NBTM + #Giveaway: Keepers of the Stone by Andrew Anzur Clement @andrewaclement @GoddessFish

Keepers of the Stone

by Andrew Anzur Clement

GENRE: Historical Young Adult Fantasy

Keepers of the Stone. Book One: The Outcasts



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In a far corner of the British Empire, a mysterious girl gallops away on a horse, fleeing for her life.  Malka has sacrificed everything to protect an all-powerful stone from falling into the hands of the malevolent Urumi. The last in a Sect of thieves, the girl is a trained killer. But will her lethal skills be enough to defeat the Shadow Warriors and their superhuman abilities? 


The fate of the stone may depend on Stas, a courageous youth born into exile from a country that is not on any map. Nell, his friend since childhood, has been caught up in the Dark Order's evil designs. The young outcasts must confront demons, real and imagined, with the help of mystical new allies. Their journey will take them to distant lands and change their lives forever.



Keepers of the Stone. Book Two: Exile



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Stranded on the American frontier, Malka must stop at nothing to safeguard the all-powerful stone. She has come under the protection of a snarky felinoid – a shape-shifting girl who traces her lineage back to the court of Vlad Dracula. They must rescue with Henry, the American orphan whose thirst for knowledge could help decipher the clues to the next
leg of their journey – if the Urumi don’t kill them first.





Alone in yet another strange land, Stas mourns the unthinkable loss of his friend, Nell.  Cryptic messages offer new hope. But the Dark Order has devised another strategy to outwit the band of misfits. Plans are betrayed and alliances are formed as history points to the final objective of their quest.

Keepers of the Stone Book Three: Homecoming

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Stas and his companions have made their way to the partitioned homeland he has never visited. He dares to hope that Nell may be alive. The doomed princess Bozhena vows revenge on the Shadow Warriors, who have enlisted Malka’s most bitter enemy in their latest plot to control the powerful stone.


With the help of a streetwise gypsy girl, the unlikely travelers must outwit the Urumi and deliver the stone to its final destination. All they have to do is put aside the differences that threaten to tear them apart. The secrets of the past hold the key to the history of the future.

Excerpt: (Book Three: Homecoming)

“Who are you?” the man asked, looking behind himself in surprise. Inside the kitchen, some of the other staff were moving to see what was going on in the lobby. That could not be allowed. The kitchen employee turned back to find himself looking down the barrel of a six-shot revolver.

“I’m the one who’s pointing a gun in your face. Let me in. Now,” Stas demanded.

The man seemed to hesitate for only a second before stepping aside, placing his frame against the open door. Holding the weapon with both hands, Stas edged forward. In front of him, he could see the kitchen. It was a rather dark space. Various dishes sat on the stone counters in different stages of preparation. Most of the staff looked at him with stares of fear and shock. When Stas used to dream of coming to his family’s home city, this was just one more way in which it had not at all been the experience he’d had in mind.

 There was a sudden yowl, followed by the sound of a foot impacting with flesh and a body crumpling to the floor. Stas glanced back just long enough to see that Liza – now in her human form – had taken down a younger man, about Stas’s age, with a side kick. He had been waiting beside the doorframe, apparently intending to attack the Slav from behind with a butcher’s knife. Kneeling quickly, Liza retrieved the cutting tool, which was smeared with blood from some kind of beef or pork meat. Standing in the doorway, she raised it up to a point beside her head. The felinoid turned the blade towards herself as she inspected it briefly, before allowing the ends of her lips to curl slightly upwards, while jutting out her lower jaw. Concurrently she nodded twice, as if deciding that this would do nicely.

“Let’s move!” the felinoid barked at Stas.

Interview with Andrew Anzur Clement

What inspired you to write the Keepers of the Stone Trilogy?

I spent years traveling and living in Europe and South Asia, while the studying the history and culture of both regions. Much of the fantasy world that I create is based off of real Slavic or South Asian-related myths. The books' events are set amid real life events, people as well as sometimes deadly Sects, and Societies. I'm also a researcher investigating the linkages between migration and common European identity. I got the concrete inspiration for Keepers of the Stone while living in Coventry during the 2015/16 Migrant crisis.  The initial impetus behind writing these books came from findings related to my own research. My international -- and interspecies -- cast of characters are sent on a journey around the world on an unwitting quest to find a place where they belong, while preventing chaos from being unleashed upon a world that will give them no quarter.        

Can you tell us a little bit about the next books in Keepers of the Stone or what you have planned for the future?

Sure. I'm currently working on Voyages of Fortune: a new trilogy set in the same universe. It's also a partial sequel to Keepers of the Stone. It picks up in Central Eastern Europe in 1889, about two years after the end of the main action in Keepers. The course of the novels' takes us through a plethora of locations and time periods -- from the fin-de-siècle Hapsburg Empire to Somalia  in the early 2000's. As the characters move between these places and times they come to realize that there is more connecting them than they could ever have known. They find themselves caught up in a mystic power struggle that spans over five-hundred years, involves a tall pirate ship that moves by folding space and a cheetah that can turn in to a person. It's a story about rediscovering lost roots and how the pasts we never knew we had can come to define who we are.    

Can you tell us a little bit about the characters in Keepers of the Stone?

My main character is a mixed raced orphan abandoned by her South Asian mother and British father. Raised by a real-life Sect of thieves and killers, which kills their victims by strangulation, Malka thinks nothing of relieving others of their belongings. As we encounter her for the first time, she has already sent the rest of her Sect to their deaths, in order to protect a mystic stone from the dark designs of the Order of the Urumi -- a mystic cult with superhuman abilities. Now the last of her kind, she must see the stone safely to an unknown destination as part of a sudden journey she never planned to find herself on.

Along the way she is unwittingly joined by a cast of personalities ranging from an American orphan with a wide mental reservoir of knowledge to a  sarcastic Were-cat protector, assigned to her by the mysterious Society. Together with them and the help of Stas, a refugee child born to a Polish father in Egypt, Malka must protect the mystical jewel and learn the true reasons behind her upbringing, with nothing but a sash, grim determination and plenty of gallows humor.   

You know I think we all have a favorite author. Who is your favorite author and why?

Henryk Sienkiewicz, a Nobel prize winning Polish author who lived and wrote around the turn of the 19th century. He's the author of my favorite novel:  'In Desert and Wilderness.' The back stories (and names) of Stas and his friend, Nell in Keepers were partially inspired by the main characters in that novel. Though, you don't need to have read it in order to enjoy Keepers of the Stone. In many ways, I think that I enjoyed in Desert and Wilderness so much due to Sienkiewicz's elevated and yet somewhat tongue-in-cheek writing style. He narrates as Stas overcomes greater and greater odds to achieve seemingly impossible deeds, all the while attributing these successes to his Polish heritage.

 As I mentioned above, I was inspired to write Keepers of the Stone during the 2015/16 migrant crisis. Sienkiewicz's original work was closely connected with this. Written in 1910, Stas is put forth as the paragon of Polish youth. However, it is also made clear in the text that, born to a refugee father, he has never been to the country, and lived his entire life in North Africa. That was the original inspiration for Keepers. I knew I wanted to take this beloved character from Sienkiewicz's classic novel and 'update' him for the 21st century. In Keepers the 'Stas' character  is surrounded by those who've been marginalized from society. But who may be more like himself than the average Pole, and force him to confront what it really means to be part of a nation. 

If you could time-travel would you travel to the future or the past? Where would you like to go and why would you like to visit this particular time period?

I've always been (sometimes morbidly) fascinated by the British Empire. There's something about the immense wealth, power and poise of the British colonies, especially during the late 19th and early 20th Century, as the UK's hold on the subcontinent began to crumple. I wrote a Master's thesis in Global History on the 1947 partition of the British Raj into India and Pakistan. I'd like to witness the increasing tensions present in the decades leading up to it for myself. Maybe it's for this reason that Keepers of the Stone is set just before the beginnings of this process, and -- through the character of Malka's not-actually-dead father -- maintains a close connection with the 'prestige' mindset of the British Colonial establishment.      

Do you have any little fuzzy friends? Like a dog or a cat? Or any pets?

Way back when I was eight I convinced my parents to get me a house rabbit that hopped around the house and used a litter box like a cat. 'Snuggles the Bunny' was by far the favorite pet I've ever had. Perhaps related to this, I enjoyed featuring rabbits prominently in one major plot development of Keepers of the Stone (cats figure into the mix as well, though I never had one; I'm slightly allergic). I've had to move to a different country every year since coming to Europe. That interferes with being able to have a pet. In the future, I'd see myself eventually getting another rabbit. Maybe one of the larger breeds like a Flemish Giant, or a New Zeeland White (that is if they aren't too busy helping Malka to pull off her heists!)

     
Thanks for taking time out of your busy schedule to visit with us today. 

AUTHOR Bio and Links:

Andrew Anzur Clement departed his native Los Angeles at the age of nineteen, with a curiosity for far-off lands. He quickly discovered an insatiable wonderlust that has led him to live, work and study in many fascinating places around the globe. Now in his late-twenties the unabashed opera fan is based in Europe. He continues to travel and read widely, finding new inspiration in the places he discovers. In his ‘other’ life Andrew is an academic researcher, focusing on  nationalism and identity formation. He enjoys including insights from his research in his books and the characters he inhabits.

On social media:

Facebook ~ Twitter ~ Goodreads ~ Blog 

 Andrew's Amazon Author Page

Buy Links: 

Keepers of the Stone. Book One: The Outcasts:

Amazon ~ Amazon UK ~ IBooks ~ Kobo ~ BN

Giveaway:

$10 Amazon or Barnes and Noble GC

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