The Story Behind the Story with Taraann LeBlanc of New Brunswick, Canada.

 

We have another new guest for you to meet today.

Taraann is one of the authors participating in the GMRD Book Fair in May.

She has kindly accepted my invitation to be our guest.

Read on, my friends.

Taraann is a bookstore employee at Dog Eared Books in Oromocto, and was raised on the east coast of Canada. Being an avid reader since a young age, she has always loved getting lost in fantasy worlds. When not reading or writing, her time is filled with crochet, spending time with their children or just letting artistic ideas take the wheel with paints, pencils & music. Being part of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community herself, she brings a lot of those tropes into her stories. Taraann published her first novel titled “Into the Darkness” in February 2024, and has since published the remaining titles in the Life of Fae trilogy.


Title: - Into the Darkness - book one in the Life of Fae series

Synopsis:

Tori was born into a poor, dysfunctional family. Her mother fled with her when she was still a baby and moved across the country to find a safe place to start over and give her a better life. Her mother cared about her a lot but didn’t have the first clue of how to show it. She was very overprotective, always worried that Tori’s father would come to find them one day. Tori was a quiet child and had a hard time making friends or even opening up to people. Her mother tried her best to hide her away for as long as she could before she had to start school. She never made a single connection until she met Tessa-Rae at school.

Tessa isn’t human, though she passes very well as one. They cropped her ears when she was a baby, and she learned to suppress her powers deep inside very well. Her parents suffered a great deal when she was still in the womb and fled their lands to survive the coming darkness. Although many of the fae are light, warmth, and kindness embodied, there are those who are the exact opposite. The dark fae, whose hunger for power and chaos, knows no bounds. The type that her family is forced to hide from. When she started school, she was determined to learn as much as she could and fit in. When she meets Tori, everything changes. She was drawn to her unexplainably.

Fate would have it that Tessa would be forced to leave her life, Tori included. When the time came to say goodbye to Tori, they were both devastated, but she told Tori, through tears, that it was for the best, that she had to keep the danger away. She thought she would never see her first friend again, and she knew her friend would never understand what was happening. After Tessa disappeared without a trace, Tori went through life like a shadow. She couldn’t form a bond with anyone else and didn’t even want to. It felt like there was a hole inside of her that nothing could ever fill. From self harm to stealing things for money to get tattoos and piercings, she tried everything to feel alive again like she did when Tessa was by her side. Frequently plagued by terrible nightmares her whole life, she didn’t get much rest. They got much worse after she was all alone again.

Will Their journey’s bring them back together, and help Tori find her place to belong, or will the evil forces at work succeed and separate them forever?

The Story Behind the Story:

What inspired this story was a mix of two things. First, I was writing pieces of my past. Memories over the years, hard times, people who made an impact, that type of thing. It was almost a type of therapy getting it all out, as if it were freeing a lot of the heavy stuff I carried around with me. I ended up writing a lot more than anticipated, and I figured, why not keep going? I wasn't about to make a memoir or anything, not with anything quite so deep. Secondly, I've always wanted to write, and my genre of choice is fantasy. So in taking bits and pieces of what I wrote from life and working bits and pieces of fiction and fantasy into it, a story began to grow.





A question before you go, Taraann:

Scribbler: Who was your favourite author and/or story when you were growing up?

Taraann: Tamora Pierce was my favorite author growing up. And by growing up I mean when I was like 5 or 6, when I was much too young to be reading things quite so established. I loved all of her works but her Song of the Lioness series is what got me through a big chunk of elementary school actually. It was one of the books that pushed me in the direction of fantasy. The world building was a big draw for me, and the time lines so different from my own.



Quote "Men don't think and differently from women - they just make more noise about being able to.”

―The Woman Who Rides Like a Man

Goodreads: Please go HERE.

Buy the book HERE.

Thank you for being our guest this week, Taraann. We wish you continued success with your writing.

And another BIG thank you to all our visitors and readers.

Feel free to leave a comment.