SWORD OF THE GLADIATRIX PROMO POST!!


HEY THERE FRIENDS, I HAVE A LITTLE SOMETHING DIFFERENT TODAY, SWORD OF THE GLADIATRIX  IS A FF STORY, SO HERE IS A LITTLE SOMETHING FOR ALL YOU FF FANS OUT THERE :), I HAVE BOOK INFO, LINKS, AN EXCERPT, AUTHOR BIO AND LINKS, AUTHOR Q & A AND EVEN A RAFFLECOPTER GIVEAWAY, SO LET'S GET TO IT :)!
BOOK INFO:
Author Name: Faith L. Justice
Book Name: Sword of the Gladiatrix
Release Date: May, 2015
COVER:




BLURB:

From the far edges of the Empire, two women come to battle on the hot sands of the arena in Nero's Rome. They seek to replace lost friendship, love, and family in each other's arms; but the Roman arena offers only two futures: the Gate of Life for the victors or the Gate of Death for the losers.
Pages or Words: 260 pages, 75,000 words
Categories: Fiction, Gay Fiction, Historical, Lesbian Romance, Action/Adventure

EXCERPT:
A slave wraps my lower legs with felted wool and straps a gilded greave to my left shin, because I fight as myrmilla. He smells of sour sweat, as do I. I’ve already fought once today, tested fate, and won. The gold sand that Nero favors in the arena still crusts my hair and rasps the skin under my sweat-soaked breast band. I will go again before the ravenous crowds to satisfy their bloodlust. For what? An emperor’s whim? The crowd’s passing fancy? A sacrifice to their gods?
I swallow the bitter gall that surges into my mouth.
Across the room, another slave straps armor on Cinnia, my beloved. She looks at me with pride in her eyes and a brief smile on her lips. We said our goodbyes last night, clasped breast to breast, thigh to thigh, a stolen moment before being sent to our lonely cells. My heart beats an irregular rhythm.
My love. Light to my dark. Fire to my ice.
Cinnia is goddess-given to me; from a land of mists and forests, so different from my country of desert and blistering sun. Without her, I would be dead. Without me, so would she. We have suffered, struggled, lived, and loved. Now we go out upon the sands of the great arena to die. One by her lover’s hands, the other by her own.
It is not the life or death I chose for myself, but it is the one the gods gave me.
HERE ARE THE SALES LINKS FOR YA: 
Amazon.com Worldwide (US, UK, Canada)
BarnesandNoble.com 
CreateSpace (print only)
iBooks (ebook only)
Kobo (ebook only)
Smashwords (ebooks--all formats)

 HERE IS AN AUTHOR BIO AND LINKS:
FAITH L. JUSTICE writes award-winning novels, short stories, and articles in Brooklyn, New York. Her work has appeared in Salon.com, Writer’s Digest, The Copperfield Review, the Circles in the Hair anthology, and many more. She is a frequent contributor to Strange Horizons, Associate Editor for Space and Time Magazine, and co-founded a writer’s workshop many more years ago than she likes to admit. For fun, she digs in the dirt—her garden and various archaeological sites.


Where to find the author:
Publisher: Raggedy Moon Books

Cover Artist: Todd Engle

BELOW IS A Q & A WITH FAITH, AND BOY IS SHE A GOOD INTERVIEW! HERE WE GO: 
Today I’m very lucky to be interviewing Faith L. Justice, author of Sword of the Gladiatrix. Hi Faith, thank you for agreeing to this interview. Tell us a little about yourself, your background, and your current book.

Thanks so much for having me here at Bike Book Reviews. I’m a science geek and history junkie and have been all my life. I knocked around a bit and worked as a lifeguard, paralegal, systems analyst, human resources executive, and college professor before settling into full-time writing. I live in Brooklyn with my family and the required gaggle of cats. For fun, I like to dig in the dirt—my garden and various archaeological sites.



  1. Favorite thing about building your own world?

I love doing the research, digging for the details that bring a narrative to life. Not just the everyday stuff of food, clothing, architecture, social mores, etc., but building compelling characters. We have a few bare facts about female gladiators: a couple of names on a carving, a gravestone or two, a few literary references, a couple of artifacts. But what do we know about the women themselves? Who were they? Where do they come from? What do they think about their lives and hope for their futures? Answering those questions and so many more is why I write.


  1. What inspired you to write your first book?

I fell in love with a historical figure, a woman named Hypatia, the Lady Philosopher of Alexandria who was also a mathematician and astronomer. I wanted to tell her story. I first ran across her at a feminist art exhibit The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago. In the accompanying book, Hypatia is described as “a Roman scholar and philosopher who lived in Alexandria…she stressed the importance of goddesses and the feminine aspects of culture.” The article decries the pagan woman’s death at the hands of a Christian mob. What I didn’t realize was that many of the “facts” in this story were wrong.

I embarked on a journey to learn as much as I could about this fascinating woman and found a bewildering array of fact and fiction. I despaired of piecing together the puzzle until 1995 when Harvard University Press published a slim translation of Hypatia of Alexandria by Maria Dzielska, a Polish classical scholar. She did a masterful job of marshaling the scant primary sources to give me a glimpse of the real woman behind the historical and literary myths.

It’s basically her version of Hypatia’s life that I tell in Selene of Alexandria. I created a fictional protagonist (Selene, a young female student) because I needed characters that could move in all circles of Alexandrine life, which Hypatia did not. Selene, her family, friends, and servants have to live in the world Hypatia and the other historical figures create. They experience directly the effects of the decisions of those in power—for good or ill.


  1. Do you have a specific writing style?

I tend to write in what is called “very close third person.” First person is popular in historical fiction, but I always have more than one point of view character and it’s hard to write all of them in first person without confusing the reader. Close third, allows me to get in their heads and expose their feelings. First person is also restrictive because the reader only knows what the character knows at the time.


  1. Who are some of the authors that inspired you to write?

This is going to sound weird, but none of my favorite authors—Ursula K. Le Guin, Mark Twain, Nancy Kress, Neil Gaiman—inspired me to write. They intimidated me. I’ve always been a voracious reader. It was a run of horrible, banal, uninspired fantasy novels (I don’t remember the authors) that sent me to the keyboard screaming, “I can write better than that!”

Of course, I couldn’t—then. It took a year or two of practice to get me as good as those bad writers and a few more taking the odd course, reading a few books on craft, and joining a writer’s workshop to surpass them. What those excellent writers I mentioned did inspire me to do is persevere. They all made their livings writing and they wrote a lot, getting better at what they did. I might never be a Twain or Le Guin, but I can practice and improve, getting better with each book.


  1. What are some jobs you’ve held? Have any of them impacted your writing? How?

My resume has a gypsy-like quality to it. I’ve lifeguarded, researched for universities, and directed a legal clinic. I took a job with a Fortune 50 company and worked my way up from systems analyst, to management trainer, to organizational effectiveness consultant, to HR executive where I stayed while moving through two other large companies. I finally tired of the corporate rat race and went back to my first love, academia. I taught as an adjunct professor for a few years while consulting and free-lance writing.

All of those jobs (except life guard) required writing—but of a very different sort. When I moved to business I had to unlearn the bloated academic style with all its passive voice and pedantic tone. Business writing had its own problems laden with jargon used to obfuscate more than enlighten the reader. Free-lance non-fiction came as close to preparing me for fiction as anything else. I had to write to deadline and word count and tell a compelling story—all good skills for a fiction writer.

Thanks again for hosting me on your site. Many hours of great reading to you all.


THANKS FAITH, THESE ARE SOME AWESOME ANSWERS! THANKS FOR COMING BY! HERE IS THE REST OF THE BLOG TOUR GUYS: CHECK IT OUT!
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HOW ABOUT A GIVEAWAY? CLICK THE RAFFLECOPTER PIC BELOW AND ENTER TO WIN A COPY OF THE BOOK, GOOD LUCK FRIENDS:



THANKS FRIENDS, FOR JOINING ME IN LOOKING AT SWORD OF THE GLADIATRIX SEE YOU NEXT TIME FRIENDS:



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