Hey, peeps! Today I have Alythia Brown on my blog to talk about how she mixed a little fantasy and a little Lakota mythology to create her new release, Dakota Captive. Take it away, Alythia!

Dakota Captive had been a work in progress for years before I finally took it seriously and finished the book. I was living in Oregon for a short while and would jog in the forest, thinking about how the story would play out. At the time, my sons were three and zero and I didn’t have very much time for silence (or thinking, really), except when I was running. The serenity of nature pushed me to develop my plans.

I knew I wanted to write a story about the Lakota, but I didn’t necessarily want to write historical fiction and I knew I couldn’t break away from fantasy writing just yet. In my “spare time,” I read about Lakota mythology and ideas began to brew.

And then I remembered the Peace Pipe and my somewhat unusual trip to North Dakota when I was younger. My mother had realized that the artifact we thought was a wagon spoke was actually an authentic Lakota Peace Pipe and we embarked on a trip to return the pipe to the ancestors of the slaughtered people of Wounded Knee. I wanted to surrender this story to my characters so they could make it their own, mix in some Lakota mythology, and twist the entire thing into a fantasy novel.

I am currently working on book two in the trilogy. Now that all three of our kids are three and older, I hope to write at a faster speed!

When the evil spirit of Jumlin returns with his army of Offspring, the Earth Spirits are summoned to protect the Sioux. Unbeknownst to Charli, these Earth Spirits are a sacred secret. So she probably shouldn’t have spied from behind a rock when they shifted from their animal forms. She shouldn’t have taken pictures. And she definitely shouldn’t have gotten caught. And they’re not going to let her go until some creepy witch doctor, or something, erases her memory.

So all she has to do is try to keep her big mouth shut, get her memory erased and go home, right? Wrong. Because Jumlin’s Offspring are stalking Charli. And since no one can explain this unusual behavior, it becomes imperative to enter the Other World for sanctuary. Now if only she can figure out why she’s beginning to fall for one of her abductors on top of everything else…

Buy Links:

Amazon

About the Author:

Alythia Brown was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she  now lives with her husband and their three small children. She found her  inspiration to write Dakota Captive after traveling to North Dakota to return an authentic peace pipe to the Lakota Natives. The artifact had been picked up after the Massacre of Wounded Knee in 1890, and eventually ended up in the hands of one of her ancestors–who, in turn, told everyone it was a
wagon spoke. Alythia is the author of two short stories, published in the Mertales anthology, and she aspires to publish many more books for children, teens, and young adults.

You can stalk Alythia here:

Website

Twitter

Thanks for coming by, Alythia!