I'm so excited to be asked to participate in The Next Big Thing Blog Hop. I've been tagged by the awesome Phil Siegel to answer a few questions about my debut novel coming in 2014. Here goes:
1) What is the working title of your
book? BURN OUT
2) Where did the idea come from?
A song I heard on Pandora (right after watching a space documentary) led to an intense
dream that became the basis of this book. Strange but true. Tora’s character
was pretty fully formed upon waking and she was screaming at me to write the
book already.
3) What genre does your book fall under?
YA sci-fi.
4) What actors would you choose to
play your characters in a movie rendition? Emily Browning
looks almost exactly how I pictured Tora and would be incredible in the role.
Cam Gigandet is probably the closest match to James, and definitely
Alexander Skarsgard as Kale because he’d be perfect. Oh, and Joss
Whedon would be the screenwriter—because hey, a girl can dream, can’t she?
5) What is the one sentence synopsis
of your book? During Earth's final years, a teenage girl struggles to escape the planet
after the sun turns “red giant,” but discovers her fellow survivors are even deadlier than the hostile environment.
6) Is
your book self-published, published by an independent publisher, or represented
by an agency? My book will
be published by Egmont in Spring 2014, and I am represented by the amazing
Jessica Regel from the Jean V. Naggar Agency in NYC.
7) How
long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript? About 6 weeks for the first draft, but it took about
a year total before I felt it was ready to send to agents.
8) What
other books would you compare this story to within your genre? Well, it’s strange but the book that I’d most compare
it to is Graceling by Kristin Cashore, which is a YA fantasy. They both feature
a strong female character facing terrible situations, albeit in very different settings. In terms of
sci-fi comparisons, I’ve been told my character is the female Han Solo, which is
hands down my favorite compliment so far about the book.
9) Who
or what inspired you to write this book? Aside from Question #2 above, I have a fascination with a concept captured
beautifully in the movie, Kung Fu Panda (no, I’m not kidding). The quote is something like “One
often meets his destiny on the road he takes
to avoid
it.” Without giving too much away about my book, mankind tries to avoid its
destiny--with catastrophic consequences.
10) What else about your book might pique the
reader’s interest? Hmm, an
astrophysicist helped me with some of the technical science behind the story because
I wanted it as real as possible. The “science” in sci-fi is so interesting to me,
because several of the things I imagined in the book have already come about in
the year since I submitted the book to my agency, and last month, astronomers discovered
a planet remarkably similar to the one in BURN OUT.
Also, it's a great book to read if you want to feel better about your own life. No matter how much your job or situation might suck, you’ll glimpse Tora’s world and
think, “Hey, things aren’t so bad after all.” How’s that for an ad?
As the final part of the bloghop,
I'm tagging two other fabulous writers with books releasing in 2014: Paula Stokes and Jaye Robin Brown. Check out
their posts next Wednesday!
