Today I am pleased to feature author L.K.
Hill whose novel, Citadels of Fire, was
released in May 2014.
In a world where danger hides in plain sight and
no one aspires to more than what they were born to, Inga must find the courage
to break the oppressive chains she’s been bound with since birth. Even as a
maid in the infamous Kremlin, life in 16th-century Russia is bleak and
treacherous. That is, until Taras arrives. Convinced that his mother’s death
when he was a boy was no mere accident, he returned from England to discover
what really happened. While there, he gains favor from the Tsar later known as
Ivan the Terrible, the most brutal and notorious ruler ever to sit upon the
throne of Russia. Ivan allows him to take a servant, and to save Inga from a
brutal boyar intent on raping her, Taras requests Inga to stay in his chambers.
Up against the social confines of the time, the shadowy conspiracies that cloak
their history, and the sexual politics of the Russian Imperial court, Inga and
Taras must discover their past, plan for their future, and survive the
brutality that permeates life within the four walls that tower over them all,
or they may end up like so many citizens of ancient Russia: nothing but flesh
and bone mortar for the stones of the Kremlin wall.
Liesel writes historical fiction so I
thought I would ask her to share with us why she chose this genre.
AMM: Welcome Liesel
L.K. Hill: Thanks for having me, Ann Marie. Now to talk about one of my favorite topics.
The
Fascination of Historical Fiction
I write historical fiction because I am endlessly fascinated by
history. Human beings are all interested in times and places other than the
ones we live in, but for me, it has always been more than that.
My favorite historical time period is the middle ages. It would have
been a difficult and often horrible time to be alive, but that’s exactly what
makes it so interesting. The people of that era didn’t have the knowledge or
help that we have today. They lived in dire, often terrible conditions. But
they still moved forward, had hope and faith and kept on going when the world
around them was often little more than a graveyard of despair. The more dire
the circumstances, the more compelling the display of human spirit. That’s one
of the reasons I love great historical fiction.
Another has to do with the tragedy that is often inherent in the genre.
I was on a panel that discussed this at LTUE this past year. A theory was put
forward that really spoke to me. The reason we are all so obsessed with the
tragedies of the past is because we feel a collective sadness about things that
have happened in our history. We’re appalled that we ever let our world be full
of darkness, injustice, or other terrible deeds.
For example, we can’t believe we let a mustached dictator murder
millions of Jews in the 1930-40s, simply due to their religion and ethnicity.
We can’t believe anyone ever let Ivan the Terrible run as rampant as he did,
plundering and torturing unchecked.
Telling these stories is our way of doing penance, and of making sure
we don’t lose the emotion of these stories. It’s the only way to ensure we, as
a society and a race of human beings, never let such things happen again.
Because of the tragedy involved, these stories are often hard to listen to, but
telling them is actually an act of hope.
The story of Ivan the Terrible is full of darkness and tragedy, but
those who lived through it—and even those who didn’t—were probably some of the
strongest people on earth. The Kremlins trilogy
is their story. One I feel honored to be able to tell.
L.K.
Hill is a novelist who writes across three genres: scifi/fantasy, historical
fiction, and crime fiction. Her scifi and fantasy, including dystopian, are
written under her full name. Her crime and historical fiction are written under
her initials, L.K. Hill.
She
comes from a large, tight-knit family and resides in Northern Utah. She loved
to read and write at a young age, and her earliest memories consist of her
father sitting in the doorway of her room at night, relating stories of Frodo,
Gandalf, and the One Ring of Power. Her mother also read to her every afternoon
as a child, sometimes for several hours a day.
Today she is an award-winning author. All of her
published works thus far have won manuscript awards in the prestigious League
of Utah Writers annual fiction competition, and Persistence of Vision was the
winner of the Silver Quill Award for Published Books in 2013.
To find out more about Liesel, you can link up with her on the following sites:
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