The Šehhinah Trilogy by Ivana Skye - Book Tour + Giveaway

The Stars That Rise at Dawn

Šehhinah Book 1

By Ivana Skye

Genre: Urban Fantasy

Yenatru had always had trouble making friends. So he didn’t expect that
he’d have such an easy time befriending Lucifer…

Meanwhile, his one previous friend Elīya is still not over the loss of the
third member of their friend group, Tamar. She disappeared one day to
become one of God’s Holy, and as far as Elīya’s concerned,
nothing’s ever been the same. It doesn’t help that her university
philosophy program is turning out much less interesting than she’d hope.

It could be that Yenatru’s weird new friend has just the skills she
needs to solve all her problems. But in order to get Lucifer’s
help, she’ll have to confront parts of herself she’s never dared to.

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The Birds That Fly at Dusk

Šehhinah Book 2

Celyet’s been trying to keep her head low ever since she left the camp of
demons she grew up in. But then she actually talks to a barista at
the local coffee shop. And then an angel gets involved…

Celyet finds nothing more terrifying than the idea of being misued or

misinterpreted by people. That’s why she hasn’t been talking to

anyone for half a year. But when she challenges herself to visit

somewhere in town she’s never been, she ends up making a terrible

mistake, bringing her time spent hiding to an abrupt end.

Sän may work at a coffee shop, but that doesn’t mean they know how to
comfort people. But they really want to find a way to make a
difference for that sad-looking demon who keeps coming in.

And just because the shop’s owned by the angel Jibril doesn’t mean
that they’re going to stop by anytime soon and start flinging puns
at people … right?

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The Lives That Argue For Us

Šehhinah Book 3

Teśenaand Kjorel have been in an open relationship for years. But when
Kjorel leaves to travel for eight months, Teśena doesn’t really
have anyone else to turn to. Well, except the most powerful person in
the world…

Everyone knows God is made of fire. So of course no one would ever suggest that the

easily-overwhelmed Teśena try praying to Them. Then why, when Teśena

tries to do exactly that in a moment of desperation, do they seem to

get along so well?

On the other side of the world, Kjorel’s dealing with a loneliness of his own.
That is, until he starts his visit to the city of Ēnnuh, and finds a
boyfriend within a few days. With no way to contact Teśena, he can
only hope their previous agreements stand … or that Teśena will
improbably find a way to communicate with him anyway.

After all, what’s a few thousand miles when you have God on your side?

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Advice you would give new authors?

            Try a bunch of different things, in a way that’s low stress for you and lets you play around!  For me, I got this from participating in three years worth of Flash Fiction Month—a yearly event that takes place in a small corner of DeviantArt every July, where you have to each day write a story between 50 and 1000 words.  There’s a bunch of optional challenges, which in many cases pushed my out of my genre and style, and were really fun.

            The best way to get better at writing is to write, and the best way to write a lot is to not stress about it, and not feel super judged for it.  I think fanfic is also a good place for this, and of course, there’s always NaNoWriMo.

            I also find that challenges and prompts and format restrictions help with creativity if you’re struggling, because that prevents you from getting overwhelmed by there being this blank slate where you can do anything.

            A community or fellow writer friend can help a lot too: again, events like FFM or NaNo are great for this, as are fanfic.

            Also, if you can identify specific things you want to work on or haven’t tried yet, set challenges for yourself!  The ones I did in the lead-up to writing Stalking and the Glory of God are copied without edit below, and they might serve as an interesting guideline [for reference, Cradle and Mateyakenata were preexisting settings I’d had running around in my head for a while at the time]…

1/12/16 (tuesday)

Write out descriptions of actions and physical postures you have noticed people taking; be specific.  Go ahead and develop these into a larger description of a person (not necessarily based on the real-life inspiration).  Shoot for 4-5 sentences for these descriptions.  If so inspired, go ahead and make one even bigger.

1/13/16 (wednesday)

Do the thing: describe your room/wherever you’re physically writing.  Yes, it’s boring, do it.

Then do the other thing: describe a place from memory.

Seriously, give details.

1/14/16 (thursday)

Go harder-core: hit up a place from Cradle, put a character there, and for every major aspect of the place and every character shown, get 4-5 sentences of information in.  Get a good sentence in describing every action (that’s bothered to be described at all).  Do anything you darn well feel like to offset information density, but make sure it has that mass.  500 words or so would be fine.

1/15/16 (friday)

Write a flash fic, fantasy.  Develop the setting as you go; again, detail.

1/16/16 (saturday)

Write a flash fic set in Cradle; in a part of Cradle you know well, even.  Don’t aim for comparing it to ground-up world building; if you like how the previous exercise turned out, try to find a way to make this one come across as spontaneous/understandable.  If you didn’t like it, make use of your knowledge of Cradle to do something better.

1/17/16 (sunday)

Plotting hell: yes, write a plot.  No seriously.  Do it.  Set it in one of the kinda-developed worlds: Matekeyanata or the abrahamic one.  Any setting/character stuff that needs to be decided for/as part of the plot, do.  Aim for it to be something that can be handled in about 5000-8000 words.

1/18/16 (monday, MLK day)

Now, write the thing.  Literally.  Outright get up at 8 (eat!! make sure you’ve bought some foods ahead of time), and work on from literally about 9 to 5 (taking breaks for foods).

Describe your writing style.

            So, when I was eleven, my two favorite authors were Mark Z. Danielewski (of House of Leaves fame) and Amelia Atwater-Rhodes (a YA paranormal author). 

            I still think that my style contains elements of being some unholy combination of the two: the dramatic playing with language of the former and the direct, to-the-point clarity of the latter.

            I try to be able to vary up my style with project and PoV, but one thing that’s pretty consistent is that I use more parallel structure in my sentences than is probably healthy.  I tend to do it in threes, where the third iteration of it is longer or spills into another part of the sentence or paragraph structure, and maybe grows a parallel structure of its own.  Here’s an excerpt from the prologue for The Stars that Rise at Dawn that shows this, not once or twice but at least three times I can count:

            No, not light. More than light. It’s a brightness less like the sun and more like certainty, it’s an I am, I am, I am echoing and rippling and forming waves of light that should be far too intense to see, and yet Tamar almost can, surrounded by and in it.

Ivana Skye is a disaster without a permanent address, who much like her
characters, spends a lot of time navigating the transition into
adulthood and screaming. Oh, and writing. She does a lot of that too.

Despite currently being in the middle of multiple months
of travel through various countries she is not from, she still
retains a strong connection to the state of Colorado, where she will
probably permanently live. Eventually.

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