Today we're excited to chat with Emily Duncan author of

Ruthless Gods.

Read on for more about Emily and her book, plus an giveaway.

Meet Emily Duncan!

EMILY A. DUNCAN is the New York Times bestselling author of Wicked Saints. She works as a youth services librarian and received a Master’s degree in library science from Kent State University, which mostly taught her how to find obscure Slavic folklore texts through interlibrary loan systems. When not reading or writing, she enjoys playing copious amounts of video games and dungeons and dragons. She lives in Ohio.

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Meet Ruthless Gods!

Darkness never works alone...

Nadya doesn’t trust her magic anymore. Serefin is fighting off a voice in his head that doesn’t belong to him. Malachiasz is at war with who--and what--he’s become.

As their group is continually torn apart, the girl, the prince, and the monster find their fates irrevocably intertwined. They’re pieces on a board, being orchestrated by someone… or something. The voices that Serefin hears in the darkness, the ones that Nadya believes are her gods, the ones that Malachiasz is desperate to meet—those voices want a stake in the world, and they refuse to stay quiet any longer. 

Click Here To Pre-Order From Macmillian!

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~ Author Chat ~

              YABC:  What gave you the inspiration to write this book?

The fact that I left everyone in an extremely bad position at the end of book one and also I was under contract. No, I went into this trilogy with the absolute vaguest of synopses. I can’t even remember what the book 2 synopsis I turned in said would happen. But I am a person who exclusively loves the second books of trilogies. In any trilogy I have ever read, the second book is my favorite. There’s something about the way the second book is always the darkest, always has the most tension, and also tends to resolve literally nothing that I just love a lot, so the stakes were quite high for me. I think I managed it based on those requirements. 

YABC:  Who is your favorite character in the book?

I’m always going to answer Malachiasz for this question but extremely tired cosmic horror Malachiasz is my favorite version of Malachiasz. He is at his worst and most vulnerable in this book in particular. What a delight. 

YABC:  What scene in the book are you most proud of, and why?

There is a scene near to the end so I’ll tread carefully with how I talk about it to avoid spoilers. But there’s a clearing and a lot of unnerving elements and it was a challenge I set upon myself to write something truly unsettling, just the feeling of wrong between every line of the book. Ruthless Gods leans cosmic horror, which means that there are some misunderstandings in what is meant when the word horror is used, because I’m not trying to scare you. It is extremely difficult to write something that truly scares someone because they can just… close the book and the scary thing goes away. That level of disconnect is always there. I just want to make you feel weird. I want to tap into that specific feeling in horror where everything appears fine but you just know, deep down, that something is deeply wrong. 

YABC:  Thinking way back to the beginning, what’s the most important thing you've learned as a writer from then to now?

Lean into whatever weird idea you have. It’s all about the execution anyway, and just about anything can be executed confidently!

YABC:  What new release book are you looking most forward to in 2020?

I will tell you the ones I have read that I adore and they are Beyond the Ruby Veil by Mara Fitzgerald  (completely and utterly bonkers!! A truly ruthless protagonist whom i love with my whole heart!) and Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir (“What if we wrote our own book’s AU fanfiction and put it IN the book? Just kidding…. unless…” It is like nothing I have ever read. My brain hurt the first time I tried to read it. I love it so much.)

YABC:  What was your favorite book in 2019?

Oh it was Gideon the Ninth, also by Tamsyn Muir. It was everything I have ever wanted in a book. Extremely weird, extremely bonkers, extremely goth, and extremely gay. 

YABC:  What’s up next for you?

Ruthless Gods has another doozy of an ending (I’m so sorry, I don’t know what’s wrong with me) but the exciting thing is that means I get to now coyly talk about book three which absolutely has no cannibalism in it whatsoever. Every time you think these kids cannot get any worse they quite gleefully prove you wrong. 

YABC:   Which was the most difficult or emotional scene to narrate? 

There are some scenes of intense grief in Ruthless Gods and that is an emotion I have a hard time tapping into because my methods of dealing with grief mean I don’t dwell on it all that much. I love the way that particular scene came out, but it was hard to write. This was just a hard book, truly, everyone is just losing everything and it’s all just a bad time. 

Ruthless Gods

By: Emily Duncan

Publisher: Wednesday Books

Release Date: April th, 2020

*GIVEAWAY DETAILS* 

One winner will receive a copy of Ruthless Gods (Emily Duncan) ~ (US Only)

*Click the Rafflecopter link below to enter the giveaway*

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