Interview with Embry from Kait Nolan’s FORSAKEN BY SHADOW

My good friend, and awesome writer, Kait Nolan, recently published her first novel, Forsaken by Shadow, the first book in the Mirus series. If you know Kait on twitter, then you already aware that she’s witty, intelligent and a fun tweeting partner. Not only does Kait have an informative blog about writing, Shadow and Fang,  check out her blog on cooking, Pots and Plots, for yummy recipes.  

To wet your whistle, here is a blurb for Forsaken by Shadow: 

Banished from their world with his memory wiped, Cade Shepherd doesn’t remember his life as Gage Dempsey, nor the woman he nearly died for. But when Embry Hollister’s father is kidnapped by military scientists, the only one she can turn to is the love from her past. Will Gage remember the Shadow Walker skills he learned from her father? If they survive, will Embry be able to walk away again?

Today I have a special treat for you all, Embry from Forsaken by Shadow has agreed, after being encouraged by her author, to sit and answer some questions.

Embry, tell us a little about yourself.

I am a firecaster. Well, sort of. My father is a firecaster. He’s able to manipulate and control flame. So am I, but where I differ from others of my race is that I can produce fire. I can thank my mother for that—and little else. As a fire elemental she wasn’t what you’d call a maternal figure. She gave me up after I was born, so it was always Dad and me. And then came Gage.

Can you tell us a little about the Mirus?

I could, but then I’d have to kill you. You’re not supposed to know about us, you see. It’s our greatest law. But hell, after everything that’s going on with your military, I guess it’s only a matter of time. I’m already suspended…

Mirus is the collective term for the entire paranormal world.  There are many races—from the usual suspects of vampires, werewolves, and witches, to other shifters, shamans, wraiths, the fae.  There are many races that humans have no mythology to explain.  We’ve been around as long as the humans have, in some cases longer.  For the last several centuries, we’ve lived in secret, hiding in plain sight.  We’re governed by the Council of Races, which you might think of as a paranormal United Nations.  Each race has representatives on the Council and they vote and determine the laws.  The name of the game is secrecy, as that’s believed to be the only way we will survive. 

When you saw Cade, whom you knew as Gage, in the ring for the first time, what’s the first thing that went through your mind?

He’s alive. I didn’t believe it, not really. It was like being sucker punched. After all these years…Matthias let me think that he was dead. Because of me. If this whole situation with my father being captured hadn’t come up, I doubt he’d ever have told me.

Gage had fallen in with an interesting crowd. Care to tell us a little about them?

Well I wasn’t in New Orleans long enough to get to know them, but despite Matthias’s intention to get Gage entirely away from our world, Gage still managed to wind up surrounded by it. His best friend was a Wylk—a wolf shifter. A crazy Cajun one who owned a bar. And his adopted mother figure Jeannette—well, I don’t know exactly what she was. A witch of some kind, maybe. She wasn’t easy to read.

What did you do all those years you thought Gage was dead?

As far as I knew, he was dead because I didn’t have enough control of my abilities. So I focused on learning control. I couldn’t be a Shadow Walker like I’d always wanted—that wasn’t one of my abilities, but I could still put my training to use and did when I joined the Investigation and Enforcement Division of the Council of Races. We’re what you might think of as the paranormal FBI. I made a pretty decent name for myself until I went rogue to rescue my father.

Do you think you would have tried to find Gage if you’d found out he was alive but your father wasn’t in danger?

I couldn’t have stopped myself. I would have had to see for myself that it wasn’t a lie, that he really had survived. I don’t know if I’d have approached him. :pauses to reflect: In saner moments, I’d have recognized that what Matthias did, wiping his memory, was the safest thing for him. As a human in the Mirus world, he could never be truly safe, and that’s why I always planned to walk away again when it was over. No matter how much it hurt. But I don’t know if I really could have done it.

When you found Gage, even after he remembered who he was, he could no longer Walk. Can you speculate on why?

Yes, he could no longer Shadow Walk. We didn’t know why at the time. I thought maybe it was a result of the memory spell—that it was going to take longer for everything to come back than I’d anticipated. Or maybe he’d been living human for too long. He shouldn’t have been able to Walk as a human in the first place, and Dad always speculated it was because he’d come to us as a child, before learning that certain things weren’t possible. Living as a human, he’d have lost that belief. As to why he truly couldn’t Walk, you’ll have to read to find out.

Tell us a little about your father.

My father is a Shadow Walker. That’s like the Special Ops Force in our world. He can control the shadows, travel by them. That’s what makes the Shadow Walkers so good at what they do. Dad’s a career Walker, but he hasn’t always agreed with the Council’s orders. He broke all kinds of rules to bring Gage home as a child and train him as his protégé.

It was a little reckless of you to attempt to rescue your father with no plan. That’s out of character. What else have you done in your life that’s a bit out of character?

I wasn’t always like this. I didn’t always have a plan, and I wasn’t so regimented—a fact which Gage likes to remind me of with regularity. But when Gage died—or I thought he had—everything changed for me. It was all because I lacked control. There’s no group more controlled than the IED. Maybe the fact is that losing my dad like that made me revert back to that time, when I was little more than a kid, when I thought I could do anything and the rules just didn’t apply.

Thank you Embry, I know you’re a busy woman. One more question. What’s next for you and Gage?

A vacation? Seriously. The world’s about to go to hell…we should take one while we still have the chance. We have a lot of catching up to do.

Good point.

You can learn more about Kait Nolan on Facebook and Goodreads.

Forsaken by Shadow is available at Scribd, Smashwords, Amazon, Barnes and Noble,