Act of Will
Will Hawthorne is
in trouble. He had been looking forward to his 18th birthday because
that meant he’d finally be a professional actor, but Will has a knack for
screwing things up royally. He winds up on the run from the authorities and
into the arms of a party of principled adventurers who represent everything
Will doesn’t believe in—principle, self-sacrifice, maybe even magic—but they
seem to be his best chance of staying alive and free for a few more days…
But when his new
“friends” take a job investigating a band of ruthless and mysterious horsemen
who have been devastating a land far from all Will has known, he encounters an
altogether different level of danger. Soon it is not clear which is more likely
to get him killed, the party’s nobility, the enemy’s merciless efficiency, or
his own special talent for fiasco. Can Will get used to this world of vanishing
adversaries and magic swords? He will have to if he’s going to survive it. And
to wind up rich and in the good graces of the beautiful Renthrette, he’s going
to have to do rather more than that…
“Hartley’s
prose is so graceful, his narrative so taut and his battle-scenes so exciting
and well-described… This is especially true of the compulsively readable second
half which unfolds with remarkable grace and power.” Booklist
A “clever
page-turner” Publishers Weekly
(Starred review)
“Fast
paced and beautifully written” R.A. Salvatore
“I was
amazed by these vividly knowledgeable adventures of a youth living by his wits
in a world much like Elizabethan England.” David Drake
“Adventure
meets a hero who just won’t shut up in this fast-talking charmer of a novel”
Kate Elliott
Categories:
JUV037000 JUVENILE FICTION / Fantasy
& Magic
JUV001000
|
JUVENILE FICTION /
Action & Adventure / General
|
Author Bio
A.J. Hartley is the New York Times and USA Today
bestselling author of books in a variety of genres.
His thrillers include The Mask of Atreus, On The
Fifth Day, What Time Devours and Tears of the Jaguar. These contemporary
adventures rooted in history and archaeology have been translated into almost
thirty languages worldwide.
His fantasy adventure series (Act of Will and Will Power), centering on eighteen year old actor, Will Hawthorne,
was first published to critical acclaim by
Tor.
With David Hewson he is the co-author of Macbeth, a Novel, an adaptation of
Shakespeare’s play written specially for audio and voiced by celebrated
Scottish actor, Alan Cumming. It was nominated for a 2012 Audie in the Best
Original Work category and published as a conventional book in spring 2012,
immediately becoming a Kindle international bestseller. Hartley and Hewson are
currently working on a novel based on Hamlet.
The first of a new middle grades fantasy
adventure series, Darwen Arkwright and
the Peregrine Pact, was published by Penguin/Razorbill in Fall 2011,
followed by Darwen Arkwright and the
Insidious Bleck in 2012 and Darwen
Arkwright and the School of Shadows in 2013. The first book in the series
won the Southern Independent Booksellers’ award for best young adult novel of
2012, and has been nominated for the North Carolina School Media and Library
award for middle grades book of the year and for the Grand Canyon Reader award
in Arizona.
AJ’s stories are driven by mystery and
danger but also reflect his abiding interest in archaeology, history, and
foreign travel. As an English major at Manchester University he took extra
classes in Egyptology and got a job working on a Bronze Age site just outside
Jerusalem. Since then, life has taken him to many places around the world, and
though he always leaned more towards the literary than to the strictly
historical, his fascination with the past continues unabated.
He has an M.A. and Ph.D. in English
literature from Boston University, and he is the Russell Robinson Professor of
Shakespeare Studies at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, and works
as a scholar, screenwriter, dramaturg and theatre director. He is the author of
The Shakespearean Dramaturg
(Palgrave/Macmillan 2005), an upcoming performance history of Julius Caesar (Manchester UP), Shakespeare and Political Theatre
(Palgrave 2013), and Shakespeare on the
College and University Stage (Cambridge University Press, 2014), as well as
numerous articles and book chapters in his field. He was the editor of the
performance journal Shakespeare Bulletin,
published by Johns Hopkins UP from 2003-2013 and a regular contributor to the
writers’ blog www.magicalwords.net.
He has more hobbies than is good for anyone
and treats ordinary things like sport and food and beer with a reverence which
borders on mania. He is married with a son and lives in Charlotte. You can
visit his website at www.ajhartley.net.
Author Interview:
1)
When you write, do you plan the storyline or
just go with the flow and see where it takes you? Plotter or Panster?
I
used to be a pantser but I tended to produce books that rambled and didn’t have
a clear sense of what they were or where they were going. That’s okay if you
are a really clear-sighted editor, but it takes me a long time to get the kind
of distance I need from a book to be able to see what’s wrong with it. Months,
even years. So now I use a rough outline, on the understanding that I can always
deviate from it, but that if I do I also have to modify the outline so I don’t
get lost or stuck and so that the story retains its shape.2) Where do you do most of your writing? Do you have a special spot?
I have an
office in my house and a standing desk where I can face the wall and be
completely undistracted. I know that sounds crazy, but I need to keep
everything that doesn’t grow out of the book out of my head. No music. No
coffee shop background noise. No friends and family members stopping by to see
how much I’ve done…
3) Are any of your characters based on people you know?
My lawyer says
to say no J
4)
Who was your favourite author as a child? Who is it now?
C.S.
Lewis, maybe? Ursula Le Guin? Tolkien? I still like them all, though now I’d
add Neil Gaiman, J.K. Rowling and Shakespeare.
5) Did you always want to be an author? If not
what was your ambition?
Actually yes, though it took me a long time for
that to come true and along the way I became a college professor. I did
seriously consider becoming an archaeologist when I was at university.
6) A lot of
authors have playlists for their books. Do you like to listen to music whilst
you write and if so can you give us any recommendations?
Nope. See #2 J
7) Can you tell us a bit more about your book and how it came about?
I grew up a
true nerdling, not just in terms of being immersed in books, but I also played
Dungeons and Dragons and the like. I loved high fantasy but as I got older I
found it harder to connect to characters who were either handsome, noble and
brave or ugly and evil. I remember reading classic YA like The Catcher in the
Rye and wanting to see that kind of realism in fantasy. So I wrote Act of Will,
which centers on a teenaged actor who doesn’t really believe in anything
(certainly not magic) and doesn’t see the point of honor and self-sacrifice. In
other words, I took a very modern kind of character and dropped him into a
swords-and-sorcery world to see what would happen. And to make it more fun, I
made it a first person narrative so that everything in the book was mediated by
Will’s no-nonsense personality. Then I pushed all his buttons to see how he
would react J
8) What made you want to write for the YA
market?
I think there’s a freedom to YA that doesn’t
always survive into adult fiction. There’s also something exciting about
writing stories about characters for whom everything is new and each moment is
shaping the adults they will be. It’s invigorating.
9) Do you ever get writers block and if you do,
how do you beat it?
I don’t normally get blocked during a story
because I try to think it out in advance, but I will struggle with exactly how
something is going to work, or whether a story needs rethinking. If I’m really
stuck, I’ll walk the (colossal) dog around the neighborhood, talking till I
either figure it out or the neighbors call the cops. If that doesn’t do it,
I’ll move on to something else, sleep on the problem, and hope an idea emerges.
If it doesn’t, I’ll try to focus on what the precise nature of the problem
really is so I can identify the kind of solution I need. Sometimes that does
it.
10) If you could take only 3 things with you onto a desert
island what would they be and why?
Can one of them
be a boat? J Or a TARDIS (told you I was a nerd)? The
latter would be cool because even if it couldn’t fly me off the island it’s
bigger-on-the-inside technology would allow me lots to explore including—of
course—a library.
Oh, and the
island should have an unlimited supply of non-melting chocolate truffles which
(for reasons I don’t have time to explain) supplied all my body’s nutritional
needs with no ill effects of any kind.
Thanks AJ!
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