Keira: Death did. I once heard it said that the death of a
parent is a reminder of our own mortality, and it’s true. Though it wasn’t
simply the thought that I would one day die that bothered me, it was more the
thought that I could die without ever having given Silver a chance to live. I’d
taken a few tentative steps down the traditional agent-publisher route before, but
hadn’t really had a lot of good experiences. My work isn’t mainstream enough,
apparently; there’s not enough money to be made from me.
Louise: Please tell us a little about your new release Silver: Acheron.
Keira: Acheron is
the first installment in a 10-book, post-apocalyptic love story series. In this
book, we meet Ella ‘Silver’ Cross for the first time—and she’s a prisoner. Banished
from her Sentinel District home, she’s relegated to the Fringe District and
sentenced to live amongst society’s trash. She’s lucky the Banishment &
Enforcement Council didn’t have enough evidence to execute her, but some days
she wishes they had. A life sentence means that she’ll never get to see her
lover, Alex, again, and that hurts worse than any pain of death.
Dishonorably discharged from the Hunter Division and
banished for crimes she did not commit, Silver struggles to come to terms with
her new prison-like surroundings: a segregated area of the city called the
Fringe District, populated by murderers, thieves and rapists.
Starving, and desperate for money, she reluctantly accepts
the Police Division's invitation to enroll in a covert Bounty Hunter program:
an initiative devised to infiltrate the criminal underworld of the Fringers,
and to force the very worst warrant dodging law-breakers to meet their
fate—death.
Unfortunately, Silver doesn't realize that the Police
Division is about to up the ante. They need more than little snippets of
information and arrests—they need someone to pull the trigger.
They need an executioner.
Louise: Do you plan all your characters out before you start
a story or do they develop as you write?
Keira: I don’t plan anything. My characters seem to
self-generate in an organic, fluid sort of way. It usually starts with a name,
and then the physical features start to appear. I start to see mannerisms and
quirks. I get a sense of sexuality: what turns them on and off. If they have a
connection to any other characters, they’ll start to draw in together like a
magnet. A conversation will spring up, and I’ll begin to understand their place
in this world. From there, hopes, desires and conflicts begin to arise.
Eventually, I’ll know every inch of them, inside and out. I really don’t do
anything on purpose. It just sort of happens.
Louise: That's is a very good description of how your characters speak to you. How much research do you do for your books? Have you
found any cool tidbits to share?
Keira: I’m constantly doing research. Science plays a hefty
part in my books, so I’m always learning new things. One of the first things I
learned—to combat the problem of there being no gasoline after the
apocalypse—was that you can generate a gasoline substitute from algae.
Louise: I think the research is really fun to do while writing. What is your writing process? Do you outline, write
by the seat of your pants (Pantser) or a combination of both?
Keira: I think it’s a combination. Sometimes I write with no
clear direction, just to see what develops. Though, even when I try to plot
something out in advance, it often ends up changing as I write. Just as my
characters form organically, so do my plotlines. Especially the subplots, which
are almost always a surprise to me when they spring up. It feels more authentic
that way. If I plot things out too much, it feels almost contrived. I don’t
want to make things happen, I want to
allow it to unfold.
Louise: Do you write full time? What did you do before you
became a writer or still do?
Keira: Some days, I feel as though I have a lot of different
jobs, each one vying for my attention. Other days, I feel like I should be
collecting an unemployment cheque somewhere. But if the question is to be taken
absolutely literally, then the answer is: nothing. I was a writer before I was
anything else, despite everything else, whether it ever made me any money or
not. If you want to get all poetic about it, I was born a writer—it’s in my
bloodline.
Louise: Do you have a ritual when it comes to writing?
Example….get coffee, blanket, paper, pen, laptop and a comfy place.
Keira: Rituals? I have OCD; my whole life is a ritual! If I
were to elaborate on that here, it would read like a checklist for mental
instability.
Louise: Oh, I can attest to having a little OCD myself. Describe a typical writing day for you.
Keira: I arise late morning (emphasis on the ‘late’) and eat
something that vaguely resembles breakfast. The general rule of thumb is that
if I can’t take it out of the cupboard or the fridge and have it ready for
consumption in under thirty seconds, it’s not worth the effort. I eat like a
two-year-old. Maybe worse. I’ll begin writing about noon, and can quite happily
continue until 3am, depending on how many distractions I encounter during that
time. Currently, Xena: Warrior Princess is a distraction. I’m watching it right
now. What were we saying earlier about my mental health?
Louise: Please give us a sneak peek at your future books.
What’s on the horizon?
Keira: The fourth book in The SILVER Series is due out this summer. It’s called A New Age Dawns, and it’s the longest
book in the series so far. It’ll be a return to the present day plotline, after
the brief flashback we had into Silver’s childhood in Entropy.
Louise: What is your favorite genre to read and who is your
favorite author?
Keira: I don’t read very much contemporary work. I’m a huge
fan of Edgar Allan Poe, so I guess my favorite genre would be macabre. Is that
a genre? It should be.
Louise: Poe is my first favorite! Shhh...don't tell Stephen King though. LOL Is there anything else you would like to tell the
readers we have not touched on?
Keira: There are 21 books in total for the character of Ella
‘Silver’ Cross (in her present incarnation, at least). This current series
consists of 10 books. The next series—The
Legacy Series—consists of another 10, and then there’s a single standalone
book—SILVER: Redux—which slips in at
the very end and ties everything together.
Louise: Where can the readers learn more about you and find
your books on the web?
Keira: The best place to go to find out more about The SILVER Series is: http://www.ellacross.com There’s also my
personal website at: http://www.keiramichelle.com
To buy, you’ll need to head on over to Amazon.
The books are available from there in paperback and for Kindle. If you don’t
have a Kindle, other eBook formats are sold directly from the EllaCross site.
Contest
I’ll do an eBook giveaway and one signed paperback to two lucky comenters! :)
Excerpt:
Who knew the Police Division had
safe houses tucked away all over the Fringe District?
Silver didn’t.
Luka takes more than a little pride
in showing off one of his Division’s best kept secrets, and also hopes that
something about this experience will perk up her mood.
Punching his key code into a
concealed pad behind a disused electrical box, he swipes his wrist across a
hidden tag plate and beams a grin back at her over his shoulder.
“Hunters have got their toys, we’ve
got ours.”
The entry system seems to like his
credentials, and an inconspicuous cellar door clicks and pops on the inside as
the locking mechanism swiftly retracts behind it. Lifting the lid on the place,
Luka ushers Silver hastily down a steel step ladder into the bunker beneath.
He’s right on her tail, and the door
automatically reseals itself behind them—locking them in.
“What is this place?” Silver
wonders.
“Nothing, so far as any civilians
know. To them, there’s nothing down here but dirt. To us, it’s a covert safe
house. It’s not finished yet, mind you.”
He’s not wrong.
The floor is a mixture of concrete
and loose wooden planks. The walls are bare drywall, waiting to be painted, and
there aren’t any doors. Silver can see three rooms: a kitchen, bathroom and a
small living and sleeping area.
“I could totally live here.”
“Not without company.” Luka nods to
the CCTV monitoring system, wired in to every room. “It’s not hooked up in here
yet, but it soon will be.”
Silver’s still stuck on one tiny
detail. “A safe house for what? You’re planning on starting a witness
protection program for all of your little snitches?”
Luka shrugs. “Once it’s fully
operational, the safe house network should help us keep our assets alive just
long enough to get what we need from them.”
Silver, who is unquestionably the
Police Division’s best asset, develops furrows in her brow at his nonchalant
disregard for the lives of the people they’re buying.
“And how long do you expect that to
be, typically? I’m just wondering if I should cancel my gym membership.”
Her sarcasm alerts him to the taste
of his own toes, but it’s too late to take it back properly. “You don’t count.”
“No? Why not?”
“You’re not like them.”
Covered in the blood of a man she
just slaughtered, Silver would beg to differ.
“After what I did today, I reckon
the only things left separating me from them are oral hygiene and clean
undies.”
“Come on, Silver, it was
self-defense.”
“The first shot, maybe. The second
and third were questionable. The one that blew his face off? That one was pure
anger.”
The world might end, but love endures.
Keira Michelle Telford
