Author Guest Post with K.A. Wiggins, Blind the Eyes

When hope kills and dreams are deadly, your only shot at survival is to shut it all down.

Welcome to the December 2nd stop on the blog tour for Blind the Eyes by K.A. Wiggins with iRead Book Tours (schedule linked.) Be sure to follow the rest of the tour for spotlights, more author guest posts & interviews, and a giveaway! More on that at the end of this post.

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Author Guest Post

Chasing Nightmares

Some books start with a character, a setting, a scenario. Blind the Eyes started with monsters. More specifically, it’s first iteration was an antisocial girl getting saved from monsters by a hero who then follows her home.

The hero barely made it into the book. The antisocial girl is just as prickly as ever. And the monsters turned into the Mara, formless nightmares that eat your hopes and dreams, desire and determination, stealing into your mind to twist memories and wishes deadly, before devouring your soul. And, at the start of Blind the Eyes, after they’ve devoured enough dreamers, they start taking form in the real world . . .

While I love folklore and fairytales, when it came to designing the Mara,rather than pinning them down to a familiar classification of monster, it seemed more threatening to have them take the form of each individual’s worst nightmare. A werewolf can be taken out by a silver bullet, a vampire by a stake, a zombie by decapitation. Kelpies only drown you if you get on their backs; trolls are territorial.

But an intangible, amorphous, ever-present monster that can get inside your head and destroy you from the inside? Oh the possibilities . . .

The Mara of Blind the Eyes are only one variation in a series of folkloric nightmare-monsters that crosses continents and spans generations. Here are just a few of the beasties that inspired the monsters of the Threads of Dreams series:

Púca/Phooka/Bucca/Pwca: Irish for Spirit/Ghost (which is kind of a spoiler for the whole series, really), Celtic, “of the family of the nightmare,” a shapeshifter that may take the form of a monstrous horse, may live in tombs, a nighttime trickster that attacks wanderers and lures sleepers into the dark.

Mare/Mære/Mahr/Mara/Night-Mare: (Germanic/Scandinavian/Slavic) A malicious or demonic being that strangles/sits on/rides sleepers and brings nightmares. Tangles hair and objects. May be wandering spirits of witches or the soul of someone wronged or unforgiven. Associated with (torturous) desire. Warded off with prayer. SO MANY brilliant little pieces of character and worldbuilding here! And when combined with the idea of waterhorses like Kelpies and Each Uisge—too perfect.

Batibat/Bangungot: (Phillipino) vengeful demon. When its tree is cut down to make dwellings, it sits on sleepers until they suffocate. Type of Aswang (shape-shifting evil spirit, may look human by day but transforms into monsters to harass/eat humans, esp. at night.) Associated with sleep paralysis, incubi.

Baku: (Japanese) dream eaters, chimaera made of spare parts, including tusks, claws, horns, when the gods created other animals. Repeat “Baku-san, come eat my dreams” three times and it will eat your nightmares. But if it’s still hungry, it can also devour all hopes and desires, leaving the summoner dreamless and empty.

As a long-time anime otaku and Celtic folklore fan, it’s obvious in hindsight that all of these nasties and more found their way onto the page in some form. Into gothic-dystopian vibes and folkloric horror-fantasy too? Join me at kawiggins.com (and join the newsletter for some free, eerie short reads) or on social @kaiespace!

About the Book

Blind the Eyes
Threads of Dreams Book One
by K.A. Wiggins

Published 1 June 2018
Snowmelt & Stumps

Genre: YA Fantasy
Page Count: 300
Add it to your Goodreads TBR!

A haunted teen outcast and her snarky ghostly best-frenemy outwit enforcers, monsters, and the scars of the past in a race to take expose a deadly conspiracy and escape a bloody end. A lush, award-winning debut to a captivatingly eerie YA Urban Fantasy trilogy. Discover a labyrinthine, post-climate-collapse dystopian Vancouver overrun by monsters and magic in this intricate and startlingly original journey of discovery, restoration, and revenge.

It’s hard not to be a little obsessed with survival when your only “friend” is an unruly ghost and the wrong thought could get your soul devoured by eldritch horrors. Haunted 17-year-old outcast Cole wants nothing more than to hide her forbidden fascination with the monster-taken and blend in with the (dreary) scenery. Her plans for a peaceful life take a turn for the deadly when a mesmerizing stranger and his dangerously tempting offer drive her into the middle of a grisly conspiracy.

But Cole hasn’t yet uncovered the biggest secret of all, and it might just have something to do with the mysterious threads tugging her into horrifying visions—not to mention the shimmering boy at their dark heart. Uncovering the truth will cost her dearly as she fends off scheming enforcers, dreamjacking ghosts & soul-sucking nightmares in a desperate quest for survival and retribution. Can she escape the scars of her past and expose the lies before she’s the next to die?

Blind the Eyes is the first book in a lush and labyrinthine trilogy of paranormal-meets-gothic-dystopian YA Urban Fantasy filled with glittering underworlds, delicious-and-deceptive strangers, and facing down the voices in your head. This slow-burn fantasy with an edge leads readers on a captivatingly unexpected journey of self-discovery, reclaimed identity, and conflicted sisterhood for those who like a little sparkle with their monsters (it glistens so nicely on all the blood.) Fans of post-climate-collapse dystopias, monsters-and-magic, and genre-bending dark fantasy will love this award-winning series starter in a complete and 100% binge-ready trilogy.

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About the Author

K.A. Wiggins (Kaie) writes award-winning speculative fiction for young people and adults that explores the tangled webs of society, environment, and identity through intricate, dreamlike tales of monsters and magic.

Her debut novel was a Page Turner Awards 2020 Book Spotlight Prize winner and a Barnes & Noble Press “20 Favorite Indie Books of 2018,” kicking off a celebrated and recently completed YA Urban Fantasy trilogy set in a gothic-dystopian post-climate-collapse Vancouver. Her short fiction has appeared in small press anthologies, genre magazines, and in translation for international audiences.

She’s also the President of the Children’s Writers and Illustrators of British Columbia society, co-founder of marketing and business services consultancy The Creative Collective, and a creative writing coach with the Creative Writing for Children society, and was recognized in the 2021 Arty Awards, taking first place in Literary Arts category.

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Giveaway Alert!

Enter to win a special edition hardback copy of Blind the Eyes: A Dystopian-Gothic YA Urban Fantasy (GRAND PRIZE) (one winner/USA only) or ebook copy K.A. Wiggins’ award winning novel. (5 runner-up winners) (ends Dec 24)

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