Featured Interview With Erin S. Riley
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I was born in Virginia but raised just outside of Cincinnati. I still live 20 minutes away from the house I grew up in. My husband and I have been married for 18 years and we have two kids, a 15 year old daughter and a 10 year old son. My daughter is a gifted artist and was recently accepted to a school of the arts for her final two years of high school. My son is an amazing athlete, playing football, basketball and lacrosse. We have four cats and a new puppy. Unfortunately, the cats are not amused by their new fur-sibling! My job, kids and pets keep me very busy, so I’ve found my best time to write is between 4-6 am.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t fascinated with books! I learned to read when I was four. I didn’t understand the concept of sounding out words–and honestly, the process seemed very inefficient to me anyway– so I just memorized whole words as I went along. To this day I’m a very fast reader, but whenever I come across a word I don’t know, I have a very hard time pronouncing it because I never learned the rules of sounding things out! Nevertheless, I love getting lost in a good book. I enjoy both fiction and non-fiction, and will read just about any genre of fiction as long as the book is well written. I started writing at a young age and still have the books I wrote and illustrated when I was a child. Everyone in my family is dyslexic to various degrees; my husband, both kids, and me. But I’m a firm believer in the notion that dyslexia is a gift, not a curse. This “creative brain wiring” helps me see the world in a vivid, unique way that in turn helps me in my writing.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
I am a very eclectic reader. I’m as likely to read a textbook about neuroscience or one of the classics as I am a blockbuster novel. If I had to pick a favorite genre, I would say historical fiction with romantic elements. A HEA ending is not a prerequisite for me–I enjoy being surprised. I really like to read indie authors because I find they’re not hampered by the “rules” of genre writing as so many authors with publishers have to be. Outlander is my favorite book of all time, followed by Catcher In the Rye as a close second, and Back Roads third. I like books that are deep and meaningful, yet not pretentious. As a writer, I’m inspired by just about everything: the people I meet, the places I’ve been, and the situations in which I find myself. I enjoy understanding how people tick and why they make the decisions they do. My educational background is in psychology, and I worked on a hospital psychiatric unit for years. One of the main characters in Odin’s Shadow is mentally unstable, so I think my background helped me write him pretty realistically!
Tell us a little about your latest book?
My latest book is Odin’s Shadow, the first book in a series of three about an Irish girl and the two Viking brothers who love her. I wrote the book in 2010 while recovering from surgery. I was off work for eight weeks, so the book was written in those eight weeks! The first draft was awful, though, and I spent the next few years editing and tweaking until I was finally happy with it. I signed with Soul Mate Publishing in the summer of 2014 and the book was released this April.
Odin’s Shadow is set in the 800s, deep in the Viking era when the sight of a longship sailing up the coast of Ireland would strike fear into the heart of any man, woman or child. Here’s the blurb:
Selia is a girl on the verge of womanhood, frustrated by the confines of her gender and resentful of the freedom her brother boasts of. Intelligent and resourceful in a time when neither is valued in a female, she longs for an escape from her sheltered existence. Fascinated by the tales of Viking raids told by her maidservant, her hunger for independence is fed through the stories of heathen ferocity she hears at the woman’s knee.
A decision to sneak to the city’s harbor to view the Viking longships leads to an encounter with Alrik Ragnarson, a charismatic Viking warlord whose outward beauty masks a dark and tortured mind. With the knowledge that her father is about to announce her betrothal to a man she doesn’t love, Selia marries Alrik and within a day is on the longship bound for Norway and a new life.
While Selia’s relationship with her new husband grows, her friendship with his brother Ulfrik grows as well. And as Alrik’s character flaws come to light and tension mounts between the two brothers, Selia begins to have misgivings about her hasty marriage . . . especially when a secret from the past is revealed, one that threatens to destroy them all.
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