Today Kelley Grant joins us to talk about her new novel, Desert Rising. Here is the publisher’s description:
“It frightens me, knowing the One has called up two such strong individuals. It means that there are troubled times in our future, and you must prepare yourselves.”
The Temple at Illian is the crown jewel of life in the Northern Territory. There, pledges are paired with feli, the giant sacred cats of the One god, and are instructed to serve the One’s four capricious deities. Yet Sulis, a young woman from the Southern Desert, has a different perspective – one that just might be considered heresy…
Sulis’s twin Kadar, meanwhile, is part of a different revolution. When Kadar falls in love with a woman from a Forsaken caste, he finds he’s willing to risk anything to get her people to freedom. But with Sulis drawing a dangerous level of attention from the deities, and war about to break out on two fronts, change may not come as easily as either twin had hoped.
So what is Kelley’s favorite bit?
I grew up running wild in the hills of Ohio’s Amish country. Animals were always an important part of my life; both our family pets, and the wild creatures who co-inhabited the old farmhouse we lived in. We had bees in the attic, flying squirrels peering at us from the walls and snakes in the dirt cellar. We also took in stray dogs, hamsters and even a very angry goat who felt called to trample me at every opportunity.
And there were always cats. It was seldom I went to sleep without a purring cat curled somewhere on the bed. I realized recently that I have been owned by 18 felines from childhood until now. So of course somewhere in those years of ownership they brainwashed me into creating the feli of my novel Desert Rising. The feli are large felines who claim magically talented people for the Temple in the Northern Territory. They are my favorite bit.
In Desert Rising, it was fun playing with a world that wasn’t human centered. The feli were created first, as companions to The One – who is the supreme creator. Humans were created to be companions to the feli because the giant cats were bored. Only then were the four deities created in the image of humans to rule over them. Because cats have no interest in governing wayward humans! And the feli of my world are truly cats – not humans in the form of cats, not talking animals – but cats in their purest persnickety felineness. They want scratches behind the ears, the best food, and their chosen human to provide a soft lap to purr on.
The feli are my favorite bit, not just because they are awesome, large cats, but because the feli Djinn, who claims my heroine Sulis, is a tribute to a particular cat who claimed me, just after college. Djinn, however is cheetah-sized, so he can really enforce his feline desires on Sulis.
“Unlike the other feli, who remained sitting tall, just barely touching their paired, Djinn sprawled beside her and laid his big head in the lap she created with her crossed legs. When she didn’t immediately stroke him behind the ears, he reached a long leg out and touched her knee with his paw, claws barely sheathed. She sighed in irritation and caressed him, so he would not put a hole in her shift. His answering purr filled the meditation area, and the other pledges looked over at them in surprise. Lasha met her eyes, and Sulis rolled hers. Lasha looked away quickly, hiding a smile.”
The cat who claimed my heart was Chester, an extraordinary cat who loved me through six moves, through college, job changes and marriage. Chester would drape himself across me when I read and if the petting stopped, the warning paw would go out as he touched me on the knee or face. The claw was next, if I did not pay attention. Chester assessed every human who came through his house. If they were judged worthy, he would bestow his presence on their laps. If unworthy, they dared not touch him or be slashed. And Chester owned every bit of me.
We lost Chester at age 19 to kidney failure. He lives on in Desert Rising. But as I write this, Willow is stretched out beside me, occasionally sticking a paw on the keyboard to put in her word. Our evil flamepoint Siamese Ember jealously eyes her from a bookshelf – Ember stars in the second book of the series, The Obsidian Temple, which comes out in July. With their gazes upon me, I feel a certain compulsion to put even more feli in book 3. After all, where would Sulis be, without her Djinn? How could my life be complete without a cat on the lap and a good book in hand?
LINKS
BIO
Kelley Grant grew up in the hills of Ohio’s Amish country. Her best friends were the books she read, stories she created and the forest and fields that inspired her. She first told stories to her cats, then her teachers, then expanded her audience at Otterbein college, where she earned her degree in writing. She and her husband live on a wooded hilltop and are owned by five cats, a dog and numerous uninvited critters. Besides writing, Kelley teaches yoga and meditation, sings kirtan with her husband, and designs brochures and media.
