Indie Author Week- Kaitlin Bevis

I hope everyone had a great holiday yesterday! 

The Spotlight is back, and today I would like to welcome Kaitlin Bevis!

Author of the Daughters of Zeus Trilogy, a YA mythology series 

published through Musa Publishing.

Kaitlin Bevis spent her childhood curled up with a book, and a pen. If the ending didn't agree with her, she rewrote it. She's always wanted to be a writer, and spent high school and college learning everything she could so that one day she could achieve that goal. She graduated college with my BFA in English with a concentration in Creative Writing, and is pursuing her masters at the University of Georgia. Her young adult series "Daughters of Zeus" is available wherever ebooks are sold. She also writes for truuconfessions.com and Athens Parent Magazine.

Hello Kaitlin! It's great to have you in the Spotlight today! Lets talk a bit about the characters in your series. Is there one character in your novel that you feel the most passionate about? 

For book one, it’s Persephone. Persephone is a short, sixteen year old, blonde girl with bright green eyes. She doesn’t realize she’s a goddess, because her mother never told her. She’s shy. She can’t lie, is non-confrontational to the extreme and consequently is a bit of a doormat, but when backed into a corner she can be pretty resourceful. When the book begins she’s having a rough time. Recently she’s gotten very pretty, and people have started acting different around her. Her old friends from school are being snarky, and guys are just being weird.

What aspect of Persephone was the most difficult to envision? The easiest?

Most difficult: The pretty factor. I had a friend who looked like a super model. She was also shy. I know, from a plain-Jane perspective that whining about being pretty is sort of like whining about being rich. No one cares or feels sorry for you, but here’s the thing. Girls are mean. My friend had to deal with so much crap from the other girls in our class just because they were jealous. Those girls picked on me to, but with her it was different, they were just vicious. Plus, even her best friends were jealous of her, every guy I ever liked was into her. She hated their attention because it drove a wedge between her friends and her. It kind of sucked. And it was like she couldn’t even vent about it without making her friends even more mad. I tried to capture this experience in Persephone, because the whole thing was just so strange to me growing up. But I also tried to balance it against my plain-Jane perspective that was grumbling snarkiness at her. I wanted Persephone to come off as a normal person, struggling with a normal thing, not someone unlikable.

By comparison, everything else about Persephone was easy to write. Particularly her reaction to finding out she was a goddess. I spent an unhealthy portion of my childhood analyzing exactly how I would respond if I ever found out that any supernatural stuff was real. I’m by nature a pretty honest person, so once I got my happy, glowing, “Finally! I’ve known it all a long, lets go fight crime now,” reactions out of the way, my brain went to the less-flattering place. The place where I would have freaked out and called the police on my well-meaning wise, mentor-like person and had them thrown in the insane asylum, thus dooming me to obscurity forever. I considered the ramifications of learning that I was really a princess from the moon Kingdom sent to earth by my well-meaning but now deceased mother. My whole life would have been a lie. My mom wouldn’t really be my mom. My real mom, Kingdom, and everyone in it are dead. These aren’t happy thoughts. They’re heavy, and sad. Persephone loses something when she learns what she is. She can’t trust her mom anymore, she doesn’t know who to believe, everything that she thought was up is down. Understandably she freaks out.

During the birth of your novel, was there any point where Persephone's character took an unexpected turn?

Hah, yeah. My meek little non-confrontational character stabbed a guy with a pen in the first few chapters. I knew from the get go that Persephone would discover her inner strength and all that stuff throughout the course of the series. I just didn’t know how hard core that inner strength was going to be.

If Persephone suddenly sprang from the pages, what questions would you have for her?
After everything I put her through, I wouldn’t waste time asking her questions. I’d run.

Before we get to my last question, I want to give readers a bit more info on you and you book.

There are worse things than death, worse people too. 

The "talk" was bad enough, but how many teens get told that they're a goddess? When her mom tells her, Persephone is sure her mother has lost her mind. It isn't until Boreas, the god of winter, tries to abduct her that she realizes her mother was telling the truth. Hades rescues her, and in order to safely bring Persephone to the Underworld he marks her as his bride. But Boreas will stop at nothing to get Persephone. Despite her growing feelings for Hades, Persephone wants to return to the living realm. Persephone must find a way to defeat Boreas and reclaim her life.

You can find Kaitlin on: 

WEBSITE / GOODREADS / FACEBOOK

TUMBLER / TWITTER / GOOGLE+

Is there a particular passage or scene from your novel that you feel embodies Persephone the best?

Sure thing. Here’s the “Persephone, you’re a goddess” scene:

“Mom, I think I’m going crazy.”

She blinked. “What?” 

“Lately really weird stuff has been happening to me, and I know it’s not real. It can’t be real because no one else notices it.” 

She pulled the chair behind her and sat down. “What sort of things?” 

It all came out in a jumble. “I’ve been having these weird feelings, and everyone acts strange around me. There’s this thing that happens with their eyes and suddenly they don’t act like themselves anymore. And the weather.” I shook my head. The more I talked the stranger it sounded. “I don’t want to go nuts and start attacking people.”

“Oh, honey.” She put her hand on mine and drew me to the chair beside hers. “You’re not going crazy. This is my fault. I thought I’d have more time to tell you, more time to prepare you.”

“Tell me what?” 

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When she spoke, the words seemed to fall out of her mouth against her will. “You’re a goddess.” 

“Mom, I’m serious,” I said, annoyed at her for taking this so lightly.

“So am I. I was going to wait until you graduated. Build up a support net of people who would understand, but if you’re already coming into your powers, I’ve waited too long.” 

My forehead wrinkled incredulously. “You actually believe this?” There was no trace of humor in her voice. 

She gave me a level stare and continued talking. “You had to act normal and fit in to be safe, and that would be much more difficult if you knew you weren’t human.”

Not human? My head was spinning. It was genetic. Of course it was genetic. Crazy ran in families. “Mom, I think we should call someone. Tonight was stressful, but—”

“This isn’t a nervous breakdown, Persephone. You are a goddess.”

She seemed to change every time she said that word. It was like she was less my mother and more something else. Her expression grew more detached, her eyes somehow got older, wiser. Looking at her, there was nothing comforting about her that said mom. This was something else. Something powerful.

Something scary. 

No. This was insane. Everyone secretly wished they were special. But in all my dreams of discovering I was a superhero, or a witch, or maybe even a princess, I’d never gone as far as goddess. That was too pretentious. Only seriously disturbed people thought they were gods. The words my mother had spoken weren’t some tolerable fantasy that could be indulged; they were dangerous.

“Stop saying that! If I were a goddess, I’d have powers and could have blown that guy away!”

“We aren’t as powerful as we used to be. Most of the remaining gods are those who were associated with nature. People still believe in and fear the world around them. We are lucky, Persephone. As the Goddess of Nature, my position is fairly secure.” 

“You think you’re the Goddess of Nature?” I interrupted in disbelief.

“I primarily preside over agriculture.” 

I thought of our shop. “Like Demeter?” 

“I am Demeter, or Ceres to the Romans, or hundreds of other names depending on the time or culture.” 

“Of course.” 

She sighed, looking old and weary as she studied me. “In time you will come to terms with your divinity. For now, all you need to know is that you’ve been discovered, so we have to leave.”

Awesome! Thanks so much for sharing this with us! Readers, you can read reviews of Persephone and the other books in the Daughters of Zeus series on GOODREADS. It is also available for purchase through AMAZON, B&N and wherever ebooks are sold!