Today’s
guest, Elle Hill, is here to chat about her sci-fi paranormal romance novel, The Tithe.
During
her virtual book tour with Goddess Fish Promotions, Elle will be awarding a $50 Amazon gift card to a randomly drawn winner.
To be entered for a chance to win, use the form below. To increase your
chances of winning, feel free to visit her other tour stops and enter there,
too!
Bio:
Elle began writing novel-length romances in junior high. She continued
scribbling wild tales on her wide-ruled notepads till those pesky college and
career things got in the way. Finally, after earning her Ph.D. in Sociology,
Elle gave herself permission to get a life. Now, she spends just about all her
waking hours doing one or more of the following: teaching, writing,
volunteering, and tending to the whims of her furkids.
Welcome, Elle. Please tell us about your
current release.
Back Blurb:
“Every seven years,
seven persons from each of the ten towns must go into the desert, where they
will enter into the realm of Elovah, their God.”
No
one knows exactly what happens to these seventy Tithes, but everyone knows who:
the “unworkables,” those with differing physical and mental capacities. Joshua
Barstow, raised for twenty years among her town’s holy women, is one of these
seventy Tithes. She is joined by the effervescent Lynna, the scholarly Avery,
and the amoral Blue, a man who has spent most of his life in total solitude.
Each
night, an angel swoops down to take one of their numbers. Each night, that is,
except the first, when the angel touches Josh… and leaves her. What is so
special about Josh? She doesn’t feel special; she feels like a woman trying to
survive while finally learning the meanings of friendship, community, and love.
How
funny that she had to be sacrificed to find reasons to live.
What inspired you to write this book?
As
the book says in its dedication: “To
all people with differing physical and mental appearances and capacities. We
deserve a story in which we’re the heroes.”
Truth
is, I’m tired of reading about characters who don’t look and think like my
loved ones and me. Since I’m a writer and the god of my own, tiny, made-up
universes (it’s good to be queen!), I realized I have the power to, as the
way-overused quote says, be the change I want to see in the world.
Also,
I’m a sociologist. I couldn’t resist the challenge of writing about how a group
of people would react when faced with their inevitable, imminent death. Since
no one knows when we’re going to die, this book is really a sociological
examination into how we Americans respond to the inevitability of our own demise.
The Tithes’ seventy days could just as easily be yours or my seventy years.
A
tad morbid, maybe, but true.
Excerpt from The Tithe:
Moments later she turned to Blue and stared.
In profile, his nose seemed sharp, proud, maybe a touch too big for the rest of
his face. A handsome nose, she realized, on a beautiful face. “Can you tell I’m staring at you?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said.
“How?”
He was silent for a long moment. “I heard you
move. I listen for your movements. But even if I’d been distracted, I’d have
felt the heaviness that comes when people focus on me.”
“You’re very handsome,” she told him. Had she
ever thought him otherwise?
“Thank you.”
She smiled at his casual acceptance of the
compliment. Did the words mean less to a sightless person, or did they not carry
the same meaning they did to her? “Tell me about your childhood.”
“What about it?”
“What’s your best memory?”
Blue sat beside her, a statue painted in
colors he would never know. “There isn’t. Child or adult, my memories are of
existing. I ate, I slept, I listened to services. Sometimes the food was worse,
sometimes the services more interesting. But there’s nothing like happiness or
sadness. There only was.”
“Was what?” she asked softly.
“Me.”
She shook her head. “It sounds so sad.”
“It wasn’t. You can’t have sadness unless you
know happiness. I knew neither.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes.
Finally, in a voice mere decibels from a
whisper, Josh asked, “What about now?”
Shameless, she knew, but maybe voicing
the question would exorcise it.
“Why are you asking a question you already
know the answer to?” he asked in his inflectionless voice.
“I don’t,” she insisted.
“Everything changed when you touched me,” he
said.
After a confused moment, and with many
darting glances, she asked in a low tone, “In bed?”
“In the hallway. You touched me, and my life
cleaved into a before and a now. Before, I existed, and it was fine. I was
content. And then, you. Everything cracked open, and I felt as if I’d just
reminded my senses to function. Now, everything feels so raw. Sometimes just
the passing of time abrades my skin. Being with you is exquisite and real. And
painful.”
Very carefully, Josh put her hands on her
knees and leaned forward. She stared at the wall opposite them, against which
Taro no longer pressed himself. In she breathed, and out. In and out.
No, she didn’t understand. Or, maybe a
little. When she was a young girl, maybe six or seven, a new imrabi had made it
her goal to befriend her. Josh hadn’t known what to think of this tall, strong
young woman, her right cheek and half her brow stained with a wine-red
birthmark. Her name was . . . well, honestly, Josh didn’t remember her name.
The imrabi hadn’t stayed long. Another rab’ri had needed her.
The woman must have pitied her, this plain,
sassy little girl who dressed herself in the morning and braided her own long
brown hair. She made it a point to sit with her during services, to sneak her
chocolate milk and extra biscuits, to ask her about herself. Josh had responded
cautiously, although she’d never refused a single buttered roll.
Then, one time, the imrabi decided to tickle
her. It was what adults did with children, but Josh had no way of knowing that.
She only knew few of the imrabi spoke with her, let alone showed her physical
affection. When the woman’s fingers brushed against the sensitive undersides of
Josh’s arms, she shrieked. The imrabi, mistaking Josh’s reaction for laughter,
persisted.
Unsure what to think, only knowing the
strange, almost painfully tender feeling of the woman’s fingers on her own
untouched skin, Josh began screaming. The woman rocked back in alarm,
overbalanced, and fell on her bottom. Josh’s screams bounced off the stone
walls, rebounded, scratched at her own ears. The imrabi stared hard at her
before rising to her grand height and quitting the room without a word.
The woman never spoke to her again, and a few
months later, she left their rab’ri.
Twenty-year-old Josh straightened her posture
and rubbed her calf with her other foot.
“What can I do to make it hurt less?”
she asked him.
Blue’s lips thinned into a smile. “I don’t
want it to hurt less. Every second that scrapes my skin is another one I spend
with you.”
She wasn’t used to being precious to someone.
Tolerated, of course. Special, sure—no one catalogued and organized the
rab’ri’s library with her level of efficiency. But not cherished, treasured,
adored.
At the end of my
life. The end of my life. She bowed her head,
clenched her fists. Six years she’d known about this, six years she’d prepared.
She’d never wanted to die, but she’d been ready for it—until coming here.
The worst part? Knowing her time with her
friends, these people who had become as dear to her as breathing, might end
tonight. Or tomorrow night. Or in ten nights. But soon. Surely she should hope
the angels came for her before everyone else.
Stop being selfish, she thought, before
her diaphragm clenched in a single laugh. Was she being more selfish in hoping
she died first, or last?
Sometimes she thought leaving them here for
another seventy days was the cruelest thing Elovah could have visited upon
them.
Blue’s hand grabbed hers, and she held on
tightly, willing to pretend for a moment it anchored her in this dust storm of
uncertainty.
What exciting story
are you working on next?
I’m
actually penning my first lesbian paranormal romance. Woot! Here’s the premise:
A security guard, Jacqueline, is paid big buckeroos to escort and protect a
leader, Marin, from Florida to South Dakota to attend a summit. They’re hunted
by creatures who look human but clearly aren’t. The more she gets to know her
charge, the more Jack thinks Marin might not be entirely human, either.
When did you first consider yourself a
writer?
I’ve
never not written. I wrote stories in grade school. I moved to very, very bad
novels in junior high. In high school, I penned angsty poetry. I stopped
writing during the college years – you know, since getting five hours of sleep
a night was a luxury and all. After finally graduating, though, I started
whining about how I wanted to write but, ohmigosh, was I good enough, and would
people buy my books, and I don’t even know how to publish or market a book. My
wise oldest sister, also an author, told me to shut up and start writing. Best
advice ever.
Do you write full-time? If so, what's
your work day like? If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find
time to write?
I
write for pleasure and work as a sociology instructor for pleasure and pay. Since it pays the bills, I tend
to privilege my teaching above my writing, which means if it takes two years to
complete a novel, then two years it has to be. During super busy times, like
midterms and finals, I have to abstain completely from writing. Alas! I fiercely
love both my jobs, though, and wouldn’t trade them for anything. Okay, maybe
I’d accept a bit more pay for both, but other than that…
What would you say is your interesting
writing quirk?
I
have no idea if other writers do this, but I’m constantly acting out words that
elude me. For example, I’ll shake my hands and blow out my breath and mutter,
“What’s the word for that?” I’ve been known to make sad, puppylike sounds and
ponder aloud, “Is that more a whimper or a moan?”
As a child, what did you want to be when
you grew up?
I’ve
always wanted to be a writer. Once I got older and realized most writers can’t
sustain themselves with their craft alone, I bounced from chef to teacher to
social worker. Heck, my first year in college, I majored in music. Luckily for
everyone, I realized I have precious little musical talent and switched to
psychology. A year later, I switched again, this time to “Social Sciences,
primary emphasis sociology,” as it says on my transcripts.
Anything additional you want to share
with the readers?
Thanks
so much for reading my information and thoughts! I’d love to hear from any and
all of you: elle@ellhill.com. Have a gorgeous autumn.
Thanks, Elle. Happy writing!
