I’m happy to welcome author L.T. Getty. Today, she shares interesting facts about her creative journey and her new release, A Fable of Wood and String.
Interview
What was your inspiration for this book?
When my niece was just transitioning to chapter books, I wrote her a novel. She read and enjoyed it, and I published it when she was just transitioning from middle grade to YA novels. In that book, there was a scene where she wanted to know what was happening, so I took the ideas from that middle grade book and ran with them, only writing for a slightly older audience.
What is the best part of being an author? The worst?
The best part about being an author is I get to partake in the creative process and have a space where I get to be unapologetically smart. I don’t have to omits things from my resume or keep my mouth shut.
The worst is many people have this idea who gets to speak, and act like certain stories are inferior, based on genre or what’s popular at the time. It’s irksome that there’s an assumption of quality because of someone’s social class.
What is your favorite quote?
I was originally going to quote Lewis, but here’s Chesterton:
Fairy tales, then, are not responsible for producing in children fear, or any of the shapes of fear; fairy tales do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly; that is in the child already, because it is in the world already. Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.
Besides writing and reading, what are some of your hobbies?
I like to go biking and kayaking, and in general being active. I used to do kendo and would love to get back into a martial art now that I’m more secure in my job.
What are you working on next?
I am finishing up the sequel to this duology, though at the earliest it’ll be out is late 2025. I have commitments to Champagne Books and my general rule is let the books percolate, but I was writing both books around the same time. I wasn’t quite done the first book when I started writing Book 2, I wanted to ensure I was giving enough hints so I don’t have to retcon myself. It’s a fantasy adventure but there’s also a mystery as to what happened to Castle Mirador and who’s responsible.
My nephew has since demanded I write him a book, so I’m writing him something redonkulous. Like he wants it to be hilariously campy, so right now it’s quasi-started.
The plan then is to work on a standalone for Chapage Books – the publisher changed hands, but my goal is to try to write shorter, less intimidating books.
Blurb
Would it hurt you to just do as you’re told?
The O’Connell siblings live in the shadow of their parent’s past, held back by obligation to keep the people of Stagmil safe when their father has to lead the non-hunters of their village to drive off a wyvern.
Lily doesn’t trust the stranger who calls herself Madeline when she staggers into the pastoral lands. The puppeteer seems to take an interest in Lily’s talent with the family mandoline, and she teaches Lily new music. Lily’s had songs stuck in her head before, but nothing like this.
Twins Seth and Tiffany however can’t wait for their father to return so they can get on with the shearing. Seth should at least be helping hunt the wyvern, and Tiffany wants to take her best friend Molly and head to the nearest city and see the world.
The twins and several other villagers are lured by song into the woods and transformed into marionettes: Seth breaking free before he can be strung, and Lily tainted in a way she doesn’t understand. They have the skills to track the woman down, but to restore Seth to his body, and rescue Tiffany and the others?
Tracking the woman takes them far from the familiar woodlands they know, across the sea to an enchanted castle, where in an effort to rescue their sister they’ll learn something much more sinister than turning folk into puppets is going on. They’ll get help, of course, but not from who they expected.
After all, last Seth checked, foxes are only supposed to have the one tail.
Excerpt
The figure in black started to play something else, and the other’s eyes widened. Tiffany shouted something, and they all reached for the soft wax of the candle but didn’t know what they were doing. In the haste of grabbing the candle, it was knocked to the ground.
Seth ignored his companions and nocked his bow. “Stop what you’re doing or I’ll shoot!”
The figure seemed undeterred. Seth knew he was about to commit murder, but he didn’t care and he wouldn’t leave Louis or any of them to whatever that doppelganger was, and this thing was obviously part of this plot. He loosed the arrow, and the figure only stopped playing to bat it away with the sword hidden under the cloak. Impossible, Seth thought, nocking another with a second between his fingers for quick redraw. He might not be the finest archer—but at this range he didn’t have to be, and no one could deflect arrows in succession for long.
Someone screamed. It looked like Rebecca was caught in a web when she tried to bolt from the glen between two trees. Seth unsheathed his long knife and went to help her, but the figure of Not-Lily appeared, taking off her face and standing near Rebecca. The face was completely blank underneath; Seth let out a surprised gasp before she replaced that face with something with six red eyes, two in the normal place with another four running up her forehead.
Then he saw it—her—grow. The lower half of her body swelled and became massive, bulbous, like the back half of a centaur; her body remained about the same size, but rather than fur and four legs, shimmering black hair and eight legs protruded from the torso, longer at the bend than Dale was tall. She towered over Rebecca. A giant spider . . . woman? There was something eerily feminine about it, a sort of terrible beauty that froze him when his instincts told him to move. She stepped over Rebecca, barreling down on Seth. He loosed another arrow at her head, but she dodged and shot out webbing from her hands that knocked him backwards, pinning him to the grass. More spider silk flew and pinned his arm to the grass.
Seth tried to wriggle free the monster chased after Dale, and to Seth’s horror, caught him with long strands at his wrists, and wrangled him like a marionette. Dale wriggled against the webbing and she dragged him back, and it seemed that he was transforming in the shadow, shrinking and becoming . . . something else. Seth unbuttoned his over shirt to try to free himself.
Dale was reduced to the size of a doll, and the spider had shifted him to a web in the canopy before going after Tiffany. Brigid flailed between two trees, seemingly stuck in a giant web.
Louis cut Seth free and thrust the bow into Seth’s hand. He shouted something and Seth realized that if he got her attention, there wouldn’t be another time. Louis released his sling in the dark. Seth couldn’t see the rock’s trajectory but the spider reeled, leaving Tiffany and moved with intent on the pair of them. They darted in opposite directions, and by luck the creature honed in on Louis, giving Seth enough time to fire. The arrow bounced off the creature’s bulbous body.
Out of the corner of his eye, Seth thought he saw a fox or coyote dart from the bush and bound through the grass. It ran behind the mandolin-playing creature and bit it in the butt. Suddenly there were two people, but Seth couldn’t watch them.
Seth let loose another arrow, narrowly missing the torso, and shouted at the others to run—he wasn’t sure who it had now, was it Rebecca or Molly? The light was too poor for him to be certain, but whoever the spider held she was shrinking fast.
The creature turned, six red and black eyes focused on Seth, and came down on him with full force. Seth found his limbs caught by two bands of silk and forced above his head, and he was hoisted into the air. He locked eyes with Louis who was looking not only smaller, but . . . wooden. Against his control, Seth raised his hands to his ears and removed the wax, and sound same rushing back.
Buy Links
Amazon US | Amazon CA | Kobo | Barnes & Noble
Author Bio and Links
L.T. Getty is a Manitoba Paramedic. She received her degree in English in 2006 from the University of Winnipeg, and has gone on to write several novels. Her latest title, Titan’s Ascent, is a sword and sorcery forthcoming from Champagne Books for 2025.
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Giveaway
The author will be awarding a $25 Amazon/Barnes & Noble gift card to a randomly drawn winner. Find out more here.
Follow L.T. Getty on her Goddess Fish tour here.
Joanne Guidoccio 