Inspired by fish out of water.
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| The strange parallel universe of Carnelia, from The Carnelian Legacy by Cheryl Koevoet |
Have you ever felt like a "fish out of water"?
You know... that feeling you get when you're in a strange new world - full of different people, different traditions, and a different way of life. Sometimes you've had time to prepare. Other times, lightning strikes and you're dropped right in.
It's shocking. Exhilarating. And yeah, even pretty scary too.
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| Madaba, Jordan |
My fish-out-of-water experience was in the Middle East, in a tiny town in the middle of the Jordanian desert. Talk about culture shock! From the blazing sun to the steaming-hot, bottomless cups of tea, to the "Yallahs!" and "Shukrans!" and "Imshees!". The experience shocked me at first. But it was an adventure that ultimately made me a better person.
Here's Cheryl's fish-out-of-water experience:
Twenty years ago, I was the Marisa MacCallum in my own story. I may not have traveled to another dimension, but by starting my life over as an expat when I moved to Europe and more specifically, The Netherlands, it felt like I had landed in another world.
When I first came to Holland, I didn't speak a word of Dutch and everything from the country's food to the customs was completely foreign to me. Wandering through the centuries-old buildings and castles scattered about the Lowlands, I felt an amazing sense of history embedded in each of the stone walls and I wished so badly that they could talk!
I saw the modern version of an ancient world through the eyes of an average American teenager and it blew me away. I was in awe of the fact that I was walking in the footsteps of Johannes Vermeer in Delft or of Rembrandt in his hometown of Leiden. I once slept in a 700-year-old hotel and the mere thought of all the generations of people who had slept there before me fascinated me.
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| De Drie Molens, Leidschendam, Netherlands |
It was this sense of being a unique part of history in an ancient world that inspired me to write the book. The clash of cultures is something that I am all too familiar with and it was this theme that serves as the main plotline in The Carnelian Legacy. The idea of a young woman from the twenty-first century trying to understand life in a world without cell phones, TV's, and internet was intriguing to me and I decided to write about it.
Although we have all of these modern conveniences today in The Netherlands, it still strikes me as funny when I see a young woman of Marisa's age enjoying her frappucino and scrolling through her smartphone as she sits in a Starbucks where Dutch painters of the Golden Age once enjoyed their ale more than four centuries ago.
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| The Carnelian Legacy on Amazon.com |
Now on to The Carnelian Legacy:
Imagine this: you're an 18-year-old dreamer who's suddenly brought down to earth when your father dies. Before you can say "Excalibur", a freak lightning storm transports you to the parallel universe of Carnelia, a medieval land bursting with knights, monsters, and (my personal favourite) war. Of course, the knights in question find you particularly intriguing, and you're suddenly caught in a love triangle that will decide both the fate of Carnelia... and whether you can return home.
Whew!
If that sounds like an amazing fish-out-of-water experience to you, make sure you enter the Rafflecopter giveaway below for a chance to win a FREE softcover OR e-book copy of The Carnelian Legacy.
Just enter your email address or login with Facebook for 3 entries. Gain 3 additional entries by following Cheryl on Twitter and Facebook, and tweeting about the giveaway.
The giveaway closes at midnight on Friday, March 29. Yallah!
a Rafflecopter giveaway
For more on the book, visit TheCarnelianLegacy.com and check out the smoking trailer below!
Don't forget to check out the Blog Hop, and join in, too!
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