This week we are shining a spotlight on Wendy Sparrow’s paranormal romance Servants of Fate trilogy where three brothers, sons of Father Time, meet their match when they are charged with taking the life of mortal women on New Year’s Eve. For a limited time you can pick up the trilogy for 99-cents! Click here to learn more!
Today we get to know Wendy Sparrow a little better!
Q: Where did the idea for a series with the sons of Father Time come from?
A submission call went out from a publishing house for a holiday paranormal anthology and they requested something different from the usual. My brainstorming session led me to focusing on New Year’s Eve and Father Time. But I wanted someone younger who wasn’t so deeply tied into the mythology that I had no wiggle room to hook him up with a mortal. I came up with Father Time’s sons and set about creating the world that they’d inhabit. While I never published in that original anthology, the novellas were too much fun to shelve.
Q: Was it a challenge to keep each story fresh while weaving some of the same stuff in them?
It was more difficult to keep the voices of all of them distinctive. As I fleshed out their backgrounds and what had created their personalities, that became easier. I think the lodge where they all end up creates its own magic by virtue of being realistically wonderful. Their interaction with that fantastic of a setting could never be stale. So, I guess my answer is that it wasn’t…because I cheated and created the lodge.
Q: Who is your favourite brother?
Hahahaha. I totally thought you were asking about my own brothers and I was thinking, “Whoa. Come on. It varies.” It actually doesn’t vary though with Father Time’s sons. I adore Tempus. He’s audacious, and he likes to read—those seem to be qualities I find sexy. His banter with Lacey just makes me grin, no matter how many times I’ve read it, and his book thievery is just awesome.
Q: What was the best part about writing this series?
I loved revisiting the world again and again. There’s a feeling of wonderment you sometimes get as an author when you can immerse yourself entirely in a world. It’s an escape and the magic has a charm that just helps my soul. The combination of the holidays and the paranormal world all add up to a place I wish existed.
Q: Do you have a favourite scene?
My favorite scene is actually a scene from Stealing Time where Zeit and Hannah are building a snowman.
Excerpt
Making snowmen was a lot more difficult than Christmas commercials on mortal TV made it look. Hannah was rolling the middle portion while Zeit supervised… because his kept falling apart.
“It looks bigger than the lower portion,” he pointed out.
She stopped and shook her head at him. “It doesn’t have to be perfect. Come over and help me lift it onto the bottom.”
After he’d set the middle section onto the lower portion, he stood back and eyed it critically. A snowball hit his head. Zeit frowned at her.
“Stop!” Hannah said. “Sometimes the best things in life are all misshapen and…” She tilted her head. “We should really do that one again.”
Zeit laughed as he brushed snow from his face.
It took them another three attempts to get what they both deemed were acceptable snowman portions.
“Hey. Coal.” With raised eyebrows, Hannah held up the two lumps of coal that had come in his snowman kit. “Get a good long look because this is what you’re getting next year.”
He couldn’t stop smiling at her. A dozen times each hour to-day, he wished he could slow down time because he wanted to spend more time with Hannah—he needed that. She was singing “Frosty the Snowman” with a carefree abandon he’d never felt before. If only he didn’t have the end of the year looming over him.
“Okay, pass me his corn cob pipe,” she said.
He pulled the “pipe” out of the box and stared at it. “Our snowman is a smoker? And this is a kids’ song?”
“It was written back before people worried about things like their lungs,” she said, reaching for it.
He pulled it away. No. It wasn’t right. “His days are already numbered, and he’s playing with fire—actual fire?”
“Ohhhh, right.” She tilted her head. “Wow, that does make him a bit of a rebel, doesn’t it? I bet the snow ladies were all suitably impressed.”
Zeit looked around. There were mortal children all around. Young impressionable mortal children. He put the pipe back in the box.
“Or he’s not really a rebel. He likes to play things safe. Then again,” she tapped his coal eyes, “he did earn his coal. Maybe he’s got nothing to prove. There should be buttons in the box.”
He pulled off his glove to search through the bottom of the box, pulling out three buttons. “What is he buttoning up?” he asked as he handed them to Hannah.
She’d started pressing the buttons into his middle snow section, but she stopped and bit her lip as she stared at the round button still in her hand. Finally, she shrugged and pushed the last one in. “I think you’re over analyzing this.”
“Or it’s a mortal tradition that could use some scrutiny.” He held out the faux carrot that came in his kit.
“But, look, he’s healthy. A carrot.”
“Is he going to eat his own nose?”
“I can’t do this with you now.”
He went still. Was she… mad?
Her shoulders started shaking, and he leaned forward to see her trying to restrain a laugh.
Then, she leaned down, grabbed a handful of snow and threw it at him. The unpacked snow fluttered around him, spraying a cold mist across his face.
He could do much better than that.
Q: Will we see more of the brothers?
Possibly. There are other brothers mentioned and it’s hinted at that they’re also calling Zeit, the hero from the first book, in Taking Time. Plus, there’s Father Time’s romance…
Q: When do you write?
My OCD spreads to my writing so that it becomes an obsessive pursuit. If I sit down to write, I write for hours upon hours. My house is quieter at night and I have insomnia so I do a lot of writing late into the night.
Q: What are you currently reading?
It’s the time of year when I start reading holiday romances to get me in the mood. So, I’ve been reading mostly historical romances, but I was going to break off and catch up in Kristen Painter’s Nocturne Falls series and reread my favorites.
More About Wendy Sparrow
At home in the Pacific Northwest, Wendy Sparrow writes for both an adult and young adult audience in many genres but always with a happily ever after. She has two wonderfully quirky kids, a supportive husband, and a perpetually messy house because she hates cleaning. She’s an advocate both online and in her community for autistic children in addition to actively trying to raise awareness about obsessive-compulsive disorder. Most days she spends on Twitter procrastinating doing the dishes.
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As servants of Fate, Father Time’s sons must sacrifice a mortal’s lifetime on behalf of humanity before each year ends. It’s simpler if they don’t get involved, as their immortality is a barrier to relationships and to understanding the emotions of those whose lives end in a blink, especially if these time holders have a hand in it. Servants of Fate pass in and out of the lives of those around them, never interacting, until a different type of fate steps in. They can stop time, but love will leave them powerless.
