Blog Tour and Giveaway - Daughter of the Sword by Steve Bein

Welcome to my stop on the DAUGHTER OF THE SWORD blog tour! Today I am excited to have Steve Bein share with you a little about how his story is multilayered and woven together. Then I have a copy of DAUGHTER OF THE SWORD to give away to US residents! So read on, enter to win, and then check out the other stops on the tour!

New to this book? Here's the cover and blurb:

Daughter of the Sword

(Novel of the Fated Blades #1)

Steve Bein

Release: October 2, 2012

Goodreads   Amazon

Mariko Oshiro is not your average Tokyo cop. As the only female detective in the city’s most elite police unit, she has to fight for every ounce of respect, especially from her new boss. While she wants to track down a rumored cocaine shipment, he gives her the least promising case possible. But the case—the attempted theft of an old samurai sword—proves more dangerous than anyone on the force could have imagined.

The owner of the sword, Professor Yasuo Yamada, says it was crafted by the legendary Master Inazuma, a sword smith whose blades are rumored to have magical qualities. The man trying to steal it already owns another Inazuma—one whose deadly power eventually comes to control all who wield it. Or so says Yamada, and though he has studied swords and swordsmanship all his life, Mariko isn’t convinced.
But Mariko’s skepticism hardly matters. Her investigation has put her on a collision course with a curse centuries old and as bloodthirsty as ever. She is only the latest in a long line of warriors and soldiers to confront this power, and even the sword she learns to wield could turn against her.

Keep an eye out for my review of Daughter of the Sword in the next couple days!

And now to hand things over to author Steve Bein:

Storyweaving 

I’m very glad my first novel is coming out in an era when readers like complex fiction. George R.R. Martin did the impossible in writing a gazillion well developed characters, and did the impossible again when he scattered them across multiple story arcs over thousands of pages and still won over millions of ardent fans (myself among them). It’s a minor miracle that he has any fans at all, given the complexity of his books, and a testament to his talent that he’s hypnotized as many of us as he has. 

I’m thankful for writers like Martin because I like reading multilayered fiction, and also because I’ve gone and written a multilayered book. Daughter of the Sword isn’t one story: it’s four, each set in a different era of Japanese history, all of them tied together by three fated swords. Or maybe it is one story, but the story is a braid, not a line, with four stories plaited to make the one. The companion novella, Only a Shadow, is a fifth cord in the braid, with more to be added in the next novel. In the end this series will be a braid of braids, with I don’t yet know how many storylines interweaving to fully reveal the legend of the Fated Blades. 

Maybe it was television that started making this kind of storytelling more accessible to a wider audience. Perry Mason evolved into L.A. Law, the single-character storyline progressing into multiple storylines tracking many characters. Then came shows like Sports Night, which followed these characters and storylines across multiple episodes, rather than neatly wrapping everything up by the end of each week’s installment. I think Sports Night flopped because the audience wasn’t ready for it, but they were ready for Sorkin’s next one, The West Wing, and also The Shield, The Wire, The Sopranos, all shows of similar complexity. 

It’s hard, writing stories like that. Storytelling is difficult enough even when the plots are simple. For Daughter of the Sword I had to write each of the four storylines as if I were going to publish it on its own. Then, when they’re all done, I have to figure out where to cut them up and how to patch them together again. Each chunk of story has to have a dramatic arc of its own, so Daughter of the Sword is really nine episodes woven into four storylines, and then the four are braided into one. 

I’d like to write a book with a more straightforward plot, but I only know how to write what inspiration strikes in me. And since the muse gave me a book that was anything but straightforward, I’m grateful for writers like George R.R. Martin and Aaron Sorkin for cultivating audiences that like their stories complex.

Enter to win a copy of Daughter of the Sword for yourself on the Rafflecopter form below! 

To enter, you must live in the US and be 13 or older. Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Now check out all the other stops on the tour and more chances to win!

Steve Bein's Daughter of the Sword Blog Tour

Oct 2: http://underthecoversbookblog.blogspot.com/

Oct 3: http://www.graspingforthewind.com/

Oct 4: http://www.graemesfantasybookreview.com/

Oct 5: http://fantasybookcritic.blogspot.com/

Oct 8: http://www.abookobsession.com/

Oct 9: http://qwillery.blogspot.com/

Oct 10: http://www.nightowlreviews.com/nor/

Oct 11: http://allthingsuf.com/

Oct 12: http://goldiloxandthethreeweres.blogspot.com/