Book Tour – “The Pact” by Brantwijn Serrah

When she isn’t visiting the worlds of immortals, demons, dragons and goblins, Brantwijn fills her time with artistic endeavors: sketching, painting, customizing My Little Ponies and sewing plushies for friends.

She can’t handle coffee unless there’s enough cream and sugar to make it a milkshake, but try and sweeten her tea and she will never forgive you.

She moonlights as a futon for four lazy cats, loves tabletop role-play games, and can spend hours on end sketching characters and scenes in her secret notebooks.

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Who is your favorite author?

I have a lot of favorites, usually favorites for different reasons. I think my all-around favorite is JK Rowling, however. I think her talent for storytelling is amazing on many, many levels, and in fact I’m not sure she gets quite as much credit as she deserves. Other favorites are Stephen King, Jim Butcher, and lately Sarah Waters.

How do you describe your writing style?

I’m first and foremost a storyteller, so I write in the style of an entertainer, I guess. I think, if one looks, they could find theme, motif, and deeper meanings in my books…but all of that would be incidental. I am here to tell you a tale, take you on an adventure. My style is a reflection of that.

Use no more than two sentences. Why should we read your book?

The Pact is a supernatural “weird west” adventure novel, and the first book in a grand quest. The journey of a thousand miles begins with one dangerous gamble…you don’t want to miss it.

Have any of your characters been modeled after yourself?

In a way, all my characters start out as fulfilling a personal desire for the story they exist in. I guess you could say they are a reflection of my fantasies. In that way, all reflect me, a little bit. How many of them are like me, though? I’d say, in many ways, they are more like someone I’d like to be. Serenity—the main character in The Pact—is a seriously tough, sarcastic, and determined character. In her, I realize my own desire to be totally independent and powerful enough to seize my desires. At the same time, she experiences some really fantastic ass-whoopings courtesy of her own hubris, and she has to learn and adapt. I think, in that way, I remind myself of fallibility, and the reality that I, too, can be spectacularly wrong.

If you could exchange lives with any of your characters for a day which character would you choose and why?

Probably Rhiannon Donovan, from my Blood and Fire series. I wish I could say I had some lofty, virtuous reason for this, but really, I’d just love to experience her terrific luck with the ladies. It would probably be a day of debauchery and sin, no lie.

What books have most influenced your life?

I’ve been greatly influenced by Itand The Stand, both by Stephen King, which seems like an odd thing to say, but it’s true. One of my favorite quotes comes from The Stand. I’m paraphrasing here, but it goes something like, “We can only be the captains of our own souls. And from time to time, some smart-ass psychologist questions even that.”

I’m also creatively influenced by the Harry Potter series and The Dresden Files (two wizards named Harry, who’d have imagined?). Reading these books can really get my creative juices going, and they’ve gotten me out of lots of writing ruts, just by reminding me what an awesome story one can weave, full of magic, adventure, danger, and triumph.

If you could select one book that you could rewrite and add your own unique twist on, which book would that be and why?

If I could rewrite The Dresden Files, Harry Dresden would be giving in to a lot more of the dangerous, wicked ladies who are constantly coming on to him. Lana Raith, for one. See, but I know that the author has kept Harry away from these indulgences because it strengthens the character, shows his deep integrity. Still…I guess I have a thing for characters doing the wrong thing, even when they know it’s wrong, for wickedly self-indulgent reasons. I think my Dresden fanfic would be better kept in the world of non-canon imaginings, though.

Beatles or Monkees? Why?

The Beatles, because Nowhere Man. ‘Nuff said. No, but seriously, I cannot get into the music stylings of The Monkees.

Who should play you in a film of your life?

I’m just going to be wildly vain and self-satisfying here and say Sarah Michelle Gellar. She’d do a hell of a lot better job at being me, though, to be honest.

Fleshlings and darklings… Rune-weavers and demons… When you walk in the land of the Reaper, who will survive?

Serenity Walker has cast runes for as long as she can remember. Her teachers call her a prodigy, and her secret studies hold the key to unlimited potential. Once an orphan left on an old woman’s doorstep, Serenity finally belongs. But when her mentor is murdered right in front of her, her hopes of a home die with him.

Her quest for vengeance leads her into a dangerous deal with a demon. Armed with its dark power and her own talent with the runes, she blazes a trail across the lands where ranchers and railroad men are kings, where the prevailing law is the law of the gun. To find the man who reshaped her past, Serenity offers up her future. She’ll face a world where weavers are hunted down to be hanged, whipped, or burned alive…but she won’t face it alone.

As Serenity’s mission takes her farther than most weavers are willing to go, she’ll have to decide who her true enemy is: the wicked men of the world, or the powerful demon inside her.

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The monk stood in wait for her, halfway up the aisle. He’d appeared out of nowhere again, quick and quiet as a scavenging rat, and glared at her with eyes full of mean shock and disgust.

“Witch,” he spat. “I knew it as soon as I saw you. Devil! Bride of—”

Serenity threw the sigh of fehu at him, the sign of the cattle’s horns, and it caught him high in the chest to send him stumbling backward. The power issued forth a bit weaker than usual. Her demon felt suffocated in the holy place, sapped by the wards against their kind and hollowed out by the ravaging spells she’d twisted back in the tavern. But it cast the insufferable priest to the stone, striking him down with a callous resentment, and she stalked across the aisle at him.

“How dare you come into this place of worship!” he sputtered, crawling backward on his behind as she came closer. “How dare you—”

“How dare I?” she snarled.

“Murderer!”

“All I wanted was a place to rest for the night,” she muttered. “A room and a bed, and to be left alone. I didn’t come here to harm anyone. But somehow I get you, chastising me in the street, thinking to tell me what I can and can’t wear even while you sit there ogling, and I get your servants breaking into my room and burning years and years’ worth of study, and then I get a mob of your people screaming for my blood, planning on hanging me in the middle of the night. And you, padre, you have the gall to call me a murderer?”

“The Lord will repay you in kind!” the priest shrieked. “When you come here, doing the devil’s work! Wearing his symbol upon your breast! Whore! Devil’s whore!”

She leaned down and grabbed him by the front of his robes, pulling him up to meet her eyes.

“You’re right,” she hissed. “I do the devil’s work. I wear his mark. I traffic with demons and I command their power. So it might have been wise of you and your people not to piss me off.”

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