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Friday, December 28, 2012

Undertow by Kiri R Newton Blog Tour Guest Post



Author Kiri R. Newton has stopped by today 
with a guest post for the Undertow blog tour.

Josiah vs Nox


When I began developing the conflict in my head, Undertow was initially going to be a protest against the pollution of the ocean and the wanton killing of its inhabitants. When I was about twelve I watched someone spear a full-grown turtle through the throat and then leave it to suffocate. I guess that left an impact on me because I get filled with a rage when I see whales being slaughtered or coral reefs being destroyed or the vast stretches of waste floating in our oceans. This is why the initial conflict in the story is that of mer-folk dying due to pollution.

Then I developed it further, tracing the source not to the likely culprit of humans but instead fellow mer-folk. That I felt was much more of a twist because no one expects these happy, songbird creatures to be willingly killing one another right? Trouble is by the time I figured out what Nesoi and Nox were up to I realized I had a problem.

You see Nox and Josiah spawn from the same person, an ex-boyfriend who had clinical split-personality disorder, among other things. He had the dominant side that most people saw; happy, bubbly, life of the party and everyone’s best friend. But then as I began to get to know him I realized something else lurked under the surface. The ‘Josiah’ side of his personality would build and build and then he would crash and ‘Nox’ would come out of hiding. It was like dealing with two vastly different people, he wouldn’t even remember what he said most of the time. ‘Nox’ as I started calling him was dark, moody and temperamental and yet that’s when his musical talents would shine.

In our relationship I was constantly being pulled between both sides. While ‘Josiah’ was hilarious and the kind of person you always wanted to be around ‘Nox’ had an intoxicating darkness that I thrived on. When I came to writing in the two characters Zoe had to be pulled both ways but as I realized the full extent of Nesoi’s plots I realized there was no way Zoe could be in love with someone who was willingly involved with Nesoi’s plots. This is why I wrote Nox the way he is, a tortured soul who can see no way to escape his mother’s influence.

Nox had to be the polar opposite twin of Josiah; they had to be essentially wired the same way, even looking similar in a completely opposite way. It turned into the ultimate battle of light and darkness for Zoe’s heart. I then also discovered a local band, the lead singer of which who just so happen to provide a perfect vessel to put ‘Nox’ into and the whole thing fell together like a sinister jig-saw puzzle.

By the time I finished writing Undertow I had split up with owner of these two characters. For at least six months the book ended at Chapter 28 but in a spat of anger and egged on by the notion that there’s no such thing as a happy ending, I wrote the epilogue. At the moment I am regretting ending the book the way I did because it’s a cliff-hanger that has to be followed up. I left too many loose ends that need to be explained and at the time I thought I was very clever doing so but now, faced with writers block I’m regretting it. I will one day write the sequel but don’t hold your breath.


Title: Undertow 
Author: Kiri R. Newton 
Publisher: Bookpal Austrailia 

Blurb: For far too long these sailor-drowning, ship-sinking sea sirens have been portrayed as happy, peaceful creatures who want nothing more than to fall in love with a prince and live happily ever after. Undertow is an unconventional twist on one of the oldest mythological creatures known to man. Buy 

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Media Links: Website



About Kiri R. Newton
Its weird right but as an author I could tell you about my characters inside out and yet when people ask me to talk about myself I go all quiet. Anyways, here I go. I am a child of ‘91 born in Jandowae, a tiny little town out past Dalby. When I was five my parents decided to pack everything up and move to Tonga in the South Pacific after Dad visited there and mum fell in love with the place after reading a book about it. So I grew up in a third world country, fluent in a second language by the time I was eight and lived amongst the locals who I was friends with. When I was thirteen my father passed away and due to the fact that the government refused to pay my mum a pension over there like they did my father, we were forced to move back to Australia. 

As for my writing career, I started writing progressively longer short stories in Grade 5 where one teacher noted on my report card that ‘I had unique ideas and an unusual talent’. By Grade 7 I had completed my first novel a post-apocalyptic fiction where cats are the highest life form and live basically as we do and follows the lives of a litter of cats, the characters based on a litter of cats belonging to my neighbour. I continued writing different things from horsey stories to Phantom of the Opera fan-fiction right through my teenage years, nothing serious, mostly just a lot of scribbling. 

In Grade 12 I realized that if I was going to be serious about being a writer I needed to finish stories, not just have a lot of random scribbles to my name. So forgoing all my assignments I finished my second book called Dynamite which is an Australiana tale about a racehorse. Two years later I went on holidays to Fiji, came home and three months later Undertow was completed. In the middle there I wrote a Tolkien-esque fantasy epic called The Dark Assassin with my now ex-boyfriend. The year after that I completed Hazardous, which will be my next published title. 

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