Battling Evil, Discovering Your Gifting, and Finding Community with YA author Sandra Fernandez Rhoads

The Episode Transcript can be found here: https://cjmilacci.com/read-clean-ya-with-cj-podcast/ 

Links to Things Discussed in this Episode

Purchase Mortal Sight (affiliate link): https://amzn.to/48OOPSv 

Purchase Realms of Light (book 2) (affiliate link): https://amzn.to/3ZVl0vt 

Sandra Fernandez Rhoads Website: https://www.sandrarhoads.com 

Sandra Fernandez Rhoads Instagram: @sfrhoads.author

October Goodies Giveaway: https://kingsumo.com/g/i3clds/october-goodies-giveaway

Purchase Fugitive of Talionis (affiliate link): https://amzn.to/3ZUg4a2 

You can watch the video of this episode here: https://youtu.be/JH_saD3zI9I 

Full Episode Transcript

Introduction

CJ Milacci 

Welcome, my friend. You are listening to Read Clean YA with CJ, the podcast for teens and young adults who want to explore exciting worlds, deep themes, and epic stories without the objectionable content. I'm your host, award-winning young adult author, CJ Milacci. And in this episode, we are going to dive into an author interview with fellow young adult author, Sandra Fernandez-Rhoads. 

Sandra is the award-winning young adult fantasy author of The Colliding Line series, Mortal Sight and Realms of Light. She was born in Queens, New York to Cuban-Columbian parents, but grew up in Texas with a love for classical art and literature, specifically Renaissance artists and late romantic poets. She attended the University of Texas at Austin and earned a degree in English, and then went on to earn an MA in her 17th century crush, John Milton. Past Experience also includes a background in acting, directing, as well as script writing for the stage and short film. 

Sandra Fernandez Rhodes, welcome to the show!

Sandra Rhoads 

Thank you, CJ, for having me. I'm excited to be here.

CJ Milacci

Yes, I am so excited to have you. Today we are talking about Sandra's Colliding Lines series and I read book one and I'm currently listening to the audiobook for book two and this series is so much fun. It is so good. There's the battle of good and evil and secret messages hidden in things and I am very entranced in the whole world. So Sandra, can you take a moment and tell us a little bit about your series and your stories?

What is the Colliding Line Series About?

Sandra Rhoads

Yes, well, thank you for that. Thank you for those words. The story is about essentially the battle of good and evil. And it really is about a group of artists who have the ability to see this war, this invisible war happening in a second realm. And the artists are able to decode messages that are embedded in classical art and literature that help them get clues to fight the war and fight the enemy. There's a lot more to it, but that's kind of the general overview of the story.

CJ Milacci 

Yes, and I love a good battle of good versus evil kind of a book. I'm all about that. And the fact that you bring in artists as sort of the protagonist, the heroes of this is so fun because I don't think you see that a lot. It's often the sword wielding hero or the gun wield, you know, whatever the genre might be. But this is so unique because we are looking at artists and seeing what they discover in paintings and music and all of that. And I think that is very much a fun twist on the classic good versus evil battle kind of system. So what inspired this? It sounds like from your bio, a lot of this was probably inspired because you love this kind of stuff. 

But what was the sort of catalyst for the story?

Sandra Rhoads

No, that's a great question. I have a passion for artists. I love art. And I believe that art comes in all forms. It's not just dance or music or painting or writing. It can be gardening. And you'll see that in the book. People have different skills and talents. And I believe that we're all given a gift. 

And so for me, the premise of this story really was how you know, how do you discover what your gift is? And then how do you use it in community, for the betterment of community. And so the idea behind it was, if there was this battle between good and evil, if there was this realm that was unseen, who would be on, because it's an everyday, it's urban fantasy, so it takes place in a modern day setting, who would be the individuals of this world that would be open to and able to see those things. 

And for me, it's artists, because artists have the ability to take whatever idea is in their head, and then you wrestle with trying to get it out and communicate it to others. And it's usually you're like, oh, it's not quite what I wanted it to be, but it's just a fraction maybe of just what it is. So for me, I felt like artists would be the ones that would really be able to kind of see, understand and kind of hone that.

And then as I started looking, I started going, oh my gosh, there's these, I got all geeky about it. And I was like, oh, there's these great shifts. I do not have a degree in art history. Let me just say that, okay? I just love art. And I'm like, there's these big shifts in changes in art. And I'm like, what if that was the point where big wars took place, but nobody really knows, but that's really what caused the change in going from the romantics to enlightenment or like, and he's just talking about these, the Renaissance period moving into, I was like, that to me would be cool. It's like you take what you have and what you know, but you add a layer and you go a little deeper and you add a twist to it underneath that people are like, ah, I was like, that's pretty cool. So that's why for me it was artists and I studied Milton.

And one of the things that I loved about, for those that have read or know the poem Paradise Lost, a lot of times in high school, you're required to read a snippet of it. Milton used a lot, he used Paradise Lost particularly, to speak a different message. He was writing about the fall of man, Adam and Eve, but really he would embed little messages in there that kind of spoke to what was happening in England at the time.

And so I was like, let's just take that one step deeper. And let's just say that it's not just what was happening at England at the time, but there's even something more to it. And I just kind of dug into whatever his mythology was. I just went a little deeper with it and added and twisted it a little. 

CJ Milacci

Right, and made it your own. And it's Cera, right, who's the protagonist of the story. And she is also a big fan of Milton, right? Is that partly because that was a bit of you maybe bleeding into the story with her? Or did it just fit? 

Sandra Rhoads 

That is a spoiler for book two, so I cannot... yes, that would be revealed in book two.

CJ Milacci 

Oh. See, I just started book two, so I didn't even know I'm being spoilery in my questions.

Okay, okay. Well, all the more reason for me to postpone working later and just listen to the audiobook. 

In the first book, Mortal Sight, can you kind of give readers a little recap or the pitch for that story so they can hear that book in particular and know whether or not maybe it's a good fit for them?

Sandra Rhoads

Yes, sure. So the recap of the story is there's a protagonist, Cera Marlowe. She's 17 year old. She's kind of a misfit. She suffers from what her mother and her have always believed are panic attacks. And so when these strike, her mom is like, you know what? She comes up with some reason as to why. And they have to uproot and start over. So she's a very transient teen and never really found that community where she belongs.

Hence her love for Milton and classics and reading. But one day she befriends somebody and that individual has an unfortunate accident. I don't know how much I want to spoil, but has an accident. And that kind of sends her on this quest and what she finds and what she discovers is she's not alone. Like she's able to see an unearthly creature. And in that she discovers that, hey, there's a, I'm not crazy, other people see this too. And then that kind of puts her into this new world where she discovers there are people like her. And then she starts to learn who she is in that community and then how she is a part of that community. 

We talked a little bit about themes, but identity and community are the two things and what her gifting is and how she uses that as a part to fight the war.

Where do I belong?

CJ Milacci 

There's definitely strong themes of identity and community, especially for her going from loner to now having people that she can connect with and befriend and support one another. It feels, I think even for her, it's almost this culture shock because it was not something that she was used to in her life at all. But I love how you wove that theme so beautifully into the first book because we really aren't created to function and live our lives completely alone without connecting to anyone else and we need to know there are others who understand.

I also love that it was in the connection with community that she could actually start touching on that other theme you just mentioned of embracing her own gift and her identity in so many ways. Like seeing how her own gifting can benefit others because what we do in our lives always impacts those around us. And it is in community