Blog Tour: Dark Goddess by Sarwat Chadda

I'm today's blog stop for Sarwat Chadda's DARK GODDESS, the sequel to DEVIL'S KISS (9/1/2009).

Sarwat Chadda (www.sarwatchadda.com) was brought up on the adventures of the great medieval heroes like Saladin and Richard the Lionheart. His passion for storytelling grew from his love for the history, culture and myths of Europe and the Middle East.

Sarwat used to be an engineer, working on projects like the Channel Tunnel and Hong Kong airport, but now he writes full time. He has travelled widely, from China to India, from Nicaragua to the Yemen, but there’s no place like home, and home is London.Devil's Kiss was his first novel.

DARK GODDESS was released July 1, 2010 in the UK and will be released January 2011 in the US.

STRONG HEROINES

I’m not quite sure what I had in mind when I wrote DEVIL’S KISS. Was it a boys’ own adventure for girls? Was it a tragic romance for boys? Was it my attempt to portray Conan the Barbarian as a 21st Century feminist icon?

That’s who I’ve based my heroine, Billi SanGreal, on. Conan. Grim, brooding, with a gallows sense of humour.

Kind of a lot like teen girls I used to know.

Billi’s descended from a long and ancient line of female heroes. She’s not got the Jane Austen gene, that I admit, but her pedigree is firmly established in other female icons of literature and history. These are my top five and Billi wouldn’t exist without them.

1. Buffy. Well, obviously. You write a kick-ass heroine and you cannot avoid the Buffy comparisons. Buff is awesome. I love her whole world and the Scoobie Gang and I think Joss Whedon is a god. ‘Once More with Feeling’ is perhaps the greatest 45 minutes of TV history ever. If Billi’s part of the descendents of Buffy, I can live with that because everything about Buffy was quality.

2. Athene. The ultimate Daddy’s girl. Leapt from the head of Zeus, fully clad in armour and ready to bag and tag. She’s no second fiddle to any man. She guided Achilles. She helped Odysseus find his way home. She kicked Ares’s arse in the Trojan War. The god of war himself is scared of her.

3. Kali. Another goddess with impeccable warrior credentials. Ten arms, black-skinned, necklaces of skulls and a long, red blood-lapping tongue. What’s not to love? Out of Hindu mythology she is the gods’ last line of defence. When they’ve all run off in fear, she’s the last one standing. Billi’s heritage has Indian roots. There’s a drop of Kali’s blood in her, that’s for sure.
4. Boudicca, the Iceni queen who tore the heart out of Roman Britain. And she travelled in style too, in a chariot with huge blades sticking out of the side. As every fashionista knows, it’s all about the accessories.

5. Baba Yaga. The Dark Goddess. I love Baba Yaga. That’s why I’ve written a book about her. You’ve probably come across her in her fairy tale version, old witch that lives in the forest in a house that walks on huge chicken legs and flies around in a pestle and mortar. Eats naughty children. Chews them up with her big iron teeth.

DARK GODDESS takes Baba Yaga to her roots. Back when she was worshipped by prehistoric man. She was the guiding mentor in the spiritual awakening of women, the one who initiated girls into women. Taught them the matters of life and death. She’s the Old Crone, the mid-wife who delivers you and then the one who wraps you in your burial shroud. She is the holder of dark and dangerous knowledge and true heroines cannot grow unless they face her. My first book was about Billi discovering what sort of Templar she wanted to be. DARK GODDESS is deciding what sort of woman she’ll become.

It might seem strange for a middle-aged man to be writing about the coming of age of a teen girl, but that’s not all I write about. I write about tragic romance, supernatural horror and sword-fights. A lot of sword fights.

There’s plenty of heroines pondering their romances and whether the gorgeous new guy in their school is the one for them and why no-one understands them like he does and so on and so forth. You don’t need me writing another one of those books.

But if you want a world where the stakes are high, where passion is measured not in lingering looks but blood, sweat and tears and love comes at a highest price imaginable, I might have something for you. A heroine of the old school.

Thanks Sarwat for stopping by!

For more information about Sarwat Chadda and his books, please visit his website here or check out his blog here. You can also order DARK GODDESS here (UK) or pre-order it here (US).