Earlier this week I was very lucky to be invited to the Pan MacMillan Children's Book offices in London, for a live google chat with Alyson Noël, to celebrate her latest book Echo. It was published in the UK earlier this week by Pan Macmillan.Echo is the second book in Alyson's Soul Seekers series, which is about a young girl named Daire finding.
She inherited a magical destiny—and a mission to stop a powerful family of dark sorcerers. She never expected to fall in love with one of them.
There’s still so much Daire Santos has to learn about being the last Soul Seeker….and about herself. As her magical training becomes more intense, so does her relationship with Dace. But when she learns that his connection to the evil Richter family goes far deeper than she ever imagined, she begins to question if love really can conquer all.
Dace is painfully aware that he wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for the Richters’ dark magic—and now his brother Cade is determined to use his love for Daire against him. Dace is willing to sacrifice anything to protect the girl he loves —including his own life. But will Daire allow it? And what if defeating Cade costs not only his life, but his soul too?
I found the live chat amazing fun (you can watch it below), and found Alyson to be such a lovely lovely person! in case you don't want to watch the full video, I thought I would share a few interesting facts about the Soul Seekers series and Alyson:
- Alyson took a 3 day course in shamanism, venturing into the lower world and finding her spirit animal, as part of her research for the series.
- Alyson is extremely dedicated, and writes seven days a week.
- Based on her fascination with twins, Alyson included twin brothers Dace and Cade in her latest series. They are polar opposites of each other; one being good, the other evil. Alyson picked these names because the letters of both their names can be re-arranged to create the other.
- Alyson uses the 'Blake Synder' method when writing, using a beat sheet to structure the key plot points of her story.
