Today our guest author is the talented Ms. AnnMarie Pavese, author of the enormous debut novel, So Sang the Dawn. If you want to read my review of this amazing book, you may do so here. It’s hard to summarize a 700-800 page novel…but I loved it. So gripping, so intense, so full of emotion…and the redemption message in the ending brought me to tears. You can learn more about AnnMarie and her debut novel on her spiffy website.
You can also connect with AnnMarie on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
About the Author: AnnMarie Pavese lives in the mountains of Arizona, which were a huge inspiration in the creation of So Sang The Dawn. A former waitress and web designer, she unashamedly skipped college in order to pursue writing full-time. She spends her days writing, dog-momming, and mentoring other girls as they pursue their own writing dreams. She is obsessed with the woods and the cold and always writes best when it’s raining or snowing.
Now for some questions!
Why do you like to write stories?
I love writing stories for so many reasons. Partially because there’s so much freedom with it; you just get to create anything you want, and it’s your world, so anything goes. On the deeper side of things, I also love doing it because I love getting to breathe a little bit of hope and light into people’s lives and to just really use my characters to show them that they’re not alone.
If you could spend a day with one of your characters, who would it be and why? What would you do together?
I would kill to spend time with any and all of my characters, even the antagonists, but I think if I had to narrow it down, I would definitely want to spend the day with Aurora and Raine. I would want to go riding with them in the herders’ valley and just experience the full thrill of doing it in person instead of just writing about it.
Would you want to live in your story world? Tell us why or why not.
I would ABSOLUTELY want to live in my story world. Maybe not in Rathmar, where the girls are held captive, but the rest of the world is so vast and amazing and has the most beautiful places. Frostholm as a whole is based on my favorite kind of landscapes, mountains and forests and snow and unique kinds of wildlife. I would move there in a heartbeat if I could.
Can you recommend any authors/books that have inspired you and your style of writing?
C.S. Lewis was probably my main inspiration, simply because I fell in love with the world of Narnia, and I love how allegorical Lewis was in his writing. I love that everything had a deeper meaning and hidden truths, and his work was really just so universal and applied to anyone from any walk of life. I don’t know that I could ever measure up to him, but I aspire to come close!
Can you share one lesson you have learned from your writing with your readers?
I’ve learned so many life changing things from writing, one of them being that there’s always hope, and there’s always something better coming, even when we can’t see it. As a writer, I get to be involved in my characters’ lives in a really intimate way, and I actually get to see their whole story at once, from beginning to end. There are times when the characters get discouraged and want to give up because they can’t see a way out, but as the author, I know the amazing things I have planned for them, and I know that the dark parts of their stories aren’t the end. It really helped to give me hope for my own life, and to help me to keep going even when I wanted to give up.
If your writing style could be compared to weather, what would it be?
I think anyone who knows me well knows how obsessed I am with rain and snow. I think I would definitely say my writing is similar to that. It might be dark sometimes, but it’s so needed. It has its gentle moments, where it’s just warm and refreshing, and it has other moments where it’s cold and unforgiving and even bitter to accept at times. Each person takes it to heart in a different way, but no matter how it’s perceived, it always brings hope and the promise of new life.
BONUS: You come face to face with a dragon…what do you do?
I think I would hope and pray that it’s one of the dragons from How To Train Your Dragon so I could befriend it and become a dragonrider. Because who doesn’t want to do that?!
Thank you for joining us today, Annie!
Make sure you dash over to Amazon and purchase a copy of her amazing debut novel today. You won’t regret it–I promise! It took me about a week to read this incredible story…I dare you to do it in less!
To learn more about Annie, don’t forget to join us on February 28th from 6pm-9:15pm for our Multi-Author Facebook Event!