Blog Tour Guest Post: Arwen Elys Dayton

Today I am participating in the blog tour for Disruptor by Arwen Elys Dayton!  This is the last book in the Seeker series and for my stop on the tour I have Arwen with us!  She stopped by to talk her series ending and her feelings that accompany it.

I wrote the manuscript for the first book in the series, Seeker, with no idea if anyone other than myself, my husband, and my fluffy white little dog would read it. (I secretly suspected that my dog wasn’t actually reading the manuscript, but she did lie down on top of the pages a few times in an interested sort of way, and once she licked a word that happened to be misspelled—coincidence???) My book before Seeker, Resurrection, had been a bit of a cult sci-fi hit, but with Seeker I was writing something for a younger audience—a new enterprise. I saw the world of Quin and Shinobu and John and Maud so clearly in my mind, but hey, you never know what’s going to happen once your book is done.

When Penguin Random House bought Seeker, I was elated because other people had stepped into Quin’s world and they wanted to stay there. “But how many books will you be writing?” they asked me, as though I carry around some sort of book-writing accountant in my head who knows the logical answer to questions like that.

“Um…three?” I speculated. This felt about right, though honestly, I could have said any number between two and six and it probably would have felt right, because the world of Seeker was bristling with stories. And yet it was particularly the story of Quin, Shinobu, John and Maud that I saw rolling out in front of me. “Definitely three,” I added a moment later, with less of a question mark in my voice. “Sounds good,” they said.

“Sounds good.” Two simple words. And with that I embarked on a few years of writing. It turns out that seeing the story unfolding in your mind, and actually making it unfold in real words on real paper, for several books, are two different things. But here’s what you don’t know until you’ve written a series: watching your characters change (sometimes for the better, sometimes not) and hate and love and make mistakes, which they try to put them right or insist already are right—all of this is a hazardous and intoxicating experience for an author.

If you have been following the Seeker series, you might imagine that you know where or how Quin and the others will end up. I can promise you that you are wrong (especially about John!), because I didn’t know where or how they would end up, not really, until the last book.

I’ve lost some close friends, now that I have left these characters to go on without me. And yet I’m satisfied that I told their story properly, and truly, which doesn’t mean that there is a happy ending for everyone. Someone once said that a good story strikes a balance between satisfying and defying the reader’s expectations. These stories and the characters that populate them have satisfied and defied me many times—and I hope they do the same for you.

 I love Arwen's answer because I have always been curious if an author is just as sad as I am when a series ends.  I usually try my hardest not to finish a series because I don't want to lose characters either, but I just have to read Disruptor!  I have to know where each character ends up and I have a feeling Arwen will keep me guessing til the last page!

Keep a look out for my review soon!

Disruptor (Seeker #3) by Arwen Elys Dayton

Publisher: Delacorte Press

Release Date: February 7th, 2017

Purchase: Amazon

For readers of Sarah J. Maas and of Marie Lu’s Legend trilogy comes Disruptor, the sequel to Traveler, the thrilling conclusion to the Seeker series.

Quin has spent her life as her father’s pawn. She was trained to kill and manipulated to guarantee her family’s power. And now that she’s broken free of that life, she’s found herself trapped again, hostage to a plot that has been centuries in the making.

It’s taken generations for the pieces to come together, and finally all is in place. Her best friend Shinobu’s mind has been corrupted, the Young Dread has aligned with her enemy John, and the bloodthirsty Watchers are being awakened and gathered. Now there is nothing that can stop the force of time.

But Quin will no longer be a pawn. Quin is a Seeker. She stands for light in a shadowy world. She will face the vengeance of the past and its enemies and save herself and the ones she loves, or she will die trying.

“Readers of the first two volumes will find their long-awaited conclusion here, and Dayton will have found fans for life.” -Booklist

Other books in the series

“Katniss and Triss would approve.” -TeenVogue.com

“In this powerful beginning to a complex family saga…Dayton excels at creating memorable characters.” -Publishers Weekly

In the Seeker series, a teenage girl called Quin has spent most of her life training for what she believes is a noble purpose, only to discover that her family is turning her into an assassin instead.

“Fans of Veronica Roth’s Divergent, Marie Lu’s Legend, and Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games series: your next obsession has arrived.” -School Library Journal

Quin has grown up in the remote Scotland Highlands, where she and two boys her age—one her oldest friend, and one her boyfriend—have spent years preparing to inherit two ancient artifacts, which have been handed down in their families for hundreds of years.
 These artifacts allow them to do astonishing things, including appearing and disappearing from anywhere in the world. Quin expects to inherit this power for noble purposes, but her father intends to use her as an assassin, plain and simple.

“Both past and present choices shook me to the core, and the final pages left me trembling . . . and then internally cursing that I’ll have to wait until 2017 for a final resolution!” -Fanboy Comics

The story is set in the near future, in a world where the hooded cloaks of Seekers and ancient Scottish ruins live comfortably next to futuristic airships and advanced medical techniques. It’s into this world that we watch Quin try to escape when she discovers the fate that’s waiting for her. And it is in this world that Quin is followed, helped, betrayed and abandoned by those she trusted the most.

Don't forget to check out the other amazing blogs on the tour!

February 6^th - Winterhaven Books

                           Adventures in YA Publishing

February 7^th - The Cover Contessa

February 8^th - Unbound Worlds   

February 9^th - The Eater of Books!

February 10^th - Once Upon a Twilight

February 11^th - Adventures in YA Publishing

February 13^th - A Dream Within A Dream

February 14^th - Two Chicks on Books

February 15^th - Seeing Double in Neverland

February 16^th - Mundie Moms

February 17^th - Take Me Away to a Great Read

February 21^st - Bookhounds YA

February 22^nd - The Reading Nook Reviews

February 23^rd - The Fandom

February 24^th - Page Turners Blog

February 27^th - Fiction Fare

February 28^th - YA Books Central