Blog Tour: Natalie C. Parker on writing SEAFIRE

Welcome to the blog tour for Natalie C. Parker’s Seafire! Seafire is the first book in a new trilogy. Natalie C. Parker is here today to share a little on the inspiration for Seafire, the worldbuilding process, and more:

 

I’ve been captivated by the ocean my entire life; I grew up in a Navy family, I learned to sail and SCUBA dive as a teen, so I started this project with a ton of background information. I also started this project with a lot of questions: what is life like on a warship? What kind of technology might change ships in the future? What might a post-apocalyptic world look like if we’d been successful in developing wide-spread, sustainable technologies? What if we developed those technologies too late to save society?

It was that combination of existing admiration and curiosity that lead to the world of Seafire. I knew I wanted a world that revolved about oceans, I knew I wanted my girls in command of a powerful ship of steel, and I knew I wanted that ship to be both an homage to traditional pirate ships and a departure from them. My answer, of course, was technology.

I looked into what contemporary warships are capable of and then I looked into what contemporary sustainable tech is capable and then I pushed both forward in the ways we see technology advance—making things smaller, lighter, tougher, faster, more efficient, more durable, and finally, more available. I ended up with a ship that has retractable sails, self-repairing glass, and a sun sail that extends over the quarterdeck like a glittering dragon’s wing feeding solar power to the engines. The ship, named the Mors Navis, is solar powered and capable of producing potable water for days.

I wanted to write a pirate adventure with a crew of girls at the core of it, and I wanted that adventure to feel epic and energized, so I gave those girls an amazing ship with amazing capabilities and then I tossed them out to sea. Literally.

 

About the book:

The first in a heart-stopping trilogy that recalls the undeniable feminine power of Wonder Woman and the powder-keg action of Mad Max: Fury Road, Seafire follows the captain of an all-female ship intent on taking down a vicious warlord’s powerful fleet.  

After her family is killed by corrupt warlord Aric Athair and his bloodthirsty army of Bullets, Caledonia Styx is left to chart her own course on the dangerous and deadly seas. She captains her ship, the Mors Navis, with a crew of girls and women just like her, who have lost their families and homes because of Aric and his men. The crew has one mission: stay alive, and take down Aric’s armed and armored fleet.

But when Caledonia’s best friend and second-in-command barely survives an attack thanks to help from a Bullet looking to defect, Caledonia finds herself questioning whether to let him join their crew. Is this boy the key to taking down Aric Athair once and for all…or will he threaten everything the women of the Mors Navis have worked for?

About the author:

Natalie C. Parker is the author of the Beware the Wild duology, the Seafire trilogy, and the editor of Three Sides of a Heart. She earned her BA in English literature from the University of Southern Mississippi and her MA in gender studies from the University of Cincinnati. She grew up in a Navy family finding home in coastal cities from Virginia to Japan. Now, she lives surprisingly far from any ocean on the Kansas prairie where she runs Madcap Retreats with her wife. She tweets @nataliecparker.

 

We loved this fast-paced, female-driven pirate adventure – Seafire is on sale now!

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