This week we are shining a spotlight on Wendy Sparrow’s paranormal romance Servants of Fate series where three brothers, sons of Father Time, meet their match when they are charged with taking the life of mortal women on New Year’s Eve. For a limited time you can pick up the trilogy for 99-cents! Click here to learn more! We kick off the week with a guest post by Wendy Sparrow.
Creating a World and Crafting a Beginning
By Wendy Sparrow
One of my favorite parts of being an author is the chance to create worlds. Most of what I write takes place in a contemporary timeframe on earth, but that’s not as limiting as it sounds, especially when you’re dealing with paranormal elements. Whenever I start crafting a new story, I begin with a series of “what if” questions. With the Servants of Fate series, it began with: what if Father Time had sons that moved around on Earth? My mind moved on to figuring out what they’d do in regards to time and New Year’s Eve. Once I decided to make them servants to the Fates, I had to start creating balance and rules for their powers and goals. What did they do for the Fates? Well, they sacrificed a mortal each New Year’s Eve to create balance for the Fates changing the fate of other mortals. How did this make them feel? Did they like their jobs? Did they like mortals? 
The questions build and help create as they do. Every answer leads to an aspect of the story or the world. One of the most important questions in a paranormal story is: what powers do they have? Magical powers have to be handled with a firm hand. The rules for magic are part of the framework of a world. Without rules, the magic feels too intangible. If you don’t place limitations, then your world feels unrealistic. There isn’t enough balance of good and bad, and readers—who are mired in the reality of plenty of bad to go with their good—can’t relate. There’s no conflict for a person with limitless powers and a story without conflict is the equivalent to a literary grocery list. Part of my process for this series was to figure all this out. What powers did the sons of Father Time have? Well, they could start and stop time. They could summon things to their plane. They could take a life…or not, and that’s where the story really starts. Every story has a jumping off point—that moment where a wrench is thrown in the regular run of things, where the monotonous rhythm of a life changes. One of my first “what if” questions will always be what that wrench is and what chaos does it cause? Perhaps there’s a dark side to me because I get a little fiendish glee in the idea of jostling my poor creations’ perfect existence. It’s good for them, though. They need it. In each of the Servants of Fate books, the sacrifice of a soul on New Year’s Eve becomes the impetus for the heroes and heroines to discover love and what it means to really live. They break out of the pattern they’ve been in and start on a new path. As they do, I lay down more groundwork for the world in dialogue and description. The goal is to have a fully-realized world where the reader knows what can and can’t happen. Creating a world and starting a story are some of my favorite aspects to being a writer because there’s a feeling of hope and possibility that coincide with them. It feels like you’re beginning an adventure yourself and you hope that your reader feels the same way. As a reader, I’ve stepped into many well-built literary worlds and the only downside to that is when you have to leave. I feel the same way about stories I’ve written. I’ve become so immersed many times that leaving gives me almost a culture shock. I hope you get a chance to step into the world of the Servants of Fate series and see what happens when that wrench hits the gears and the characters are forced to feel, grow, and love.
As servants of Fate, Father Time’s sons must sacrifice a mortal’s lifetime on behalf of humanity before each year ends. It’s simpler if they don’t get involved, as their immortality is a barrier to relationships and to understanding the emotions of those whose lives end in a blink, especially if these time holders have a hand in it. Servants of Fate pass in and out of the lives of those around them, never interacting, until a different type of fate steps in. They can stop time, but love will leave them powerless.
