As the headline says quite emphatically, today is day eight of the Fellowship of Fantasy Writers Blog Tour. My guest today is Debbie Manber Kupfer, a writer (of course) with a fondness of cats. Today she discusses her new book Argentum and introduces us to one of her characters.

Gromer the Green and the Pea Soup

(From Argentum (P.A.W.S. 2) by Debbie Manber Kupfer)

I love my literary children. There are so many characters that make me chuckle or guffaw. Old friends, like Joey, the animagus kangaroo (who was a character I created especially for my son Joey) and Ian the chimp who lives in St. Louis zoo, and is fond of monkey jokes and banana daiquiris, or new friends like Gordon Frakes, the (very annoying) Canadian exchange student, who happens to be an animagus Canada goose, or Oswald the Ostentatious, the flamingo animagus who runs the New York P.A.W.S. Institute and is a lot more formidable than he looks.

But my favorite new character in Argentum has to be Gromer the Green, the old magician that lives in a cave in Snowdonia, Wales. Here is a little snippet from the first scene when we meet him:

On the stovetop in the kitchen area sat a large cauldron, and Quentin walked over to it and peered inside. Green liquid bubbled in its depths. What wondrous potion was this old magician concocting?

“Pea soup!” said Gromer, and he grabbed a wooden spoon and stirred the contents of the cauldron vigorously. He then lifted the spoon and sucked on it. “Hmmm! Needs more wizzlewoop, methinks! What do you think?” And before Quentin could object, Gromer took the spoon and jammed it into Quentin’s mouth.

The soup was boiling hot and scalded Quentin’s throat as it went down. Quentin gagged, but Gromer just waited. “Well?”

“Oh, um, definitely more . . . wizzlewoop.”

“Yes, that’s what I says, you can never get enough wizzlewoop. Very rare it is, but I knows where to get it, knows me a spell for that. Old Caradog never knew the spell. His pea soup was never as sumptuous as mine.” Gromer looked up at Quentin, “Who were you again?”

Read more about Gromer in Argentum, and discover how it all began in P.A.W.S.

Debbie Manber Kupfer grew up in London and lived in Israel, before somehow ended up in St. Louis, where she works as a puzzle constructor and writer. She lives with her husband, two children, and a very opinionated feline. She is the author of P.A.W.S and Argentum and has short stories in several anthologies including Fauxpocalypse, Shades of Fear, Darkly Never After, and Sins of the Past. She believes that with enough tea and dark chocolate you can achieve anything! Connect with Debbie on her blog http://debbiemanberkupfer.wordpress.com/ or Facebook https://www.facebook.com/DebbieManberKupferAuthor .