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Darby Harn will be awarding a $25 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

Author Interview: Darby Harn

1. How did you choose your genre? What made you write this book?

I’ve always had an interest in science fiction but really how sci-fi or speculative ideas live and breathe in ‘the real world.’ So when I had this idea of a rogue black hole spiraling toward Earth, I was never interested in the disaster flick big stakes of it all. I wanted it to be as ground level and human as possible and that’s why this cosmic event is presented from one of the most isolated perspectives you can get. But Mairead and the people that live on her island have a front-row seat to the impact of the black hole, in ways many don’t, because of its gravitational pull on the tides.

2. Writers write what they know, and must observe the world. Are you a firstborn, middle or last child and how does this shape your view of the world?

I’m a firstborn and I don’t know what impact it had on my view of the world. I’ve always felt like an outsider so there was certainly no sense of position.

3. Where is your favorite place to write?

I can write anywhere, thankfully. I did enjoy writing in my apartment in Ireland and being able to look out the window on the sea.

4. How do you feel about killing your darlings, and what do you do with the remains?

I can get attached to a sentence or idea and sometimes it takes me a while to let go. Nothing is ever wasted. I cut a lot and some of it finds its way into later stories.

5. You are introduced to your favorite author. Who is it, and what is that one burning question you must ask them?

One of my favorite writers is Kelly Link. I’d ask her how you write the perfect short story.

6. Inquiring minds want to know…tell readers something about you that no one knows.

Nothing I would want to divulge!

7. You are stranded on a deserted island with only a backpack for company. What three items are in your survival pack?

I have a book of Seamus Heaney poetry, as many Kind Bars as I can manage, and a flare gun.

8. If you could have one super power in your existence, what would it be?

I think I would like to go back in time, but I feel like that probably is less attractive once you start doing it. We can never undo the past and so I think it would be an exercise in futility, at best.

9. Favorite snack?

Kind bars.

10. Indy 500 – Do you know how to get where you’re going or do you drive the speed limit?

I know how to get where I’m going.

A Country Of Eternal Light

by Darby Harn

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GENRE: Speculative Fiction

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BLURB:

“One of the most beautiful books I’ve ever read” – Sunyi Dean, author of The Book Eaters

A rogue black hole tears apart the solar system. Mairead’s life is already in pieces.

The Earth has less than a year to survive.

Asteroids rain hell; earthquakes rattle cities; manic tides swamp coasts. Mairead intends to give herself to the erratic waves that erode her remote Irish island, the same that claimed her child. When Gavin, an American, arrives to scatter his father’s ashes, she becomes torn between wanting for life and death.

Despite the tides, fuel shortages, and closing borders that threaten to trap him on the island, Gavin can’t seem to scatter the ashes. He doesn’t know how to let go any more than Mairead does and they find a strange comfort in their confusion.

Their affair draws Mairead back to the world of the living, but the longer Gavin stays, the more it seems there might be a future for them. There is no future.

Life closes down around them. The world they know shreds. Life drains into an inescapable abyss. And yet Mairead fights, both the gravity of her grief and the restless, dissonant desire to find some kind of peace no matter how brief.

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Excerpt:

“Here?” I say.

Gavin and I inch down grass carpeted limestone steps from the buckled road to a strand the sea exposed. This is foolish of us but then this is our fashion so we go on, being fools, further out into the moonscape the retreating sea exposed. Crabs skulk through the seaweed. The rock slick. The seals beach hundreds of yards off shore and we just keep going, skipping from one pink stained stone to the next, like playing hopscotch with no end.

Do I want it to end?

A rogue wave could come in. I could slip on a rock and brain myself. He could. Could I? Could I slip, right now, and pull him with me? I squeeze his hand. He squeezes back. He’s got me. I pull and then he’s done; he guides me to a flat bit of rock and we sit, where people have not sat or stood since there was ice covering the world.

His hand touches his coat pocket. “Maybe.”

For a long time we watch the seals sleep. They rest their hairy chins just over the water. How tired they must be, spending all night in the turbulent sea. How sad they must be, to fight this war with the water every single day. How angry they must be. Who do they blame.

Do they know.

Gavin holds the pill bottle in his hands. The current surging through him to twist off the cap. The strain on his face. The trap he’s set for himself. It’s like giving up the drink. You want to. You just can’t. It’s nothing to do with wanting. You’ve no control over it.

He can’t let go.

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AUTHOR Bio and Links:

Darby Harn studied at Trinity College, in Dublin, Ireland, as part of the Irish Writing Program. He is the author of the sci-fi superhero novel EVER THE HERO. His short fiction appears in Strange Horizons, Interzone, Shimmer, The Coffin Bell and other venues.

Links:

Website: darbyharn.com

Buy Link: https://www.amazon.com/Country-Eternal-Light-Darby-Harn-ebook/dp/B0921W3QNF

Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/author/darbyharn

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/darby_harn

Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/DarbyHarn

Facebook Author Page: https://www.facebook.com/Darby-Harn-255976537767428

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