Welcome to the 2024 ARIA Author Showcase and Giveaway Event! 

  

  

How to enter – Comment on the daily showcases to enter the daily giveaway. Comments close four days after the initial Showcase post. GRAND PRIZE drawn on Dec 5th (1 -$250, 1 -$100, or a 1 -$50 Amazon gift card. One grand prize pp) – For every showcase you post on, you automatically gain one entry to the grand prize. 30 Authors = 30 entries.    

Tabitha Lord  will be at the Rhode Island Author Expo   

On to the Showcase! 

 

What name do you like to write under? Tabitha Lord

Where do you call home? From RI, currently living in an RV traveling the country

What genre(s) do you write? Speculative Fiction as Tabitha, and under my pen name, Maggie Clare, I write romance.

What genre(s) were you drawn to when you were younger? Was there a reason that genre(s) appealed to you the most? 

I was a huge Star Wars fan as a kid, and that movie influenced my love of astronomy, John Williams music, and science fiction! I also loved anything to do with horses, and I was a particular fan of the Black Stallion series. As a teen, I think I read everything by Stephen.

What were some of your favorite books growing up? Why?  

The Black Stallion, Summer Pony, anything in the Star Wars universe

What are some of your favorite books today?

I probably read 2-3 books per week, so it's really hard to pick a favorite. I've been partial to Romantasy lately. Sarah J Maas could teach a masterclass!

What inspired you to become a writer? 

I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember. I loved to write stories as a child. In fact, years ago when I was sorting through some of my grandma’s things after she passed, I came across a whole collection of poetry and stories I’d written. It was very sweet. In my previous professional life I’d written some ad copy, blog posts, and done some editing for school publications, but I had very little time or energy for creative writing. 

When the dynamics of my family shifted, as my children got older, I began to consider changing careers. While I pondered what was next for me professionally I took on a yearlong writing project at work thinking it would give me the change of pace I needed. Turns out it was one of the most satisfying things I’d ever done in my career. Since I was in the habit of writing every day for work, I challenged myself to write creatively every day as well. Lo and behold, when the report was finished a year later, so was my first manuscript.

Horizon: Book 1

Caeli Crys isn’t living—she’s surviving. On the run after the genocide of her empathic people, she witnesses a spaceship crash near her hidden camp. When she feels the injured pilot suffering from miles away, she can’t help but risk discovery to save his life.   Commander Derek Markham awakens stranded on an uncharted planet. His co-pilot is dead, his ship is in ruins, and he’s only alive because a beautiful young woman is healing him with her mind.   As Derek recovers, Caeli shares the horror of her past and her fear for the future. When Derek’s command ship, Horizon, sends rescue, Derek convinces Caeli to leave with him. But his world is as treacherous as hers—full of spies, interplanetary terrorist plots, and political intrigue. Soon the Horizon team is racing to defend an outlying planet from a deadly enemy, and Caeli’s unique skills may just give them the edge they need to save it.

Tell us a little about how “Horizon” came to be. Did it start with an image, a voice, a concept, a dilemma or something else? 

I had two distinct parts of a story floating in my head when I began writing Horizon. The first was a crash sequence. It was pretty basic at the time of its inception – just a young man who crash lands on a planet, and a young woman, in some kind of trouble, who saves his life. The second part was more complex. I was playing with the idea of what would happen if one segment of an already small isolated population evolved differently (either naturally or by design) from the other. What if some had gifts that enabled them to imagine a different kind of future for themselves and their world? What if they were empathic and could sense each other’s emotions and thoughts? What if some of them could heal with their mind? How would the unchanged people feel about their neighbors? It created such an interesting premise I knew I had to find a way to make it into a story.  

Which scene, character or plotline changed the most from first draft to published book? 

Oh my gosh, so much of this book evolved between the first and last draft! HORIZON was my debut novel, so I had a lot to learn about good writing craft before it was anywhere near ready for publication. I spent nine months drafting it and then almost two years editing it, with much of that time spent working with a professional editor. One thing stands out that required special attention–several beta readers along with my professional editor didn't really like my main male character at all, and I had to figure out what they were seeing in him that I wasn’t. To them, he felt too arrogant and immature to be the hero I needed him to be. In a major edit of his scenes, I was able to give him more depth and maturity. I did this, in part, by aging him up a decade. His daring, confident personality was still in there, but it had been tempered by life and experience.

Which character was the most challenging to create. Why?  

I'd say the villain in the first two books. I wanted to make sure he had enough depth to carry the role. In order for his character to work, he needed conviction and charisma. He convinced his army to commit a near genocide after all, and many of those soldiers were just regular people, not villains in their own right. I spent a lot of time thinking about what kind of person could motivate his people to that kind of action, how he'd do it, and what his own experiences were that led him to such extreme thinking.

What do you like best about being a writer? 

I love that I can spend my time creating characters and stories that connect with readers.

If you could collaborate with any author past or present, who would it be? What would the title of the book be? (If possible) - Give us a one sentence blurb.  

While I don't think I'd like to co-write a book with another author, I'd love to write collaboratively in a shared world. It would be fun to write in the Star Wars universe since it's a space I've inhabited as a fan for decades!

 

You can follow Tabitha Lord here - 

Website - www.tabithalordauthor.com 

FaceBook - https://www.facebook.com/tabitha.l.jorgensen/ 

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/tabithalord/ 

Tabitha is giving away a signed copy of Horizon

 

To enter, comment below → Who would be the best book character to rescue you from a crashed spaceship on an alien planet?

 

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