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Saturday 18 July 2015

ℚ The Blind World: Brimstone [1] - M.C. Rohweder

Today we have the pleasure of meeting up with author to talk about The Blind World (, 259 pages), a new adult urban fantasy, book one of the Brimstone series. 

Miranda just wanted a little freedom when she started college. Now she’s got hell to pay. Literally.


Author Q&A | Synopsis | Teaser | About the Author | Giveaway &Tour Stops


A big welcome to Mari C. Rohweder.  Welcome to BooksChatter.

What was the inspiration for your latest book, The Blind World?

"As cliché as it sounds, The Blind World started out as a really good dream about a couple trying to stop the world from ending.  Over the next two years, the story morphed and twisted, and became The Brimstone Series.  It’s far more complicated than it originally was, but in a really interesting way.  (At least, my best friend says so.  He’s about ready to kill me if I don’t hurry up and write him the rest of the books.  It’s a little counterintuitive, as he wouldn’t get them after that point, which is probably the only thing stopping him.)

Miranda Schaffer’s freshman year of college turns out to be more than she bargained for when she learns her basement is the gateway to Hell."
How much of yourself is reflected in The Blind World and the Brimstone series, and how?
"My main character, Miranda, has a few of my traits—her caffeine addiction, her fear of the darkness, and her weakness for guys, mainly—but her best friend, TJ, is more like me than anyone else in the series.  It happened by accident, but TJ turned out to be as quirky as I am in real life (but she’s probably more fun :P)."
The first thing that draws me to a book is its cover.  Can you tell us about your cover for The Blind World - why you chose that concept and who the artist is.
"I did the cover myself, mainly because my contracted cover designer hadn’t contacted me in weeks and took about the same amount of time (weeks) to return correspondence.  My best friend (you know, the one who would kill me for the story, if he could) is a graphic designer, and while I was hesitant to use something I made on my own, his encouragement after I made the cover helped me go through with it.

I wanted to showcase that the story wasn’t just about some romance, even though that is a big part of it.  The whole series, while being about the start of the apocalypse, is mainly about Miranda’s personal growth, so I decided to keep her on the cover alone.  The splotchy red-and-white-and-black grungy look was mostly because I liked the way it looked, but also to show that it’s an apocalypse-related story."
I think you did really well with it!

Why should we read The Blind World and what sets it apart from the rest?

"I feel like this is a story that hasn’t been done yet.  I’ve been trying to come up with comparable titles in books, film, TV series, etc., but I haven’t been able to yet.  At the risk of getting ahead of myself, I can say it really feels like something that hasn’t been done quite like this before."
Can you tell us something quirky about The Blind World, its story and characters?
"TJ, who is now one of the main characters in the series, technically didn’t exist in the original story.  Now, I can hardly imagine it without her.

Also, one of the Four Horsemen is now one of Miranda’s love interests, whereas he was just a bad guy in the original story.  He kinda grew on me, and I decided I couldn’t kill him off as I’d wanted to before."
Who would you recommend your book to and what should readers be aware of (any warnings or disclaimers)?
"I think The Blind World would be a good read for anyone 16 years or older.  It’s pretty clean—there’s some heavy petting and some foul language (both will continue throughout the series)—but overall it’s nothing like other New Adult books I’ve read, that seem to have sex in every other chapter.  (Hey, there’s nothing wrong with that—I like those books, too.  I just didn’t want to write one.)"
If you could / wished to turn The Blind World and the Brimstone series into a movie, who would be your dream team?
"Chester See, a really talented singer, would be my go-to guy to play Cole Sanders, the Guardian.  Haha, I don’t know what it is about him, but his face just screams Cole to me.

I love Tom Hiddleston and a lot of Caleb was written with him in mind, but I don’t think he’d be on my dream team for the movie…  That’s a little tough.  On the one hand, I’d love for Tom to play Caleb, and he’d do a fantastic job, but on the other hand, then I’d have to share my entire dream-Caleb with the world.  (Not that Tom is mine… *shifty eyes*)

I don’t really fantasize about the series being made into a movie or a set of movies, because I prefer reading to watching movies or TV, so Cole and Caleb are really all I’ve got for this, haha"
Ah, Loki!  He's such a good baddie.  It's a dream-team, it doesn't have to be real ;-)

What do you like to write and read about?  Do you stick to a particular genre or do you like to explore different ones?

"I like to write about a lot of different things.  Romance is something that is always in my writing (except maybe my horror dabbles), so you could say I prefer to stick to that, but I really just like writing stories that will (hopefully) engage readers, whether it’s to touch their hearts (my WIP, Missing You, will probably make a lot of people cry) or to scare the pants off them (my horror stories have caused nightmares before—I feel a little bad about that).  I don’t care about sticking with one genre, because I like to read so many different genres myself."
That sounds exciting - I love horror and would love to read your stories.

What is your writing process?

"I outline months in advance (usually while working on a WIP) and slowly modify the outline until it becomes the story I want.  By the time I’m done with whatever is currently occupying my time, I’m usually dying to write the story from the outline, and so I just kind of sit down, open Write or Die (because I like to torture myself for productivity’s sake) and get the words out.  And then I edit.  Oh, editing.  I spend more time editing my books than writing them, because that’s how I feel a quality story is made.  A lot of plot twists and secret things that connect later in the series came into existence during the editing process, so I fully count them as being part of the writing process."
What is in store next?
"Currently, I’m working on book two of The Brimstone Series [The Melancholy Storm], where sh*t gets real.  I can’t tell you much about that, because of spoilers, but it’s been fun to write so far.  I love this series so much.  Other than that, I’ve got a romantic suspense in the works that is kind of along the lines of Phantom of the Opera.

I mentioned Missing You before, and that’s going to be really hard.  It’s about the loss experienced by a girl after an accident.  The problem is, she doesn’t know what she’s lost because her memory was compromised in the accident.  But she knows something is wrong, and she fights like hell to figure it out."
Mari & Roki
Many thanks again for talking to us and for introducing us to the gorgeous Roki!  We wish you all the best with the rest of the tour and with your future releases :-)

The Blind World - available NOW!

UK: purchase from Amazon.co.uk purchase from iTunes UK find on Goodreads
US: purchase from Amazon.com purchase from iTunes US purchase from Barnes & Noble purchase from Smashwords

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