Guest Post and Giveaway: Lethal Inheritance by Tahlia Newland

Title: Lethal Inheritance
Author: Tahlia Newland
Series: Book One
Published: Catapult Press (Oct. 10. 2012)
Genre: YA Fantasy

Book Description:
If last night was real, Ariel should be dead. She’s not, but her mother has disappeared, there are bruises on her neck and the hideous beast in the photo looks frighteningly familiar.

You can’t send police into a tunnel that doesn’t exist after a villain they can’t see, so when shadow demons kidnap her mother, Ariel has to mount the rescue mission herself. Hot on the trail, she enters a hidden layer of reality only to find that the demons are hunting her, and they feed on fear. Ariel must defeat them before they kill her and enslave her mother. But how do you kill terrifying demons when your fear makes them stronger?

A quirky old guide teaches her how to locate and unleash her inner power, and while battling hallucinogenic mist, treacherous terrain, murderous earth spirits and self-doubt, she falls in love with Nick, a Warrior whose power is more than either of them can handle.

Ariel’s journey challenges her perception, tests her awareness and takes her deep into her heart and mind to confront, and ultimately transcend, her fear and anger. 

About The Author:
 Hi. I'm an author, avid reader, extremely casual high school teacher & occasional mask-maker. I write urban fantasy for adults & young adults and like to challenge readers to look more closely at the nature of their world, their mind and their perception. After creating and performing in Visual Theatre shows for 20 years, I'm now a bone-fide expatriate of the performing arts. I live in an Australian rainforest, am married with a teenage daughter and love cats, but I don’t have one because they eat native birds.

 

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Guest Post: 

 

Demons, demons and demons

This guest post is by Tahlia Newland, author of the YA contemporary fantasy, Lethal Inheritance. and the acclaimed, You Can’t Shatter Me, a YA novel about inspiring and empowering ways to deal with bullying.

Several of the publishers my agent approached when looking for a publisher for Lethal Inheritance told her that they weren’t interested because demon stories had gone out of fashion. I thought about that and about the books I’d read with demons in them, and I realised that the demons in Lethal Inheritance weren’t anything like the demons in any other book I’d read, and there are no angels or sorcerers either. A friend who read it recently even told me that he didn’t think they should be called demons. I ended up having to fill him in on why they really are demons.

Western culture is familiar with two main kinds of demons; the Judeo/Christian version, and the pagan kind that help sorcerers with their spells. But there are also Balinese demons, Maori demons, Tibetan demons, Australian Aboriginal demons, Chinese demons and countless other forms of demons for the many other cultures in the world. Most cultures have some kind of form that represents evil or negativity.

The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines demons as (among other things) evil spirits; devil; heathen deity; malignant supernatural being; cruel, destructive, or fierce person; or personified vice or passion.

This covers a pretty wide area, and the Judeo/Christian kind of demons that are either fallen angels or citizens of hell are a very small category in the pantheon of demons, but there are a lot of books about them. There’s a similarity in these books simply because they’re all based on the same mythology, one where you inevitably have angels as the good guys, and God is in the background somewhere. I bet you can all think of a book with this kind of demon in it. I guess these were the kind the publishers didn’t want more of. My favourite book of this kind is Laura Kreitzer’s Timeless Series.

The Bartemaus Trilogy by Jonathan Stroud is a good example of the Pagan view of demons as creatures from other realms of existence that can be trapped by witches or sorcerers and made to do their bidding. In the West we’re pretty familiar with this kind of representation of demons as well, but for most of us, that’s where our understanding of demons ends.

The Dark Heavens Trilogy by Kylie Chan (The White Tiger is the first book) has Chinese demons and deities in it, but that is the only non-western form of demons that I’ve ever seen in a novel. There are probably others, but they haven’t come to my attention.

So what kind of demons are in Lethal Inheritance? They fit the personified vice or passion category, something that is in accord with the Buddhist idea of demons. The story goes that just before the Buddha attained enlightenment, he was attacked by Maras (demons) who tried to make him angry, jealous, lustful, arrogant and dull-minded. The demons and their battle with the Buddha are seen as a symbol of the Buddha’s internal battle with his own emotions.

But my demons don’t look like the ones you see in paintings of the Buddha’s battle with the Maras. Mine emerged from my own creativity tempered by my cultural conditioning. The major demons in Lethal Inheritance are clothed in a form more reminiscent of the Ring Wraiths in Lord of the Rings than anything from Eastern cultures. However, my minor demons are very similar to Tibetan and Balinese demonic forms.

Here’s the description of a major demon from when the main character, Ariel, first sees one.

“Something black and vaguely human-shaped struggled out the window, cursing in a voice as spiky as ice shards. Its skin, hanging in folds like the fabric of a long hooded cloak, rippled as it turned. White flames flicked, like snake tongues, from two slits in its hideous face, and a thin-lipped mouth curled into a sneer. The claws on its long loose arms flexed and unflexed as if warming up for a fight, and it stunk like rotten potatoes.”

What is your favourite kind of demon?

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Giveaway Details!

Tahlia has generously offered everyone who comments today a PDF, Kindle or Epub copy of her prequel story to Lethal Inheritance, Run.

If you would like a copy of this story please comment below with what format you would like it in and a place (email) to send it to and I will get that sent over to you by later this evening (or whenever you post). 

Thank you so much Tahlia for your generosity and for being here today!!