UFI welcomes Author Devon Taylor. Thanks for Joining us!!
What can you tell my readers about yourself that they might not know from looking on your bio or reading in another interview?
Hmmm. That’s a good question. I talk about being a dad a lot, and I talk about my love for heavy/fast/loud music a lot, both of which are things that people don’t automatically assume about me. Let’s go with the fact that I’m a budding home cook. Over the past few years I’ve gotten the chance to really teach myself some great techniques in the kitchen, and one of my favorite things to do is to put on some punk rock and make a good meal for my family.
What do you enjoy doing on your down time?
Whatever free time I get is usually spent with my kids or my wife or both. And if I have some time just to myself that doesn’t involve writing or reading books, I try to spend it catching up on TV shows or movies. For instance, I’ve been wanting to watch Supernatural for years now, and I’m still about, uh, fourteen seasons behind, so....
What is your favorite part of writing?
Definitely the escape. Writing, like reading, is one of those things that allows you to escape into your own head for a while. With reading, you’re given a roadmap and some descriptions, and your imagination takes over, filling in the rest. With writing, you’re the one who’s in charge of creating that roadmap, transcribing the story that’s unfolding in your head. And I think the best part is that no one will ever truly understand what that story looks like to you, just like you’ll never truly understand what it looks like to them. Everybody carries around their own version of the same story, including the person who created it.
Do you have any certain routines you must follow as you write?
I’m not really a ritualistic writer. As long as I have my laptop and some coffee, I’m usually good to go.
What are some of your Favorite books or Authors in the Urban Fantasy/ Paranormal Genres?
Anybody who knows me knows that I’m a huge Stephen King fan, which probably sounds like a cliché but it’s one hundred percent true. The Dark Tower series is a pinnacle for both those genres, I think. I’ll also say that one of my absolute favorite books from the last couple years is The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert.
How would you pitch The Soul Keepers/The Ghost Seekers to someone who has not heard of it before?
The elevator pitch for the series that I always gives is kind of like this: A paranormal fantasy about a young man who dies in a tragic car accident and immediately emerges in the afterlife, where he’s led to a massive seafaring vessel called the Harbinger, the crew of which are tasked with gathering the souls of the dead and bringing them back to the ship for protection from soul-eating monsters and, more recently, a demon who’s after something far more powerful than just the souls the crew of the Harbinger are sworn to protect.
Can you tell us a little bit about the world that The Soul Keepers/The Ghost Seekers is set in?
Both books toggle back and forth between our world (the living world) and an alternate plane of existence that is essentially the afterlife. It looks like an endless ocean but it’s referred to as a river. This is where the Harbinger, a massive, city-size ship, sails and where the souls of the dead are brought for protection. At the beginning of the second book, though, (spoilers, if you haven’t read The Soul Keepers yet) the Harbinger has been sunk. So most of The Ghost Seekers takes place in the living world, following what’s left of the stranded crew as they try to get back to the ship and save the souls that are still trapped there.
Do you have a favorite scene in The Soul Keepers/The Ghost Seekers?
I have many favorite scenes, but I think the one that tops the list comes about three quarters of the way through The Ghost Seekers and is basically just one massive spoiler. So I won’t go into too many details, but it’s a really amazing convergence of a lot of the elements in the story and introduces a character who is also one of my favorites of the series.
Which one character out of all your books was your favorite to write about? What about the hardest to write about?
I don’t know that any of the characters were necessarily difficult to write about. I think one of my favorite characters in the books, though, is the villain, Urcena. She’s evil just for the sake of being evil, and even though she ultimately has a purpose behind her actions, she enjoys doing what she’s doing in a way that makes her delightfully chaotic.
What Other Projects can we look forward to reading from you?
Right now I’m working on a novel that’s a little more grounded in reality but has a lot of urban fantasy elements, along with some elements of sci-fi and horror, and so far I’m totally in love with it. Hopefully you’ll be seeing that sometime soon.
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Devon Taylor was born in Las Vegas, Nevada and currently lives in Pennsylvania with his wife and two daughters. His day job consists of sneaking around the house with ninja-like stealth to avoid waking up his kids. When not writing, reading, or tediously typing out text messages with all the correct spelling and punctuation, he spends his time with his family. THE SOUL KEEPERS is his debut novel.
Find Devon and his books
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The Ghost Seekers
The Soul Keepers #2
“A fantastic high-stakes adventure on a ghost ship
sailing forever into eternity, where every soul is (literally) worth
fighting for—what’s not to love?” —Rin Chupeco, author of The Bone Witch and The Girl from the Well, on The Soul Keepers
There are worse things than death.
The Harbinger is
lost, sunk to the bottom of an otherworldly sea. Every soul that ever
died and was protected within its hold has been lost along with it. But
at least that precious cargo is out of reach of the demon Urcena and her
army of soul-devouring monsters.
For now.
The soul keepers
are broken, scattered, and barely clinging to existence without their
ship or any way to collect or protect the souls of the newly dead. If
they are to have any hope of stopping Urcena’s horrifying plans to
destroy the fragile balance between living and dead, they will first
have to survive long enough to locate the ghost of one of their own, who
sacrificed himself to save the rest of the crew.
Devon Taylor’s cinematic and pulse-pounding duology comes to a thunderous conclusion in The Ghost Seekers.
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