Born at Dawn Blog Tour // Author Interview!!

Author: Christina Davis
Published On: November 15, 2020
Publisher: Christina Davis
Genre: YA, Fantasy
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Synopsis:

When a heist goes terribly wrong and the binding spell holding 17-year-old Neva’s powers at bay is shattered, the half-human thief knows she’s in trouble.

Neva has always hidden her Da’Valian heritage while working risky jobs to make a name for herself and serving at her family’s tavern, but she won’t be able to hide much longer. She can either risk the safety of those she cares about or seek out her mother’s people to gain control over her emerging powers.

The Da’Valia are beautiful, brutal creatures created by the god of war, and the austere Da’Valian soldier Astiand reluctantly agrees to take Neva to his clan under his protection. She makes unexpected friends, including the handsome fighter Emiliand, and a new enemy in the clan’s ruthless leader.

Spying on her guardian, the sly heroine quickly discovers just how deep she has stumbled into a dangerous, developing clan feud.

Will she be able to embrace who she is in time to keep her loved ones safe?

First off, Happy Book Birthday, Christina!! Today is the release of Born at Dawn, which I’ve had the lovely opportunity to be on the book tour for. Which brings me to a hefty thank you to TBR and Beyond Tours for including me!!

Born at Dawn is a fast paced, exciting, and addicting book that I loved every minute of reading. Christina has such a great style of writing that makes for an awesome read, and I had a hard time putting this down once I started it. From the very first chapter, where we’re introduced to our favorite thief and resident badass Neva, I was hooked.

The plot moves quickly, yet I never felt that anything was rushed. By introducing us slowly to the world, the reader is able to see how the characters and the plot are interacting to form such a complex world and story. The lore surrounding the God of War and the Da’Valia’s dark history are incredibly intriguing to me, and I loved learning about these aspects of the world’s history alongside Neva as she explores her own origin and background.

Along with reading the book, I was given the chance to ask Christina a few questions and I’m super excited to share with ya’ll! Her answers were so insightful and she has some super fun little tidbits about the story here, as well as an incredibly yummy-sounding latte recipe that I’m going to have to try ASAP! Without further ado…

Hi, Christina! Thanks so much for joining me today! I absolutely adored Born at Dawn and the world that you built in it. Where did the inspiration for the Da’Valia come from? Was it a building idea, or something that popped into your head unexpectedly?

Thank you! This is one of the areas of writing fantasy where I get super nerdy. So the inspiration for the Da’Valia came from wanting to create a race of battle demons who were passionate and valiant. I wanted them to be proper and honorable as a way to balance their natural brutality, and I wanted to write a matriarchal society. I took a lot of anthropology classes in college, and the ways that different cultures develop and interact has always fascinated me. A lot of my world-building and magic systems are influenced by what I learned in those courses. 

Some parts of Neva’s world were unplanned, but I went into it knowing that I wanted the males and females to complement each other in a sort of yin and yang way. I also wanted the world she starts out in, a typical northern wintery city you might find in fantasy, to be vastly different from the Da’Valian world that she is introduced to as the story progresses. My hope is that the reader gets the sense that they are leaving the familiar behind and going somewhere new and special.

Neva is such a badass, I loved seeing her start to grow into her own and take ownership of her history over the course of the book. Where did her character come from?

Haha. Me, too! OK, I hope this doesn’t sound silly, but I drew her out of a hat. When I finished college, I knew I wanted to get back to writing books for fun. I just wasn’t sure what I wanted to write. So I put different categories into a hat and drew out an occupation, a location, a race (which actually was demon and I didn’t like, so that’s when I started creating the Da’Valia), etc. It was like that MASH game that we played when we were kids — where you fill in the blanks to “tell” your future. The one where you can live in a Mansion, Apartment, Shack, or House, and the rest of your life is filled in? I’m from California, so I’m not sure if that’s a regional game. You’d usually end up divorced with 12 kids living in a shack. Anyway, in this case, I ended up with Neva, a half-human, half-demon teenage thief.

Once I had that general idea of who she was, I started writing. Over the next decade or so, I spent a lot of time doing creative writing exercises, working on the trilogy, and just adding more and more detail until she felt like a real person to me. Now, here we are!

What’s your writing process like? Do you have a routine or is it more go-with-the-flow?

It’s a little bit of both. When I start a story, I like to have three main points in mind, and then I let my subconscious go to work and write “by the seat of my pants” as they say. But that method leads to a lot of time spent in editing, so I’m working on streamlining the process and changing my focus more to plotting first. I’ve heard from more established authors that this has been a natural progression for them, so I’m looking forward to seeing how that goes for me!

As far as the actual writing goes, sometimes inspiration will strike and I’m grasping for a pen or a napkin — anything to write down the idea that just came to me before it disappears — and other times I have a full scene where I know exactly what I’m going to write ahead of time. I like to get together with my writing partners (in non-pandemic times) and do writing sprints, which is where we set a timer and “Go!” for a half hour. We usually do that twice each time we meet up. It’s surprisingly effective.

Spill the tea: what’s your go to food/drink to have while writing?

Mmmm. OK, I’m a coffee AND tea girl, but my go-to favorite for while I was working on most of this trilogy was a Paris latte. I’m guessing you weren’t expecting a recipe when you asked this question, but it’s so delicious, I have to share…

Paris Honey Cinnamon Latte Recipe

• 3 tablespoons Paris loose leaf tea from Harney & Sons
• 16 oz. soy milk
• 1 teaspoon honey
• A pinch of cinnamon

Heat up, mix well, and enjoy!

I LOVED how intricate and complex the magic system is in this world. What was your process for coming up with it?

That’s a good question. For the Da’Valia, a magic system rooted in warfare made the most sense. Since you need to destroy and heal on the battlefield, I molded their raw power to fit those purposes — but never in the history of anything have people not tried to modify their gifts or talents, right? So warlocks became the more studious Da’Valia, who specialize in refined magical warfare. This will sound like gibberish to anyone who hasn’t read the book yet, but their braided shields, landscapes, and lures emerged because I needed them for the story, so they fall in a sort of in-between space that requires some more finesse and thought on the behalf of the wielder, but no formal training.

And then, you have all the other races — humans, Colavalia, witches… I didn’t want any of them to be exactly the same, so I put my imagination to work and then tried to poke holes in everything to make sure the systems hold up (and my beta readers helped with this, too). …So I guess, in essence, my process was to overthink things excessively!

I definitely got attached to Neva and Astiand and am craving more of them already!! Can you give us any hints as to the adventures to come in future books?

Haha. I hear that a lot, and it always brings a smile to my face because I love them so much, too. OK, so you will learn more about Astiand in the second book, Blood, Fire & Mercy, so look forward to that. Also, without giving too much away… assassins, dragons, and a djinn!

Again, thank you so so much to Christina and to TBR and Beyond tours for allowing me the chance to read and promote this awesome book, and I highly encourage everyone to add it to your December TBR’s!

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To check out more content for Born at Dawn, you can see the tour schedule here!