7 Questions with #Author Christina Daley @CDaleyWrite #MiddleGrade #Fantasy #GoodReads

1. Tell us about this book. What’s it about and why did you write it?

Seranfyll is about a slave girl who's bought and freed by this really weird guy while he was drunk. But since she has nowhere else to go, she sticks around him, and she's sorta pulled into some of his misadventures. That's all I started with in the beginning. I didn't have any idea where it was going or even who these two characters' names were. But I wanted to find out more, so I started writing about them to see where they would take me.

2. Who designed the cover?

My friend, an artist and graphic designer, designed the first version of Seranfyll that came out in 2011. But I did this new cover and interior design for the print book.

3. Why did you redesign the cover?

I'm working on the third book in this series, and I had a hard time describing to my friend who designed the cover for Seranfyll and Eligere what I was thinking for the third cover. Plus, she's super busy with work and a family and her own art projects. It was easier for me to redo the covers for the first two books so that their style will match what I have in mind for Book 3.

4. Will you write others in this same genre?

Definitely. Seranfyll is the first book of a series I'm working on. I'm sure I'll produce other work along the same vein in the future.

5. How did you come up with the title?

The title is the family name of a character, Domrey Seranfyll. He's an unusual guy, so he had to have an unusual name. I did a lot of research on sites like www.behindthename.com, but I couldn’t find something that really clicked. I ended up taking sounds from different names and jumbled them together, and that's how his name came about. Since he's an immensely important element in the book, I chose to make his name the title.

6. Can you tell us about your main character?

The main character is a slave girl named Rain, and she's called that because masters typically name their slaves something common so that they don't have a "proper" name, like free people. She's very timid in the beginning and cares a lot about others, and she has a bad habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

7. How did you develop your plot and characters?

Years ago, I wrote the first draft for Seranfyll and it was awful. When I rewrote it, I got a better understanding of the characters personalities and pushed them to do more things that would make them uncomfortable. That made it easier to unleash them and let them figure out the plot for me. I didn't have an idea of what was going to happen until the characters did their stuff, and I was basically just tagging along.

(Ages 10+) Rain has never chosen her own name. Nor has she met a polite apple tree, been caught in a house’s security spell, or ridden a horse . . . winged or not. What she does know is that, after having been a slave for all thirteen years of her common life, she’s free and has nowhere to go. 

That all changes when she’s taken in by the peculiar Domrey Seranfyll, who was drunk when he purchased Rain’s freedom and doesn’t remember doing so. Some say he’s part devil and spent time overseas learning the dark arts—not the sorts of things one hopes for in a housemate. And the longer Rain keeps company with Lord Seranfyll, the more magic and mayhem she gets tangled into, all the while discovering that being free can be far more exciting, and dangerous, than she ever imagined. 

(~ 85,000 words or roughly equal to 330 print pages) 

Buy Now @ Amazon & Smashwords

Genre - Middle Grade Fantasy

Rating – PG

More details about the author

Connect with Christina Daley through Facebook & Twitter

Website http://www.christinadaley.com