Today I am thrilled to have author Kelly A. Harmon here today at Book Junkie to talk a little about her latest release Blood Soup. Please give Kelly a warm welcome and enjoy! Don't forget to enter the
Giveaway at the end of the post!
Background of Blood Soup
The writing of Blood Soup was a very different project for me. I had been asked to participate in the 3-day Novel Contest by a friend, and I needed something "fresh" to write about.
I normally have a ton of ideas to choose from, but I didn't want to chew up any one of those with a project that I'd "only" be working on for three days. So I brain-stormed for a project that had limited scope in the telling of the tale. I wanted to be able to finish what I started during the contest. It was important that I had a story I could tell in about 20,000 words.
I also needed to know the entire story arc before I started. In my mind, I had to know the beginning, the middle and the end. If I didn’t, how would I be able to write it in three days?
Up until then, the novels I'd completed (and have not yet published) had been "organically" grown: they started with a seedling of an idea, usually the back-story of the main character, and the ending. The middle scenes and the subplots coalesced as I wrote. Often, I let the characters tell me which direction the story will take.
But I couldn't work that way for the contest if I wanted to complete the novel within the time limit.
I created a working outline which was little more than a few words about a witch/nursemaid, Salvagia, and her charge, Piacenza, and the prophecy regarding the fall of a kingdom. I knew all the players, and I knew many of the scenes I wanted to write, but it wasn't until I sat down to the do the actual writing that the concept of Blood Soup as the linchpin for the story materialized.
I'm an avid genealogist. At the time I was writing Blood Soup, I was doing a great deal of research on the Polish side of my family and putting together a family-recipe cookbook. One of the recipes was for a special-occasion (usually a holiday) soup called "Czarnina" (char-NEE-nah). In English, it’s referred to as Blood Soup.
The translation of ,"czarnina" is "black." The soup is actually named for its rich, dark color, rather than its ingredients. I toyed with using a play on words for the darkness of the soup and the darkness of the theme of my story, but time after time my mind returned to the idea of the blood in the soup itself being most important to the story.
Despite the sound of its name, Blood Soup isn't such a sinister thing. There is some blood involved, but it only constitutes a small fraction of what is used to create the broth. The other ingredients are fairly routine and include cloves, peppercorn and fresh apples and pears which create a sweet-and-sour soup served with thick, chewy noodles called kluski.
Besides, I said to myself, working through the plotting process, blood is a requirement for life! Right? Any great loss of it, and we perish. So, I began to think of ways blood could be used for healing or as a medicinal ingredient. Taking it a step further, I wondered at the efficacy of using blood to save the life of another person: Could blood from a well person pull a dying person back from the brink? Could it strengthen a weak constitution? I considered whether or not a person could subsist on a diet of mostly blood...human or animal. And, what happens to someone who develops such a taste, so much so, that it’s like an addition?
That line of questioning solidified Prince Amalric’s character: he was a weakling as a child and fed blood to fortify him. He came to crave it as a youngster, often demanding it. He reveals his strong temper–like an addict-- when someone has eaten the last bowl of soup which he considers his.
Although King Theodicar set in motion the events which lead to Amalric’s eventual rule, Blood Soup is actually about Amalric , whose blood lust was thrust upon him by a determined father and who must come to realize that he’s not the rightful heir to Borgund.
And that's how Blood Soup came to be.
A tale of murder, betrayal and comeuppance.
King Theodicar of Borgund needed an heir. When his wife, Queen Piacenza, became pregnant, he’d hoped for a boy. His wife, along with her nurse, Salvagia, knew it wouldn’t be so: with each cast of the runes, Salvagia’s trusted divination tools yielded the same message: “A girl child must rule or the kingdom will fall to ruin.” The women were convinced that the child would be a girl.
When the queen finally gives birth, the nurse and the king are equally surprised. The king is faced with a terrible choice, and his decision will determine the fate of his kingdom. Will he choose wisely, or will he doom Borgund to ruin?
READ AN EXCERPT
Excerpt One:
Theodicar looked down at the mewling infant in his arms, and felt the anger rise up. Even in death his wife defied him, the nurse ensuring her success. Women did not rule. He would not allow it. They had created a male child, and that child would take the throne upon his death.
“You can save the boy,” he said to Salvagia.
She slitted her eyes at him, her stare mutinous. Her words were loud and hard in the wake of Pia’s death. “I have the power to save one at the expense of the other, Sire. The girl is stronger. And eldest. She was born to rule.”
Theodicar watched the girl curl up in his arms, her birth fluids staining a brown patch on the dyed-yellow wool of his tunic. She burrowed into the crook of his elbow, trying to achieve the comfort of the womb.
“I will not hear those words again,” he said. “That absurd idea died with my wife. My son will rule.” He reached for the boy, thrusting the girl child back into the nurse’s hands. “There’s no need for a daughter. And no need for anyone to know of her.”
“So be it,” Salvagia said, wrapping the weary girl in a square of wool, covering her face. She reached for her basket.
“Kill her now,” said Theodicar.
Salvagia looked stricken.
“Sire, if we kill her now, she will be of no use to her brother. Once dead, the blood won’t flow, and we need her blood to strengthen his.
“Then drain her now,” he snapped. “I will not have her crying out when we call the witnesses back to cut the boy’s cord.”
Excerpt Two:
“Do you want to learn about your sister?” King Theodicar asked.
“Go on.”
“Salvagia had a set of runes, and she cast them over and over and over as Pia’s pregnancy advanced. Always, the answer was the same: ‘A girl child must rule or the kingdom will fall to ruin.’”
“Do you believe that, Father?”
“Your mother did. And so did Salvagia. They came from Omero, where the eldest born ruled, not just the eldest male. They believed your sister should rule.”
“But, did you believe?”
“I think your mother wasn’t meant to bear children. She was little and frail. Her labor arrived early—almost too early for you to survive. Your sister was born first. She was tiny, and just as delicate as your mother. Pia died the moment she was born, without even seeing her. Salvagia cut the girl’s cord and handed her to me. Then your mother’s belly contracted, and we realized there was another babe: you.”
“So, you killed my sister so she wouldn’t take the throne.”
“It wasn’t like that at the time.” Anguish washed across Theodicar’s face. “The girl was
frail, but you were worse. Salvagia could only save one of you. She was certain you wouldn’t last through the night, and she tried to convince me that your weakness fulfilled the prophecy. I wouldn’t listen to her. I told her to sacrifice the girl so you could live.”
“The girl, the girl, the girl. Has my sister a name?”
“Her life was given for yours before she was named. I’d asked Salvagia to remove the body afterward, so there would be no question about who would rule after me.” He looked down at his feet. “I’m fairly certain Salvagia named her, though she never told me so.”
“How did my sister save me?”
“Her blood, Amal. You drank of her blood to strengthen your own.”
Amalric’s hand tightened on the glass in his lap. He swallowed hard, imagining he could taste the tinny flavor of blood on his tongue. It was worse than he first thought: not only was he winner by default, but he was beast—some variation of an incestuous cannibal—alive only because he drank his sister’s blood.
Excerpt Three: (A Little Longer. This is condensed from a much longer passage...)
Almaric didn’t know what he had expected to see—what he expected to feel—once he pushed aside the curtain. But it certainly wasn’t the empty void he experienced. Surely, these two women should mean something to me, he thought. He should feel sad for their passing. Or relief at his own existence. Or anger at his sister’s senseless murder.
But he’d never met them, and they meant nothing.
“Mother,” he whispered, trying to feel the relationship. He touched her loose brown hair, satiny in death, as if it had been oiled. Mummified flesh clung to her skull, her mouth hung slack with decay. But he could make out her features, even in abstract.
Piacenza’s arms crossed her chest, holding onto the baby she’d died birthing. The child lay on her stomach, her face turned out to the corridor. Smooth in death, the babe’s skin was stretched taut across her skull, her tiny mouth open as if searching for a breast. He couldn’t picture this small babe as his twin.
“Sister,” he said, failing to convince himself of an emotional connection to the babe. He smoothed a thumb across her forehead, touched a finger to her puckered lips.
A scowl wrinkled his forehead, and he felt a tightness behind his eyes.
Now that he knew about them, how long would he continue to feel the emptiness that knowing them should have filled?
Had his father confirmed his sister’s existence in order to wring sympathy from his heart? Didn’t he realize that a man who had never known the loving touch of his mother nor felt the bond of his long-deceased sister would find nothing but apathy amid these moldering bones?
Amalric gazed at the wispy hair, the withered skin, and suddenly, he made a fist and drove it into his mother’s side. He felt her ribcage shatter beneath his knuckles, and saw his sister’s small frame sink as the bones of his mother failed to support her. A puff of dust rose above his sister’s head like a small halo in the torchlight.
He laughed, finding sudden humor in the situation. He should be rejoicing, he thought. Perhaps he should feel some harmony with his sire—the man who removed all obstacles from his path to the throne.
How pathetic of him, thought Amalric, if he felt any pride at all for getting rid of these women. Women! Who should be seen and not heard, who should do the bidding of their husbands without fail, who are required to take the brunt of a man’s anger and return it threefold with a submissive demeanor. Women, he thought, who are frail beyond measure and easily subdued. How pitiable that Father should take pride in such an achievement. And worse, how contemptible that he might think my seeing the mortal remains of these women would create in me a sudden change of heart.
***GIVEAWAY***
Kelly will be giving away a $25 Amazon or B&N gift card to one randomly drawn commenter! Contest ends May 12th. I encourage you to check out Kelly's entire Blog Tour and enter on the other sites as well for your chance to win! You can do that HERE 
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