Story Secrets: BLUE FIRE by Janice Hardy + Giveaway!

Once in a while, we fly into fantasy around here - rare, I know, but I do love fantasy, especially when I'm in the middle of writing something contemporary and want to escape into a completely different world.

Janice Hardy is here to chat about her new fantasy YA, BLUE FIRE: THE HEALING WARS Book II. (You can browse an excerpt of Book I: THE SHIFTER here.)

Way back in the D&D and fantasy game days, I used to always love to play a healer. So I find the premise of Janice's books, the dark consequences of healing gifts, to be quite fascinating. I hope you will, too. So I'm giving away an ARC of BLUE FIRE that I picked up in my travels! Details below.

Welcome, Janice!

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THE HEALING WARS is the story of Nya, a war orphan who has the unique ability to heal by shifting pain from person to person. She's forced to use that ability to save her sister in book one, and ends up being drawn into a growing rebellion against the ruler currently oppressing her people and the surrounding lands in book two. BLUE FIRE is the sequel to THE SHIFTER, and it follows Nya as she deals with the consequences of saving her younger sister in the first book, and her discovery that her city isn't the only one being oppressed. And of course, things go horribly, horribly wrong.

The Making of THE HEALING WARS

Years ago I was playing with different common fantasy ideas, trying to turn them on their heads to find something new. I started thinking about healing and how you rarely see any consequences associated with it. It made me wonder if there could be a darker side to it, and if something always portrayed as good could be bad. That led to the idea of buying and selling pain, and how a society like that would work. The rest developed from the world building. I created the culture first, then thought about who would suffer the most in this world. That was Nya...

Click here to learn more about Janice's secrets and to enter to win BLUE FIRE!

~Holly Cupala