Ink Motions with Cornelia Amiri

 

Maeve Alpin, who also writes as Cornelia Amiri, is the author of 19 books. She creates stories with kilts, corsets, fantasy and happy endings. She lives in Houston Texas with her son, granddaughter, and her cat, Severus. Please visit her at http://MaeveAlpn.com, @MaeveAlpin,  Pintrest and Facebook

Interview with Cornelia Amiri

How do you get an idea for your novel?

I get a lot of ideas from history. I love history. However, the idea for As Timeless As Stone came from a day dream. I saw a headless statue and when the missing head was set on it the stone figure came to life. I thought now there’s the beginning of a story and my Steampunk/Romance As Timeless As Stone was born. I decided to set that part of the story in Egypt due to a conversation I had with my muse prior to the day dream. You, ll see more about that in a question below.

 

What is your writing style?  Do you just sit down and write or do you create?

I’m a panster rather than a plotter. I just sit down and write and then I craft the story in rewrites.

 

Who is the "Writing Muse" in your life? I.E. who gets your juices flowing?

Honestly ideas come from everywhere so it’s hard to say. I guess my writing muse is me. But I like to think of my muse as Clio. You know Zeus's daughter. She is the muse of history, pictured with a scroll and books. She moves me to write, but there's one drawback. Clio gets carried away. Regarding my new release for example, one day, I was taking a well-deserved TV break watching a show on ancient Egyptian mummies. They mention two different Scorpion Kings. Real pharos with the same name as “The Rock’s” character in “Return of the Mummy.” Clio says, “Quick to the Internet, rush to the library, run to the bookstore - start researching.”

You have to be firm with Clio. I said, “I’m not going to research ancient Egypt. No way.” And as you can see by my book, As Timeless As Stone, Clio won again. She always does.

 

How many novels have you written including all work in progresses you are currently working on? If I include the novellas published as independent eBooks as well as my novels it’s 25.

Who is your "writing idol"? I.E. Who do you like and what is it about there writing that captures your soul? Morgan Llewellyn because she does such a fabulous job of bringing Celtic history and mythology alive. She would have made a great bronze age or iron age druid, that’s the highest compliment I could give to anyone.

 

What is you favorite plot line type? I would say it’s a toss between myth and legend or warrior women. 

Is there any advice you can offer to anyone who would like to write? Put aside your inner editor and finish the first draft, learn the craft of writing, revise – revise – revise – revise, revise – revise , find some good critique partners, follow your intuition, make writing friends – the greatest asset you’ll ever have, make writing a priority and never stop writing no matter what.

 

What is a good villain?

A good villain is someone that’s as smart or smarter than the good guys. A good villain is hard to defeat and gets very close to beating the good guys. A good villain is someone you love to hate but at the same time there are moments when wish you could be like them.



 

Here is an excerpt of As Timeless As Stone:

 

Ricard picked up a claw hammer and pulled out the nails of the largest crate. Once he had worked the lid loose, he threw the hammer down and slid the wooden top off.

“Mon dieu, what is this?” He carefully lifted a severed stone head, gazing into the dark, almond eyes of a beautiful woman. He gasped. “It looks real.” A shiver surged through him at the eerie feeling that he held a human head in his hands. “This workmanship.” No less than a great artist had crafted this, and a modern one, for the paint had not faded or peeled. The exquisite work was the best he’d ever seen. Her hair did not seem like carved rock as much as it did an ebony crimped wig. The band across her forehead shone like real gold. Rather than red and black paint, the thin black lines rimming her eyes appeared to be kohl and the blush of her cheeks was like the ochre used by women of ancient Egypt. Her bowed lips had been reddened, as if smudged with actual henna.

Ricard placed the head back in the crate. Then he helped Jean Francois pull out the heavy stone woman and stood her up on the floor. They both gaped in wonder.

“Certainement. It is a fake.” Jean François ran his fingers across the neckline of the body of the ancient yet untarnished statue. “A clean break.”

Ricard picked the stone head up again. “Oui. Clearly the head broke off of this body.”

“Oui, Ricard.” Jean François nodded at his assistant, then glanced back at the stone body. “Look at this dust.” He grabbed a wad of straw from the crate and used it to wipe the headless statue clean. “What do you think of our ancient Egyptian, Ricard?”

“For a relic dug out of the sand of Egypt, she looks fresh. Other than her severed head, there is not a flaw or mark on her.”

“Oui, the paint is as bright is if she were just made.”

“Jean François, it does not look like paint, but flesh. Her breast can be seen under the garment as if real.” The young man gaped at the beautifully formed plump stone mounds and erect, peach-toned nipples straining against the sculptured linen draped over her voluptuous body.

“Mon dieu, she is stone, Ricard.” Jean François’s admiration locked on her breasts as well. “Yet, so beautiful.”

“Let us look at her whole for but a moment.” Ricard took a deep breath, then set the statue’s severed head onto its neck, positioning it until if fit like two pieces of a puzzle.

Ricard stepped back as his gaze devoured the entire woman, though stiff and lifeless. The stone looked like lush, sun-warmed skin. Her oval face was dark and delicate, with full, rosy lips. He admired her long, lithe body, clad in a sheer, white, sleeveless dress, held up only by two delicate linen shoulder straps. He longed to roam his fingers and lips over her high perched breast and the thin waist that flared into curved hips and lithe thighs. Then, down to her pretty legs and her slender feet garbed in white papyrus sandals, of the station she depicted, an Egyptian priestess of the Middle Kingdom. He drank in her beauty, then he noticed the ornament lying in the valley between her breasts, a thick ankh of gold hung from a chain.

His fingers absently tried to grab hold of the necklace but it was only part of the statue, no matter how real it seemed. “What is this?” He looked at the plaque in the statue’s stone hands, held beneath the ankh. The last hieroglyphic depicted the symbol for life, an ankh, held up to the woman’s nose.

Ricard read it silently, sounding it out, Nce xarp wt pwwne Ab etoot abrem... Toujo Abrem etoot pwwne ab... xarp wt au ai ankh qe, and translated it under his breath. “God Horus, as you turned my flesh to stone...God Horus, save me, make me whole...change my stone to flesh...give me the nose breath of life,

The room vibrated and an unnatural wind swirled within. Ricard’s hair stood on end, but he could not tear his eyes away from the statue. He grabbed the ankh, and this time it gave way, lifting from the statue’s chest. The curiosity that drove him as a scientist, as an Egyptologist, caught hold and as strange as this all seemed, he felt he had come this far, he had to see it through. Laying the ankh against the statue’s small nose, Ricard acted out the last hieroglyphic on the plaque.

He shuddered at the sound of a gush of breath. A flash of light struck inside the room. The shock knocked the breath out of him. The stone statue moved, but she wasn’t stone anymore. Jean François gasped and stepped back. Ricard couldn’t move.

It’s a living, breathing woman.

He dropped the ankh and it fell against her chest, which now rose and fell with heaving breaths. Ricard managed to step back on shaky legs. He gaped at her, unable to think or speak.

Alive.

The priestess shrieked. Her brown eyes glowed with anger. “Come near me, you Hyksos cobra, and you will die!” she warned in Old Egyptian.

“Hyksos?” Ricard shook his head. “I must be dreaming.”

A tall, alluring lady with smooth, golden skin and shiny ebony hair falling to her narrow waist stood where the statue had been.

“What is happening?” Jean François’s gaze wandered back and forth, from the woman transformed from stone to the empty crate.

Ricard blinked, but it didn’t change what he saw. The woman was anything but stone, an earthy flesh-and-blood seductress, though the defined bone structure of her oval face appeared chiseled by the finest artist. He looked away from her revealing garments. To gape at stone was one thing, but to stare at a stranger’s body was unheard of. Unthinkable. He had been raised better.

 

Blurb:

Little does Ricard know when he sets the broken head of an ancient Egyptian statue onto its body, the stone figure will transform before his eyes into the most beautiful flesh and blood woman he’s ever seen.

Seshat, an ancient Egyptian Priestess is newly awaken in 19th century Paris, after centuries as a stone statue. Though enchanted by the wondrous inventions of steam-servants and a steam-carriage, she is enthralled by the inventor, Ricard. He ignites her sensual desires and in a steamy night of carnal magic, Seshat transforms Ricard’s life forever. But how far will he go to secure her happiness? Is Ricard’s love for Seshat powerful enough to transcend time?

 

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