Book 1 of Sawyer Shepherd Chronicles
Young Adult Supernatural Thriller
Date Published: 2/4/2020
Sage City, Colorado is a beautiful but struggling town. Its mining history has dried up, leaving it only with a dark local legend that may just be more history than myth. But an East Coast developer named Lucius Furr and his team, including Lennox Dupree and Elena Cordova, might just bring salvation- or awaken a long-dormant evil.
Sawyer Shepherd is on a road trip of self-discovery- and running from a tragic past. He hopes to find himself and healing from the loss of his parents while in the deadly beauty of the Colorado Rockies. He soon finds himself caught up not only in Furr’s plans for the small town, but also an ancient and epic battle between good and evil. Guided by locals Eli Romer (the 'town drunk' that knows more than he lets on) and Mandy Jane (college intern with the Parks Service), Sawyer will seek to overcome the demons of his past while also trying to survive a real-life demon that seeks only to consume.
Or is it also trying to open the door for an even greater and more powerful evil?
Interview with Chad Lehrmann
For those interested in exploring the subject or theme of your
book, where should they start?
I have a free chapter on my
website,
https://www.chadlehrmann.com/rites-of-passage-1st-chapter.html#/
if you want a taste of what the book will be like. I also have
several short stories set in that universe on the site. I also host
a weekly Vlog on YouTube at this channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKh56iD5-tPpqXtFz3KH6oA?view_as=subscriber
If you want to purchase the book- or pre-order the second in the
series, my Amazon Author Page is
https://www.amazon.com/Chad-Lehrmann/e/B083S3N4MF?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_2&qid=1590864943&sr=8-2
How did you become involved with the subject or theme of your
book?
My family has vacationed in a small town in Colorado named Lake City
over the last eighteen years. I love the mountain setting and the
history there- especially the dark story of Alferd Packer, a miner
that was accused of cannibalism in the 1800’s. That story really
stuck with me, and I thought it would be a great story to tell of a
similar situation leading to a demonic protagonist. As far as my
protagonist, Sawyer Shepherd, a version of him has been in my head
since I was his age- 18- over twenty years ago. He is largely
inspired by characters like Percy Jackson and Dean Winchester from
Supernatural. And, well, me if I had been much cooler.
What were your goals and intentions in this book, and how well do
you feel you achieved them?
I wanted to create a world that was exciting, a little scary, and
had the potential to raise subtle questions about how young adults
deal with loss, issues of trust, and even faith in a destiny. The
intention was always that this was the beginning, the origin story,
not just for Sawyer, but in many ways for all the characters. I
think that the basis is laid well, and I have also learned a great
deal about writing and pacing. By no means are all the questions
answered at the end of the story, so I think there is fertile soil
to continue growing the world in book two and beyond.
Anything
you would like to say to your readers and fans?
I
hope first and
foremost that you enjoy the story. Sitting down to write the story
is always exciting to me, and I love seeing where the characters go-
I truly hope you feel the same as you read. I LOVE feedback- I
want to hear your thoughts, your hopes for the story, and your
predictions. Book one ends with a new mystery- I’d love to hear
tour guesses. I am a learning and growing writer, and there have
been mistakes I made- not unlike the journey Sawyer is on. I hope
you are as ready for the next stage of the journey as I am!
What
did you enjoy most about writing this book?
I
loved the process
of writing characters into a corner, then trying to create an
organic way out. Sometimes that changed the fate of a character
because the way out was just too good to ignore. I also really
loved learning the interactions of the three leads- Eli’s grumpy
tendencies and Mandy and Sawyer’s flirting, and especially
Sawyer’s sarcasm and child-likeness.
Can
you tell us a little bit about your next books or what you have
planned for the future?
Rites
of Passage is book one of five. Book Two- Red Hand Rising- debuts
in August. It will pick up almost a year after Rites of Passage.
Sawyer is a much more seasoned Judge, and pretty quickly gets pulled
into something sinister in St. Louis. I am also introducing new
supernatural beings called Zeitgeists that have a big role to play
in the mythology of Sawyer’s world. If you read Rites of Passage
and want more before Red Hand Rising, my website has several short
stories set between the two books with Sawyer and other characters.
Mostly for fun, they just bridge that gap for readers between books.
How
long have you been writing?
I have been “writing” since I was a child. But as far as
focused on actually creating the novels as they are, I started in
earnest about a year ago. I picked up portions of stories I had
started when I was a teenager, or when I first tried to write this
story about five years ago, and wove them together into this. So, I
have been actually writing fiction for about a year- but the story
has been building for twenty.
Can you tell us a little bit about the characters in Sawyer
Shepherd Chronicles: Rites of Passage?
Sawyer Shepherd is eighteen, has a cool black Camaro, and lost his
parents at sixteen in a church shooting. He graduated high school,
sold his parents’ ranch, and used the money to travel and find
himself. He is always wearing a gray military-style jacket- one of
the last gifts he got from his parents. He uses sarcasm as a defense
mechanism, but also has a real childlike quality. He has massive
trust issues with authority, but once he does trust you, he is loyal
to the end.
Mandy Jane is a nineteen-year-old college intern with the National
Forest Service. She wants to be a park ranger, and loves the
outdoors. Her trademark is her curly brown hair and green eyes. She
is kind and where Sawyer is suspicious, she is trusting.
Eli Romer has the reputation as the town drunk- a middle-aged
African American former engineer that has more secrets than anyone in
town thought possible. He knows something about the horrific history
of the town, and uses a gruff and distant demeanor to keep people
from asking too many questions. But he is more than meets the eye.
Lucius Furr, Lennox Dupree, and Elena Cordova are the big-city
business people coming to the small town of Sage City to buy it and
turn it into a new tourist destination. They are greedy, but also
charismatic and welcomed by many in town. But they will do anything
to get their hands on the small village.
If
you could spend the day with one of the characters from Sawyer
Shepherd Chronicles: Rites of Passage who would it be? Please tell
us why you chose this particular character, where you would go, and
what you would do.
I think I would choose Eli. Sawyer is too much like me, and Eli
has stories to tell and lots of skills to share. I would want to
hear the haunted stories and learn a few techniques for dealing with
demons and monsters while hiking in the mountains.
About the Author
The only child of a family that lived on a ranch in the Central Texas Countryside, Chad Lehrmann learned early on to use his imagination to entertain himself. Creating stories in his head and acting them out eventually led to him entertaining the idea to write stories. He began this process in his teens, but life got in the way. After eleven years in ministry, Chad became a public school teacher in College Station, Texas. Working with teenagers (and raising two of his own), he began to read young adult fiction like Harry Potter and Percy Jackson. Combined with his love of the works of Stephen King, Chad began to recall those stories and ideas from his youth, but with a new perspective. Tired of explaining to his students that if he was not a teacher, he would be a writer, but doing nothing to validate that- he penned his first novel, The Sawyer Shepherd Chronicles: Rites of Passage. It would be the culmination of characters and story beats that had been germinating in his head for over twenty years. He hopes you will join him on this journey!
Chad still teaches at College Station High School, where he is currently the Psychology, Sociology, and Debate teacher. He is married and has two teenage daughters and as a family they love vacationing in the mountains (which are a strong inspiration for the stories he writes). He also has hobbies of woodworking and collecting action figures.
Contact Links
Purchase Links
Read Free With Kindle Unlimited
1 comments:
Thank you for hosting!
Post a Comment