T n'T's Confidential: Nephylim (GIVEAWAY)

Welcome to another T n T’s Confidential installment. Let's all welcome author  Nephylim. *Applause and cheers*.

After answering my meticulous questions, Nephy has agreed to give away two of her books: The Unfairness of Life and the Wicked Watchers, Looking at the Lads. To participate in the giveaway all you have to do is leave a comment with your email (so we can get in touch with the winners).

The winner will be announced during the weekend on my blog and Nephy will get in touch with them.

Hope you enjoy!

Born into a poor but loving mining family in the United Kingdom, Nephylim grew up in the beautiful and history rich South Wales Valleys, becoming the first in her family to attend university. As a lawyer practicing Family Law for several years, the profession allowed Nephylim to learn more about human nature at its worst and best moments, and develop empathy and a view of life not limited by social standing or background.

Tapping into the heritage of her people that throughout Earth's ages welcomed the wandering bard into the hearts of their villages as keepers of lore, Nephylim trained as a Druid and brings the richness of her Celtic past and spiritual training to enrich and elevate her writing. Since a child Nephylim has been fascinated with other worlds, which exist within and alongside her own and has reveled in creating worlds and characters for others to enjoy.

Despite lack of family support, Nephylim continued writing privately and eventually found the Gay Authors website. With the positive response and a warm welcome received, she found the confidence to pursue her passion to a greater degree. Feeling gay fiction was a woefully neglected corner of the market where readers were all too often presented with what amounted to erotica, Nephylim strives to write quality gay fiction where sex and sexuality is not the central premise. Instead, concentration is given to character and narrative development through storytelling that goes beyond the physical.

Nephylim still resides in Wales, UK, and enjoys writing, reading, art, and taking part in medieval reenactments.

Welcome Nephy! Tell us about your recent and upcoming releases…

So far I have six books released as ebooks. The Unfairness of Life, a YA adventure with a snarky young man, haunted by his past and trying to run away from his future, who finds love with a persistent suitor who sticks by him even when things get freaking weird.

Two collaborations with my friendly neighbourhood flashers which are out under the names of Bigger Briefs, Looking at the Lads (a voyeur’s paradise) and Bigger Briefs, Reluctant Romance (where love needs a little persuasion to blossom).

Then there is my one and only forage into ‘proper’ erotica – Hump in the Night. Which is a collection of five stories of supernatural love. That was fun to write but I was sick to death of sex after I’d finished. Just writing it of course. That being said they’re not all about sex and there are some interesting stories of angels and demons, werewolves and vampires.

Then there are the first two books in the Enigma series Enigma I and Enigma II fighting the man. The books follow River and Silver in their struggle to free the beautiful and unique Silver from his past as a sex slave. Initially locked deep in his own mind hiding from the horror of seeing his first love beaten to death in front of him, he opens like a flower and ventures out into a world that is strange an alien to him. Simple, loving but frightened he takes one-step at a time towards understanding and independence.

When River’s parents are killed in a car crash they are left to take care of his twelve year old brother and when Social Services become involved and Silver’s past is put under the microscope he’s plunged into hell yet again.

Silver is the favourite character I have ever written and I am totally in love with him. An interview with him can be found on my blog. http://nephylim-author.blogspot.co.uk/p/enigma.html along with some excerpts from the book

It has recently been brought to my attention that there are some editing issues so it is likely that this will be corrected very shortly. I will announce on my blog when this process is complete.

This brings me to my new book, The Runaway, which will be released on September 12th.

I think the process by which this book was born is interesting in itself. The inspiration is an old Celtic fairytale. I have the prologue of the book, where two characters tell us all about the fairytale, posted in full on my blog. Just check out the page for The Runaway. I have pages for all my books with snippets and illustrations.

In essence, the moral of the tale is that it’s better to live life free and have to struggle than to want for nothing but be without freedom.

This has been kind of mulling around in my head for a while. Then a friend of mine started an art project—to draw / paint one subject for a year, to see among other things, how her art developed. She chose an androgynous male supermodel and started sending me photographs and increasingly amazing pieces of art. The results so far can be found here http://mandartania.tumblr.com/

It then occurred to me that a supermodel might fit the bill for my fairy story and Ciarrai was born. Typical of my characters, he then took control and made himself a Hollywood actor as well, just for a bit more prestige. He was my princess in his ivory tower. My bird in his gilded cage.

Very damaged by what he perceives to be nothing short of imprisonment under the strict control of his manager, his family and his lifestyle, the free spirit seeks an unusual and very unwise method of buying himself time and space. It goes tragically wrong and he’s left more of a prisoner than ever.

In this case, he doesn’t wait for a prince charming to rescue him but takes his fate into his own hands and runs away, choosing to live a simple life in a cabin by a lake in North Wales.

Here, he meets Jack, a man left without a memory after the car accident that killed his parents. They develop a friendship after ‘whirlwind Ciarrai’ hits Jack like a tornado. Gradually they get closer and closer… until the past catches up and whips Ciarrai away again.

It’s a fairytale, a romance, had a lot of humour and yes, there are one or two sex scenes. But that is definitely not what the book is about.

What is your inspiration when it comes to writing?

Now there’s a question. Anything and everything would be the answer. I once got inspiration from a mannequin I saw in the window of a shop on the way to work. By the time I got to the office I had the bones of an entire novel that had absolutely nothing to do with mannequins or shops. My train of thought can be somewhat erratic.

Dreams are often a source of inspiration, sometimes for scenes, sometimes for whole novels. Also snippets of conversation I hear at bus stops, on trains, in waiting rooms. I am a family lawyer and I hear stories of extreme situations of stress and the dynamics of family life every day from clients. Sometimes one of them will spark off a train of thought that leads to a story.

And then there are myths and legends and local history.

Yep, just about anything and everything.

How do you pick the names for your characters?

I have a list. Whenever I hear a name I like I put it on the list. I have a thing about names. They have always been very powerful things. It’s a belief by many peoples that when you name something you have power over it and you help shape it. My characters tend to grow into their names.

I love unusual names and I can only relate to characters whose names I like. I have great trouble immersing myself in characters whose names I don’t like.

With The Runaway, I specifically wanted an Irish name, so I looked at lists of Irish names and Ciarrai (Kee err ee) jumped out at me. Jack became Jack because my cousin’s son, Jack was staying with me at the time. I like him and I like his name so…

What are you currently working on?

Another fairy story, this one with fairies in it. It’s about a fairy called Draven who falls in love with a human man. After showing himself to ‘his human’, Keiron, three times he’s sent to be his slave for three months, in the hope he’ll learn to listen to someone and curb his wildness.

There are various adventures as the fairy learns about the human world, for example why is the sink not under the floor and how does Keiron manage to make it rain in one place whenever he wants it to? After learning to skateboard in the park and getting used to drinking milk from cows instead of cats, through adventures with jam and finding out that sherbert affects him like badly cut LSD, Draven insists Keiron is his true mate, even though Keiron has difficulties with accepting this, especially saying the ‘L’ word.

You are both an artist and a writer. What do you like doing best? Or is one unequivocally related to the other?

I do find myself painting my characters sometimes, primarily Silver, and now Draven who jumped out at me from behind some leaves in a photograph someone sent me. Looking behind the subject I could see him peeping at me and I had to paint him… wings and all.

I get different things from my art than my writing. Writing is something I ‘have’ to do. Art is something I ‘want’ to do. I don’t dedicate anything like enough time to it as writing takes over too much of my life, but when I’m painting I lose myself and hours can pass in the blink of an eye.

I’m never satisfied with my art, not even my better pieces. I am not good at drawing and everything I do has to be interpreted from composites of photographs and images. I would love to be able to create from my mind but that’s never going to happen. Interpretation is the best I’m going to get while, with writing everything is original and comes straight from my mind.

From what I’ve read, your characters tend to be tortured souls, emotionally scarred, is there a particular reason for this?

I can’t torture people so I torture my characters instead  Seriously, I suppose writing is a therapy for me. My stresses, fears, worries and all the negativity in my life pours into my writing and my poor characters get it. The more I like a character, the more I torture them. \Except Silver. The more I fell in love with him the less I tortured him.

I believe there is a much deeper reason which relates to my ambiguous relationship with the male gender as a whole but that has dark roots and I won’t go into it now. Let’s just say I guess I write about men because I like to torture them.

I think my stories have a lot of humour, too. The Runaway has a lot of, so does my fairy story (preliminarily named Fairies at the Bottom of the Garden). It’s usually pretty cerebral humour and quite dark too, but then so am I.

Do you wear any special outfit or token when you sit down to write?

Usually my pyjamas  I sit on the sofa with my laptop on my knees while my son sits on the other side with his laptop on his knees playing Diablo III or WOW

If given the choice would you have preferred to be born a man?

Now there’s a question. It would be great to be able to pee standing up. I used to think I’d have liked to be a man… when I was ten and being told I should ‘act like a lady’ when I wanted to get dirty and climb trees. Since then, no I’m happy being what I am. I could never have given birth to my beautiful children if I had been a man, and I loved being pregnant.

What is your favourite part of a book?

The part where the protagonist gets tortured, but only if it’s a man

Any words for your readers?

Thank you for reading. There is nothing I could hope for more than that my characters live in someone else’s head and heart and that my words make them ‘feel’ something… anything.

Sales links

Visit my blogspot at http://nephylim-author.blogspot.co.uk/  to find out just how strange and unusual I am

Enigma I - https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/110641?ref=redhaircrow

Enigma II - https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/159126?ref=redhaircrow

The Unfairness of Life - https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/120555

Hump in the Night - Five stories of the paranormal http://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-humpinthenight-786310-144.html

Wicked Watchers - Looking at the Lads - A collaboration of m/m writers. Seven stories by seven fabulous writers. http://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-wickedwatcherslookingatthelads-762380-144.html

The Runaway: September 12, 2012  From Flying With Red Haircrow

Upcoming Event: Chat With Nephylim & Red Haircrow at Love Romances Café on September 6, 2012 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LoveRomancesCafe/

REMEMBER TO LEAVE A COMMENT IF YOU WANT TO WIN ONE OF NEPHY'S BOOKS!