C.E. Murphy is the contributor for this week’s Take Five, a regular series where we ask authors and editors to share five facts about their latest books. Her book Wayfinder will be available September 6, 2011.
Lara Jansen is a truthseeker, gifted—or cursed—with the magical ability to tell honesty from lies. Once she was a tailor in Boston, but now she has crossed from Earth to the Barrow-lands, a Faerie world embroiled in a bloody civil war between Seelie and Unseelie. Armed with an enchanted and malevolent staff which seeks to bend her to its dark will, and thrust into a deadly realm where it’s hard to distinguish friend from foe, Lara is sure of one thing: her love for Dafydd ap Caerwyn, the Faerie prince who sought her help in solving a royal murder and dousing the flames of war before they consumed the Barrow-lands.
But now Dafydd is missing, perhaps dead, and the Barrow-lands are closer than ever to a final conflagration. Lara has no other choice: she must harness the potent but perilous magic of the staff and her own truthseeking talents, blazing a path to a long-forgotten truth—a truth with the power to save the Barrow-lands or destroy them.
C.E. Murphy:
1. The premise behind Truthseeker and Wayfinder – a woman who always knows when she’s being lied to – came from a friend of mine, which is why the first book is dedicated to her.
2. Kelly, Lara’s best friend in the series, is named after a high school friend for whom I was always being mistaken (and vice versa).
3. I was writing the very end of Wayfinder when I suddenly realized what the first line of Truthseeker had to be. Fortunately I still had the last stage of edits to do before Truthseeker hit the shelves, so I was able to fit the line in.
4. I never ever “cast” characters in my head as celebrities, but I cast Dafydd. And no, I’m not telling you who, because I don’t think the writer should put ideas like that in peoples’ heads. I’ll entertain guesses, though! 
5. Writing a character who thinks and speaks literally is preposterously difficult. I kept catching idioms slipping in and having to rewrite Lara’s thoughts and dialogue.
