Once Upon a Twilight!: Blog Tour: Ice Like Fire by Sara Raasch | Interview

Welcome to our stop on Ice Like Fire tour for Sara Raasch. This tour is hosted by Rockstar Book Tour.

Ice Like Fire
Snow Like Ashes #2
Author: Sara Raasch
Reading Level: Young Adult
Genre: Historical Fiction
Released: October 13th 2015
Publisher: Balzer + Bray

It’s been three months since the Winterians were freed and Spring’s king, Angra, disappeared—thanks largely to the help of Cordell.

Meira just wants her people to be safe. When Cordellan debt forces the Winterians to dig their mines for payment, they unearth something powerful and possibly dangerous: Primoria’s lost chasm of magic. Theron sees this find as an opportunity—with this much magic, the world can finally stand against threats like Angra. But Meira fears the danger the chasm poses—the last time the world had access to so much magic, it spawned the Decay. So when the king of Cordell orders the two on a mission across the kingdoms of Primoria to discover the chasm’s secrets, Meira plans to use the trip to garner support to keep the chasm shut and Winter safe—even if it means clashing with Theron. But can she do so without endangering the people she loves?

Mather just wants to be free. The horrors inflicted on the Winterians hang fresh and raw in Januari—leaving Winter vulnerable to Cordell’s growing oppression. When Meira leaves to search for allies, he decides to take Winter’s security into his own hands. Can he rebuild his broken kingdom and protect them from new threats?

As the web of power and deception weaves tighter, Theron fights for magic, Mather fights for freedom—and Meira starts to wonder if she should be fighting not just for Winter, but for the world.

Interview

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
I’m Sara Raasch, author of the YA fantasy trilogy SNOW LIKE ASHES. I’m 26 years old. I live way too close to DC and therefore have a deep and unending hatred of traffic. My husband and I named our cat after Ezio from Assassin’s Creed.

Two down, one more to go. So far, what are you top 5 favorite moments from Snow Like Ashes series?
OH GOSH MEAN QUESTION. Okay, so far, my top five favorite moments (in no particular order):

The ballroom scene in SNOW LIKE ASHES
When Meira is in the memory cave in the Abril work camp.
Chapter 26 in SNOW LIKE ASHES
Pretty much any scene with Ceridwen or Simon. They crack me up.
The last line of Chapter 29 in ICE LIKE FIRE

Do we get to meet any new characters in Ice Like Fire?
OH GOD YES. Ceridwen, the princess of Summer; Simon, the king of Summer; Caspar, Nikoletta, and Shazi, the royal family of Autumn; Giselle, the queen of Yakim; Jesse and Raelyn, the king and queen of Ventralli; basically all of the remaining royals in Primoria.

Without spoilers, were there any scenes you had to cut that you wished you could have kept?
Oh yes! I went through a crazy lot of drafts for ICE LIKE FIRE, but one scene in particular kept popping back up—and it’ll actually be up on Dark Faerie Tales as part of this blog tour!

Can you give a hint of what's to come?
I like to think of the series as:
SNOW LIKE ASHES was about Warrior Meira.
ICE LIKE FIRE was about Queen Meira.
And Book 3 is the best of both those parts, the culmination of who Meira is supposed to be: a Warrior-Queen. It’s by far my favorite book in the series, and the one into which I put every last remaining scrap of badassery, fighting, action, intensity, romance, and tension.

Sara Raasch has known she was destined for bookish things since the age of five, when her friends had a lemonade stand and she tagged along to sell her hand-drawn picture books too. Not much has changed since then — her friends still cock concerned eyebrows when she attempts to draw things and her enthusiasm for the written word still drives her to extreme measures. Her debut YA fantasy, SNOW LIKE ASHES, came out October 14, 2014 from Balzer + Bray, and the sequel, ICE LIKE FIRE, comes out October 13, 2015. Neither features her hand-drawn pictures.