Owl Totem
by Sean E. Kelly
Genre: Epic Fantasy
Famine has swept across the island of Dearviél. The threat of war looms on the horizon. The Vacids, the people of the owl-totem, wilt under the dominion of a foreign king. Their greatest hope lies with two sisters.
Leara and Caileigh Mana had trained to be scholars. But the famine has compelled them to take on the task of healing their weary people and averting even greater suffering. Leara's quest to find a mythical seedling that can sate all hunger will require all her knowledge and skill in the sciences, both the physical and the arcane. But she isn't alone. She'll find friends in the most unexpected places-friends she'll need when she comes face-to-face with the otherworldly Fae, who will do everything in their power to stop her from reaching the seed.
Meanwhile, together with a ragtag group of companions, and hiding a secret power deep within herself, Caileigh must convince the Vacid nobles to put their quarrels and scheming aside and come together for the good of the people before it's too late. But just as her strength of spirit is tested, so too will be the bonds of family.
In this intimate, emotionally charged adventure, the hand that heals may be stronger than that which wields the sword, virtuous deeds may count for more than titles and accolades, and the greatest power of all, whether in the material world or in realms beyond, may be that of compassion.
Amazon * B&N * Kobo * Author's Store * Bookbub
Excerpt 1
Everything was nothing, and nothing was anything. Brantivien’s mangled, rusted gate might as well have been a portal into another reality. Perhaps the enigma who called himself Gormfreith had cast some spell upon Leara; perhaps the spell was a ruse played by her own mind upon itself. There was indeed something about him, some sublime quality for which no tongue among sapienkind had conjured a word. The way energy rippled about him like the waves that radiate when a pebble is dropped into still water, energy that she could feel surging through her more than that of any human’s Song, playing its melody deep in her soul, a Song of such seductive dissonance, of the most dulcet disharmony. Perhaps her eyes had deceived her, but for one ephemeral moment, she saw that energy weaving about him in an ethereal waltz—the lastaí bielthé, the flame of the spirits, the strings that bound all consciousness together throughout the four worlds.
Yet his essence was sodden with tears, and that melancholy had set upon Leara like a vernal rain.
Gormfreith stood between two pillars before the door to the great hall, himself as forlorn, as much a relic as the bronze kings atop their capitals, headless and swallowed by verdigris. There was a profound elegance in his frailty. With every twist of his gaunt body, his long black cloak would swirl about, hovering in the rank air, rustling pages and sending them fluttering like dancing dryads, and with them, faint notes distorted as if played upon a broken zither.
“Take my hand,” he beckoned, waving for Leara to join him. “But hold tightly to me, lest you be lost forever in the Void.”
Warily, Leara inched forward, ever and anon halting as her anxious mind did battle with her eager heart. What does he mean? The thought lingered in her mind’s peripheries, kept at a distance by whatever enchantment the stranger had woven about her, taking the place of fear.
“Do not be afraid.” His maladroit smile was strangely reassuring. “I know what it is you seek.”
At last, she relented. Bony fingers encircled hers like strangling vines, yet his embrace was tender. He pulled her close to him, pressing his other hand to her forehead, sliding the palm over her eyes. At his touch, energy rippled through her body, the energy that she summoned when she ascended out of the material. She was aloft, though her eyes were blinded; matter fell away beneath her feet, and she was moving, whither she knew not.
Then, all was still and silent. Her uncovered eyes gazed across endless white mountains, punctuated only by the slash of a tower black as moonless night in the distance. I have seen this place before. The silvery lake lay behind her in ethereal stillness. The ebon door loomed before her at the summit of the highest peak, beyond which lay only an abyss.
She turned to Gormfreith to tell him that the vanishing man had already shown her this place. But when she beheld him, he was a man remade: a youth of beauty unimaginable, sable hair flowing like silken banners, lightning forking around his irises. Had wings grown from his back, she might have mistaken him for one of Elven kind.
The angelic figure turned Leara’s chin to the door. As before, she could see something in the emptiness within. But instead of the skull and flower, she beheld a cube, transparent as if made from pure ice, and within, a single seed.
In an instant, her spirit was reunited with her body.
“You know what you have seen,” Gormfreith said. He had left his luminous form upon the mountainside, and he was wretched once more. Perhaps even more so now , for the ascent seemed to have drained what little vitality remained in him. “Glandmal,” Leara affirmed. “Does that mean the legends are true?”
Gormfreith nodded.
“But there was only one seed.”
“There is only one. Only one is needed for the fruit of transfiguration to blossom.”
Leara did not understand. “But how am I supposed to feed my people with but a single seed?”
Gormfreith offered a glance that seemed to scold Leara for her ignorance. But within his Song she heard only sympathy, tinged with a note of despair. “The fruit you know as glandmal is meant to feed the spirit. It is not to nurture the body but to overcome it. To destroy it.”
Leara stumbled backwards, gasping.
Gormfreith grimaced as he observed his withering hands. “None of us was meant to wear this mortal shroud, this burial gown of flesh and bone. We are all beings of Light and Song, just as the Fae, just as their forebears, the gods who fashioned this world in their error, in their boredom with perfection.” He glided to the image of the dragon and the emperor. “The Darandingaí knew as much. They tried to recreate the Paradise that was denied them when they were doomed to this living death.”
“Darandiné is a myth,” Leara said reluctantly, for that was what learned men had taught her, citing the lack of any evidence beyond songs and stories. Even the intricate documents she’d studied in Satranthia were said by some to be little more than the fanciful scribblings of mystics too deeply entranced in their leaf, florid façades to disguise realities of a much more banal kind. But those documents, those stories had to have come from somewhere. She wanted so badly to believe that a better realm had indeed once existed, one that could come to pass once more.
“Nay,” Gormfreith affirmed. “They had fashioned a great and puissant society, using their knowledge, their wisdom, and their tools. They had nearly succeeded in their goal.” He uttered a defeated sigh. “Alas, they were corrupted, as are all things in this world. They did not understand the hideous truth that only our people now remember.”
“What truth is that?”
Gormfreith’s jaw clenched. “That this world was made by demons.”
Excerpt 2
All the night, he slept with his demons, holding them close.
In his dream, Andrin was in a dark forest, naked and shivering, surrounded by tall trees draped in virginal snow. A pack of wolves gathered around him, baring teeth like swords, their footfalls splashing blood, their eyes a hellish red. The alpha howled, but as the others closed in, a figure in white appeared, holding out a placid hand, and the alpha nuzzled it, and the rest knelt in submission. Sinúela? The mysterious figure turned to him; there was no body beneath the cloak, only a white bird whose wings played a dulcet tune as she took flight, and the garment vanished into the snow.
Then, a horseman stormed out of the blue mist, a pale ghost upon a headless steed, and he held out his scimitar and massacred the wolves. He wheeled his cadaverous mount about and charged at Andrin, frost-grey eyes seething with ravenous hunger glaring out of a formless hollow where his face should have been. Time slowed to a glacial pace. Andrin saw the blade leveled to strike his abdomen, but he was catatonic. Strands of his hair and beard turned to ice, breaking away and falling like a rain of daggers to pierce his feet. Still the apparition came, and he saw death in its black mask, and snakes slithered from its hollowed eyes and from the seared flesh where the horse once had a head. The dark rider drew near enough that Andrin could taste the poison oozing from its putrid flesh. Its maw opened, uttering a shriek that split Andrin’s ears like a spear of obsidian. Andrin tried to flee, but his legs were as frozen as the icebound panorama. The phantom inched closer, ever closer as seconds passed like epochs. The blade carved a scar into the frigid air, leaving a cloud of sickened fume in its wake, and Andrin could read an ancient curse engraved in grim runes on its cutting edge. He turned his head, bracing for the strike…
…but it never came. He risked a glance toward the shadowy figure, but it was not there, only dwindling cinders and a smoldering patch of wood and mud in the snow. Wolves gathered again, encircling Andrin, their breath spinning a vaporous web that cocooned him. But this time, their eyes glimmered like polished gold. Their voices echoed in his mind, whispering: Follow, and you will be saved.
20 questions
What makes a good story?
Emotional investment. I’ve long believed that you can have the most amazing plot in the history of literature, but if readers don’t care about the characters, it’ll be all for naught. One of the reasons The Lord of the Rings is so endearing and enduring is because, long before we’ve ever left the Shire, we get to know Frodo and Gandalf and the others. We develop a bond with them. They’re not merely names on a page; they’re our companions on our journey. They’re our friends. And as such, we care deeply about what happens to them. Now, obviously, with some genres, you’ll want to jump right into the action. But make sure you make time for good character moments. After all, storytelling is the art of mining emotion.
Can you tell us a little bit about the characters in Owl Totem?
There are three point of view characters. Leara Mana is the most prominent; at thirty-two, she’s not your typical young and wild-eyed fantasy protagonist (but, let’s not forget, Frodo was in his fifties when he set out for Mount Doom). She and Caileigh, her older sister and the second of our three protagonists, are members of a guild called the Snowy Owls—owls, by the way, are central in this tribe’s religious beliefs, as messengers of their ancestors—who are sort of a mix of scientists, shamans, and medics. The third is Andrin Torvarni, an aging warrior carrying a lot of baggage from his past that he’s eager to be rid of.
How did you come up with the concept and characters for the book?
I wanted to write a fantasy story that wasn’t all about epic battles, slaying dragons and dark lords, or the usual. Not that there’s anything wrong with those, but I wanted to write a story that was more philosophical, spiritual, humanistic, etc.; a story where the protagonists were healers and scholars, not warriors. Even Andrin, the old warrior, is looking for an escape from his life of violence. Owl Totem draws heavily on medieval Irish history and culture, as that’s a big part of my ancestry to which I wanted to pay homage, but it also incorporates a lot of ideas from Gnosticism, Enochian scripture, Mesopotamian and Norse mythology, Stoic philosophy, and a fair few ideas of my own—modified for a setting on par with tenth-century Ireland, of course!
Do you try more to be original or to deliver to readers what they want?
I can’t write a book if I’m not fully in love with it, to which the large number of unfinished manuscripts that’ve found their way into the wastebasket can attest, so I’m all about originality. I figure that, if I love the story, others will too; if a musical artist can stick a microphone down a sinkhole, record the ambient noise, play some faint synthesizers behind it, and slap it on an album (yes, this is a real thing), then there’s a market for anything! Maybe that market isn’t very big, but I’m cool with that; for me, writing is a labor of love, a means of catharsis, so I’m always going to take that first piece of writing advice I ever learned: write the story you want to read. Minus the asterisks.
Is there a writer whose brain you would love to pick for advice? Who would that be and why?
No surprises here: J.R.R. Tolkien. I’d ask him just how the heck he was able to build such a rich world from the rocks up, so deeply that there are scholars who dedicate their entire professional careers to studying the philosophy, lore, and even hard science of his legendarium. I thought I’d built Owl Totem on a pretty solid foundation; Tolkien would laugh at the paltriness of it! Oh, and he did that all while managing to tell stories that are epic in scope and consequence, yet never lose their sense of intimacy.
What kind of research do you do before you begin writing a book?
It depends on the book I’m writing. For my science fiction novels, I gave myself a crash course in neuroscience by reading several books and listening to some academic lectures on the subject—though I recognize that I’m far from an expert on the matter! Owl Totem is a fantasy, so theoretically I had a little more leeway with facts, though I reject the notion that “anything goes” in fantasy and am a firm believer that, in order for readers to accept the fantastical, they must first find the mundane believable. As such, I did a deep dive into Celtic and Norse history, culture, mythology, etc. Not just the pivotal events, either, but the more banal subjects; for instance, I wrote over six thousand words of author’s notes to create a legal system for the main tribe, based mostly on medieval Irish law and custom, all the way down to inheritance law and sale of property, most of which wasn’t necessary for the book, but nonetheless helped to give a foundation to build these people upon.
Did you learn anything during the writing of your recent book?
Take your time writing! It’s most important to produce the best book you can, even if that takes a year—or, in the case of Owl Totem, thirteen years. I’ve never written a book start-to-finish without taking an extended break (though usually only a few months), and I’ve found that to be helpful, to give time to shake the cobwebs from my head, to let in new ideas, to rethink parts of the story, and such. It’s a bit like a fine wine; it’s best when it’s left to age a bit.
Do you believe in writer’s block?
Unfortunately, yes, and it’s awful! I’ve heard some authors advising new writers to power through it, but I disagree. Any time I’ve tried to force myself to write, even if I’m at a loss for words or inspiration, I’ve ended up throwing out the entire section and rewriting it.
What is your writing process? For instance do you do an outline first? Do you do the chapters first?
I think of my stories as living organisms, the characters within them real people with real agency, so, while I do sometimes start with an outline, it usually gets ripped to shreds within the first chapter or two because of a decision some character made. This usually won’t change the ending I had in mind when I set out—though, admittedly, I don’t always have a clear picture of how the story will end, or any idea at all, when I start; I let the story come to me—though it’ll certainly change how the characters arrive at that end. Because of this, I tend to write in a linear fashion. But not always…
Do you write one book at a time or do you have several going at a time?
Right now, I’m juggling around six concepts in my head, and because of that, I’m having a heck of a time writing any of them! Being something of a scatterbrain by nature, I really need to pick one story to write, focus entirely on it, and push everything else to the wayside.
Do you prefer to write in silence or with noise? Why?
Silence! I’m very easily distracted, so I like to shut out pretty much everything around me before sitting down to write. Fortunately, I’m a night owl, and I live in a quiet community, so I’ve got the perfect writing environment. Although I am a metalhead, and I’ve read some scientific studies that say that playing extreme music like death metal in the background has actually been shown to help improve some people’s focus, so maybe I’ll give it a try!
Which of your novels can you imagine made into a movie?
Well, I’m under no delusions that this is even in the realm of realistic thinking, but in that entirely hypothetical scenario, I think my second novel, Omega Noir, would be the easiest to adapt. It’s got a healthy mix of action and intimacy, and could be accomplished on the smallest budget. Plus, it’s set mostly in Pittsburgh, my hometown, so there’s no reason it shouldn’t be filmed here, giving my city a good economic jolt! Although there are helicopters in it, and the movies can never get the sound of a helicopter right…
If your book was made into a film, who would you like to play the lead?
Since Leara is really the lead character in Owl Totem, my unequivocal first choice is Oona Chaplin. (I’d also nominate her for Kat Rowan in the aforementioned Omega Noir, though I really can’t imagine the motion picture industry’s biggest hippie willingly playing a techno-optimist.) I don’t know why I always feel such a strong rapport with her characters; something in the way she emotes just hits my resonant frequency.
What book do you think everyone should read?
Obviously anything by Tolkien, but, getting away from the names everyone knows, Soil-Man by Oz Monroe. It’s not for everyone, especially if you’re turned off by foul language and violence, or if you’re a religious person with sensitivity to how certain issues of belief are portrayed. But though it’s short enough to blast through in an evening, it’s incredibly creative, tells a powerful story, has an amazing ending, and is just one of those books that sticks with you. And it’s proof that self-published and/or small-press books can be every bit as engaging and polished as traditionally published ones.
Do you have any advice to offer for new authors?
Ignore much of the advice you’ve heard. It can be information overload, and most of it is a bunch of rules that are meant to be broken, or tips for success that don’t actually work given by someone who in fact just got lucky. But above all, if someone tells you that you don’t need a professional editor, run. Run far, far away. You do need a professional editor. You don’t sell a car without safety-testing it first, or a software product without checking it for bugs. Your book is your art, yes, but to your readers, it’s your product; every product requires some investment for quality control, and if you’re not willing to make that investment, then how do you expect customers to invest in it? Every one of the worst books I’ve ever read is unedited, or credits a family member, friend, beta reader, high-school English teacher, etc., for looking it over. You need a professional set of eyes on your manuscript.
Do you see writing as a career?
No. For one thing, it’s incredibly difficult to make a career as an author. And furthermore, I quite enjoy my “real” job! (I work in the aviation industry, in case you were wondering.)
Who is your hero and why?
Marcus Aurelius. His Meditations are my primary source of inspiration, not just as a writer but as a man, and I have a plaque on my wall with one of his aphorisms that I try to live by: “Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one.” (The jury’s out as to whether I’m succeeding…hehe)
Who designed your book covers?
The covers for Owl Totem and Aethyr were done by Damonza; Omega Noir is by Tim Barber of Dissect Designs. I’d highly recommend either, though as you’re probably aware, Damonza is a bit pricey.
What can we expect from you in the future?
If I answer that, it probably won’t happen. But there will hopefully be an eventual sequel to Owl Totem, though I really hope it doesn’t take me another thirteen years to write!
As a writer, what would you choose as your mascot/avatar/spirit animal?
A Malayan colugo, because they’re most active at night, and no one really knows how to categorize them, and they can fly. (Actually they just glide, but it’s still pretty cool.)
Sean E. Kelly has been writing fiction since 2009, and has no immediate plans to return to the real world.
He published his first novel in 2015 under the pseudonym John Gaiserich, but later unpublished it due to poor quality. His writing exploits were reinvigorated five years later with the publication of Aethyr, which received rave reviews, being dubbed “philosophical cyberpunk” by one reader. This was followed up in 2021 with the technothriller Omega Noir.
Sean’s latest novel, the fantasy epic Owl Totem, is the culmination of thirteen years of world-building and backstory, finally coming to light. The novel draws heavily on the author’s Irish ancestry.
When not indulging his overactive imagination, Sean works as an aviation professional and is an avid photographer. He currently resides in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Website * Instagram * Bookbub * Goodreads
#Epic #Fantasy #EpicFantasy #Adventure #OwlTotem #NewRelease #SeanEKelly #feacthengead #books #readers #reading #booklovers #bookbuzz #BookBlogger #Bookstagram #bookish #bookclub #MustRead #OnTour #BookTour #Giveaway @SilverDaggerBookTours #SilverDaggerBookTours
Excellent excerpts, great cover, Owl Totem sounds like a fantastic epic fantasy and I am looking forward to reading it! Good luck with your book and I hope the blitz was a success!
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing it with me and have a terrific day!