Authorpreneur Dashboard – Eva Vanrell
The Butterfly Crest
Science Fiction & Fantasy
Between the shadows of the human world, a war as old as time is being fought. Ageless pantheons scheme to obtain or keep control, provoked by the weight of human belief which has altered the realm of the divine. An ancient prophecy speaks of a human woman who will alter the course of this divine war, a descendant of a Great House mired in misfortune and blood, whose history was shaped by the cruelty of the gods. On a day as unremarkable as any other, Elena Vicens, a young woman living a seemingly ordinary life, receives a letter about a deposit box belonging to her mother, nineteen years after her mother’s death. When this letter sends her on a journey halfway across the world from New Orleans to Japan, Elena unknowingly comes into possession of a cursed inheritance. She is suddenly thrust into a world of myths and legends, where the intangible and the strange are the fabric of everyday life, and deathless gods vie for victory at any cost. As allies converge to help Elena fulfill the prophecy, one of whom is struggling with his own inheritance, Elena must choose for herself the measure of her own destiny.
Book Bubbles from The Butterfly Crest
Yokai
The Butterfly Crest is an epic fantasy set in modern times. It is the first book in a series that focuses heavily on mythology, different world mythologies in particular. The story follows Elena, a human woman who suddenly finds herself in the middle of an ancient war, in a world where all myths are real and human belief can create or alter the divine. Each book in the series will involve various mythologies, and in The Butterfly Crest you meet the yokai of Japanese myth, amongst others. Most people I know aren’t familiar with yokai, so including them in the storyline was one of the most enjoyable aspects of writing the book.
On prologues
In the process of writing a book, the prologue is the last thing you write. I’d heard this a million times, but in my case it turned out not to be true. Or so I thought... At the onset of everything, three paragraphs gave life to my book (guided, unknowingly, by the hand of the immodest Mr. Muse). They were not my best work, but they were pivotal and by proxy became my prologue. As I worked to finish the book, I knew in the back of my mind that I would have to revisit the prologue at some point; I needed to infuse the beginning of the story with some of the magic of the rest of the book. It wasn't until over a year and a half later that I realized I had already written it. Halfway through the book, I had written a passage that broke from the narrative of the story. It was a perfect fit.
