Blog Tour Recap: The Clover Fields
This is a guest post I originally wrote for Thoughts from a Yodeling Goat Herder for my Hidden World Blog Tour (great blog name, amiright?). But for those of you who missed the post, I wanted to share it here. Enjoy!
Hey everyone! My name is S. M. Boyce, and I’m the author ofLichgates. It’s the first novel in a young adult fantasy adventure trilogy that was just recently published, and I’m here to stand on a box and throw copies at random passersby. Just kidding. I only do that on Tuesdays.
Today, I’m honored to have the keys to “Thoughts from a Yodeling Goatherder.” I won’t lie. Half of my excitement stems from the fact that it’s a freaking amazing name for a blog. Just saying. It makes me want to go out on a mountain and try my hand at it. I bet V. L. Locey is much better yodeler than me, though.
I love the caption contests that Locey does, too, though I must admit I’m not the best captioner. I usually come up with something days later, when the joke’s over, and laugh quietly to myself in my little corner of the café. People leave me alone there. Not sure why…
Anyway, I’m here on my Lichgates Hidden World Blog Tour to offer you some fun freebies and talk about the wonderful world of pets and all things fuzzy. This is my little bundle of mischief:
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Oh, he looks cute. But that’s his greatest weapon. It’s hard to be mad at him for eating the legs off the coffee table when he gives you that face.
I haven’t actually had many dogs in my life; mostly horses, actually. It’s neat to see Locey talk about the hillside farm, since I get flashbacks to the farm where I grew up. We harvested hay one summer, but apart from that, it was just a horse farm. My mom always wanted a goat, and after reading this blog for a while, I’m starting to see why!
I actually came up with most of the plot and world development for Lichgates while on that farm. We had this open field in the front right of the house, which we never really used except for extra parking if my parents had a party. It was completely covered in clover – it was just a thick blanket of soft weeds that were perfect for falling into and staring off into space. I love the smell of clover —it’s warm, but kind of sweet, and always reminds me of peaceful summers where nothing matters except for hoping it doesn’t rain while you’re sitting out there. I also had a great view of my mom’s garden, with her azaleas and black-eyed susans. It was always interesting to me that those beautiful flowers were so well-maintained and yet never really appreciated as more than being something pretty to look at, while I actually enjoyed the clover more.
These clover-moments actually inspired a prominent theme in the Grimoire Trilogy. I won’t go into too much detail, but clovers are a frequent motif. Additionally, it inspired this line:
“Life requires balance. Though a dandelion is never as stunning as an orchid, we would never appreciate a flower’s beauty without also appreciating a weed’s simplicity. Therefore, we must accept that there is evil if we are to understand what it means to be good.”
It’s a little snippet, one that will be often overlooked, but it makes me smile every time I read it. It reminds me of the farm, my horse, and the time I accidentally mistook my mom’s prized ivy vines as weeds and removed them in a weeding frenzy one spring.
Oops. Sorry, Mom.
If you have a fond farm memory, too, I’d love to hear it. I’ll get us another round of coffee and we can settle in to talk in the comments.
Ah, and before I go, make sure you enter the giveaway that’s coming up here in a minute. You can win a free eBook copy ofLichgates (whatever format you’d like) and some pretty fun book swag. So enter the giveaway and let’s talk farms, pets, and other fuzzy things in the comments!
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