Hello fellow book lovers!

Spring finally feels like it has arrived. While I love a frosty morning, I am very pleased to see the sun again after what feels like endless rain!

Book Updates

Earth and Bones has been through the BETA readers, so now onto round two of editing. Then onto proof reading! The drafting of book 2 in the Faulkes and Stone series, Love and Blood, has commenced and I hit 13k last week which feels like a milestone!

Introverted Indies hosted its second author discussion panel which will be available to watch on our YouTube channel here. While we love chatting with new authors, Lucy and I will be taking March off to regroup and catch up with home life, our writing and our families.

The ebook for AVA is starting to gather a few more reviews after I lost all of the ones attached to ther version with the old cover. So, if you have read AVA and would be happy to leave a review I would be eternally grateful!

Find AVA here 

Blurb: First, MTech came for the city and we allowed it. They put up the Barrier and we stayed quiet, silenced by the fear of what was beyond. Our elderly were next and still we didn’t cry out; then they came for the women, removed their fertility and stole our future, so I hid. I became Alec and I turned my back on my true self, Ava.

Ava can’t live as Alec any longer, the lie is killing her, destroying all that she is.
The world beyond MTech’s Barrier calls to her and she can’t ignore it. She has to know what, if anything, survived the terrible day that tore her family apart fourteen years ago.

But what if the Outside is far more dangerous than anything Ava has ever faced on the Inside?

Currently Reading

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

So far, I am enjoying the book. Though, I dislike both the main characters, Nick and Amy, in equal measure. I am keen to see where it ends.

Once this in done, however, I have the honour of a sneak peak and my cohost, Lucy’s, next novel 😉 

An Interview with C.P Du Toit
Author of A Certain Slant of Light

Hello C.P Du Toit, thanks for joining me at Indie Author Insight. Please tell us a little bit about yourself and your writing journey.

My name is C.P. Du Toit. I'm originally from Northern California but spent six years living overseas in Scotland, South Africa, and Australia before settling in Philadelphia with my husband and our two black cats. I've been a writer of some form since I was able to hold a pen, including elementary school newsletters, articles for the high school newspaper, short stories inspired by my travels, and terrible adolescent poetry that I pasted like art all around my teenage bedroom. In terms of novels, I have always had story ideas that I jotted down on flash cards and in journals, but I wrote my first novel-length piece my first year of university during National Novel Writing Month.

The demands of changing countries, transferring universities, making new friends, and being in college/grad school got to me and I did not write for almost ten years. Then, in 2021, I participated in National Novel Writing Month again and wrote my second novel-length piece. In 2022, I wrote my third, which went on to become A Certain Slant of Light.

Wow, it sounds like you’ve been all over the world. Can you tell us a bit more about ‘A Certain Slant of Light’?

A Certain Slant of Light is a new adult fantasy romance set amidst the unique setting of a reimagined colonial Africa. It tells the tale of Sahle, a young black woman who is transported a new world on her twentieth birthday and learns she is Queen of a nation called Izwe. Sahle must quickly learn all there is to know about Izwe, the magical abilities she supposedly possesses, and her own destiny as a prophesied peacemaker. The problem: she doesn’t have any magic, she is woefully unprepared to be Queen, and one particular Lord seems hellbent on destroying her reign before it can even begin. As family secrets are revealed and threats to her kingdom mount, Sahle struggles to reconcile who she is with the Queen she must become. The fate of a nation depends on it.

I wrote A Certain Slant of Light over the course of nine months in 2022. Then, like most authors, I hated the first draft and took a good amount of time editing it in 2023. I entered the query trenches in the summer of 2023. After several rejections, I had a stroke of luck and signed a contract with a small press in late 2023.

The "aha!" moment for A Certain Slant of Light was when I was on the city bus in Philadelphia. We drove past one particular mural and I remember looking at it and realizing the flower at the center of it was a protea, the national flower of South Africa. I remember wondering what this flower was doing on a wall in the middle of an American city, so far from home. It seemed alien among the cobblestone and brick landscape it found itself in. And that prompted this image in my head of a young woman so out of place -- literally in an alternate world as an alien herself. I immediately jotted down my initial ideas for A Certain Slant of Light.

In terms of themes and tropes, this is very much a traditional chosen one/reluctant hero story. The elements of romance are forbidden relationship and friends to lovers. An overarching theme throughout the story is the question of what it means to be foreign and other. Sahle is the Queen, arguably the center of the nation, yet she does not know the world and feels like an outsider. This is something she (and, I hope, the reader) grapple with throughout the tale.

The book sounds amazing. I’ll be adding it to my TBR. Apart from ‘A Certain Slant of Light’ are you working on anything else?

I'm currently working on edits for the sequel to A Certain Slant of Light. I'm also about to start writing book three. Other ideas are percolating for near-future projects, but I'm not ready to talk about them just yet!

Ideas really do have to percolate don’t they! I find a new book idea needs time to brew before anything can be committed to paper. Tell us about your journey as an author, the highs and the lows. It can be a roller coaster!

The best moment in my author career thus far was definitely when I received my first reader feedback for A Certain Slant of Light. As a child and young adult, I always loved fantasy novels but never saw myself in the main characters. When I set out to write this novel, therefore, I wanted to center it on someone who looked and felt like me -- brown, a little bit of an outcast, someone who didn't fit a particular mold. One of my reviewers actually reached out privately to thank me for writing this story, for depicting someone who looked like her in the genre she loves. She said this was the book she needed as a young woman because it would have made her feel more confident in her own skin. More than any star ratings or words about craft, that really touched me. It felt like someone saw my art and it mattered to them on a profound level.

And that is what being an author is about—connecting with readers. That is wonderful and I agree that is so much better than any star rating. I love the wealth of multicultural characters who are being written, representation is so important. What do you find hardest about writing? I hate marketing!

Unfortunately, I also find marketing my work to be the hardest part of being a small-press author. I have found that the best marketing for me is more about forging genuine connections with readers and reviewers, getting to know them on a personal basis, and sharing my work with them after those friendships are built. That might be more like PR, but it's the only good advice I have! I'm still learning the whole ad and marketing business myself, and it's tough out there.

If you could go back in time and give your past self some advice, what would it be?

I would tell myself not to take that decade-long break from writing. I really believe that being a good writer is 20% natural skill and 80% practice, so I kick myself every day for "wasting" years of writing practice in my twenties. It's not that I didn't want to write; I did. I was just too scared, too focused on the what-ifs about how I would make a career out of it. I forced myself to pursue other avenues and degrees since I was convinced I would never make it as a proper novelist. If I could go back, I'd tell my younger self to believe it's possible and to follow that calling.

Practise definitely helps. I know when I look back and my first novel and compare it to my current project, they are so different. Like with all things, the more we do them, the more we learn and grow. Do you have any other hobbies as well as writing?

Alongside my writing, I'm an avid reader, a hiker, and a traveler. Some of my best story ideas pop up when I'm alone on a winding trail, or sipping coffee in a foreign city.

Is there anything else you’d like to tell us about your book? And where can it be bought?

A lot of people ask what sets my book apart from the other fantasy romances out there. If I had to answer that, I'd say what makes A Certain Slant of Light unique is the lush setting. This story is very much a traditional Euro-centric fantasy but I wanted to integrate elements of Southern Africa, including the exotic plants and animals, the white-plastered architecture, the brilliant rainbows of sunset, the harsh red earth. I think one example of how I tied these elements to the traditional fantasy stories readers expect is in the outfits the characters wear -- fashioned in traditional European styles but made out of Southern African chitenge cloth with bright colors and bold patterns. It was really a passion project being able to marry my love for fantasy romance with my love for Southern Africa, a region I spent almost four years of my life living in.

Thank you so much for chatting, C.P. Du Toit!