guest post: Author Angelia Almos

Hi guys! Today I would like to introduce you all to Author Angelia Almos, the author of Unicorn Keep. The tour is brought by Enchanted Book Promotions. Please Click on the banner if you like to read more of post, interviews and of course, GIVEAWAYS!

"Writing Books of the Heart"

When people ask me why I write young adult fantasy, my answer is almost always, “I write the books I would have loved as a pre-teen and teen.”

 I was your classic horse crazy girl who also happened to be a book crazy girl. As such, I read a lot and one of my favorite things to read were horse books. It didn’t take me long to get through all of the well-known horsey authors and start to stalk the shelves looking for any book cover with a horse or unicorn on it.

One of my all time favorite “horsey” books as a teen was the series The Secret of the Unicorn Queen by Josepha Sherman, Gwen Hansen, Suzanne Weyn and Dory Perlman. It might not have had many horses in it, but it had magical horses – unicorns. It had just a smidge of romance, lots of adventure and mystery, and pretty unicorns with distinct personalities. I re-read those books for years before I finally wore my copies out. I also adored Thoroughbredseries, The Saddle Club series, and Walter Farley books. Finding horsey contemporary fiction was fairly easy, but finding horsey fantasy fiction was a lot harder which is probably why I love to write it so much.

It’s been a lot of fun writing the books I would have loved as a teen. After Horse Charmer, I was trying to come up with an idea for another fantasy story and I wanted horses to have a prominent role again. But this time, I was thinking unicorns, I wanted to write about unicorns. There are more unicorn books on the market now thanks to Bruce Coville, but I remember having to hunt and hunt to find any books featuring unicorns when I was a teen. It took me several weeks of on and off brainstorming to finally come up with the idea of Unicorn Keep.

The first idea presented itself to me as a middle grade fantasy, but several chapters in I learned the book was actually a young adult fantasy romance. It isn’t so unusual to find your book taking a very unexpected turn when you’re a pantser (writing by the seat of my pants/no-plotting). I fought the change at first, but then decided to go with it and I’m very glad I did.

Unicorn Keep was both fun and a challenge to write. It’s a little different in style than my other books – the challenge, but very much a book of the heart – the fun.

About the Author

Angelia Almos formed a lifelong passion for horses at the age of five when she talked her parents into riding lessons. Horses often play a prominent role in her young adult fantasy books. She also write horsey nonfiction and space opera. She lives in the Sierra Nevada Mountains with her husband, two daughters, two dogs, two cats, and one pony (she often thinks of bumping that number up to two).

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