Fireblood: The First Flight by Sam Stewart ~ Blog Tour

Dragons don’t exist. But they used to…

Discovering that the magic of dragons flows through your veins is frightening – and liberating! But with the powers of dragonkind comes a desperate quest: siblings Finn and Tula must travel to a hidden island fortress to help save their father – and the world they know; and discover the truth of their incredible fireblood heritage.

Fireblood: The First Flight by Sam Stewart is a captivating story of family, community, truth and trust. With a Harry Potter vibe of unknown magical powers and discovering where you really belong, readers are taken on heart-pounding adventure. When their father goes missing, Finn and Tula must travel from what they thought was home to an amazing island where they must learn to battle against the evil that surrounds them. As more and more secrets come to light, they realise just how much their father loves them and how he has been preparing them for this day from the very beginning.

I’m thrilled to welcome author Sam Stewart to Scope for Imagination with a guest post about her inspirations for writing.

Fireblood ~ Guest Post by Sam Stewart

Sometimes a creature from our real world, or from worlds of magic, myth and legend, will gift a fireblood with their special skill. In this adventure of The First Flight, we see that Tula Flint has the gift of magnetism, gifted to her by a fruit fly. She’s so powerful that she can open the strongest locks, which means she and her brother Finn can continue in their perilous quest!

Hello, frailskins, and hello, Kate, who is so kind to have me on here to chat with all of you! Thank you, xxx!

Lots of readers and potential authors ask where or how I get my ideas. My answer is always the same: from everywhere and by any means possible – my ideas come from distant memories and also from things happening right now! (Like how I need to get to a meeting in twenty minutes, and oh how much easier that would be if I could just sprout wings and fly there!) Fireblood has taken me a long time to craft. I always wanted to write a book about people with the power of fire, and to my mind that meant dragons, of course. I wanted at least one of the characters to be aged nine, because there were never any books with nine-year-olds as readers when I was growing up and so that’s why Tula is nine. I think she’s great! Really fearless, but also sensitive, with a special affinity for animals.

Her brother Finn is twelve and he is also sensitive, but not as brave. They meet Errol on a secret fortress island called Portaldor, and Errol is amazing with all kinds of creatures. Some of them even sort of live on him! They also meet Charlie, who is fifteen and full of anger. We realise why that is by the end of book.

It’s Charlie who introduces us to the different houses on Portaldor, which aren’t really houses at all – they are instead really tall turrets, home to people with particular fireblood qualities. Ooooh! Exciting!

Want to hear about one of them?

The house of Vulkan?

Vulkan was a fireblood descendent of immense power who George found abandoned near Scafell. She grew into a woman with bright orange hair and emerald eyes. Those with Vulkan heritage are frugal people, trusted with the protection of the earth. They love gold more than most, and are excellent hoarders. They are called the terrors, because they’re territorial, of the earth. Depending on the strength of their magic, they have the ability to grow plants in any circumstances, to taste metals within the earth to seek them out for hoarding or mining, to crack or shake the surface of the world or bring it together, depending on their strength, to sense paths and openings ahead.

The Vulkan house is a turret of granite and iron facing west, towards the rising sun. Here’s a rough sketch of what I think it looks like, but you can see a finished version in the map of the actual copy of the book.

Most firebloods with earth skills are wayfinders like Charlie Flybynight. Charlie cannot leave the island of Portaldor because his dragon wings will not retract, and maybe that’s why he’s so furious all the time, but maybe not . . .

Here’s a link to order Fireblood if you’d like to lose yourself in this world of myth, magic, mystery and mayhem:

https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/fireblood-sam-stewart/7374263?ean=9781915444196

And you can check in with me at @IAmSamStewart on Twitter or @I_am_samstewart on Instagram, plus you can go to fireblood.co.uk for exclusive news and giveaways and ridiculous character takeovers. I look forward to seeing you there, and thanks for taking the time to connect with me.

Love,

Sam x

Thank you to Karen Bultiauw & Firefly Press for inviting me to take part in this tour for such a fantastic book!