“Inspirations and Influences” is a series of articles in which we invite authors to write guest posts talking about their…well, Inspirations and Influences. The cool thing is that the writers are given free reign so they can go wild and write about anything they want. It can be about their new book, series or about their career as a whole.

Today’s guests are Adam Jay Epstein and Andrew Jacobson, writers of the lovely and fun MG novel The Familiars. The book tells the tale of 3 familiars – magical animal companions – the cat Aldwyn, the blue jay Skylar and tree frog Gilbert and how the fate of their loyals (magical human companions) and possibly of the whole land depend on them. The novel releases in early September and is also soon to be made in a major motion picture, produced by Sam Raimi. We are delighted to have the authors here today talking about their influences and to give away two copies of the book.

Without further ado, Adam and Andrew, everybody!

Sometimes, you don’t realize how someone influences and changes your life until years later. When I was in seventh grade, I had an English teacher give me an assignment to write the first ten pages of a sequel to Pearl Buck’s The Good Earth. Now, I knew very little about Chinese farmers other than what I had read in the book. But it didn’t seem to matter. Over the next few nights, I felt as if I was Wang Lung with new plights, hardships and victories. By the time I had finished the assignment, I felt as if something special had happened, as if the story had written itself.

A week later, the teacher handed back the graded paper. There, on the top, was a bright red A+ from a teacher who wasn’t even keen on giving As. It was a boost of confidence, an affirmation that I could write creatively and convincingly. It felt great.

Then, I went to my next class. Science. And I let the paper slip from my mind.

Eight grade. Ninth grade. Tenth grade. Didn’t think about it.

Then to college. Other things occupied my thoughts.

It was in my junior year, when I was starting to consider being a writer,that I thought back on that paper. And her bright red A+.

“I could do this,” I thought to myself.

I never got to thank my 7th grade English teacher for her encouragement and that assignment. So, I will now.

Thank you, Mrs. Winer.

–Adam Jay Epstein

*******

I grew up in the early 1980s in one of those idyllic suburban towns with only one movie theater – the kind that played the same movie for up to a year at a time. When I was just 4, that movie was “Star Wars.” It had been re-released in theaters in 1981, and it was not just the first movie I ever saw on the big screen, but the second and third and fourth, too. To further my obsession, I also collected every last action figure and vehicle from the “Star Wars” trilogy that I could get my hands on. I remember my mom even bribing me to take swimming lessons with the promise of a Boba Fett Slave 1 starship. And taking medication for chronic childhood ear aches always went down a little easier with a new x-wing fighter or Jabba the Hut palace.

My favorite hobby as a kid was playing shows with my action figures. I spent countless hours in every corner of the house with a Han Solo in one hand and a Darth Vader in the other. That’s where my imagination was born, I think. Making up stories about good guys and bad guys, jedi knights and evil lords. It wasn’t just “Star Wars,” either. I had superheroes, GI Joes, and WWF wrestlers joining the living room adventures, as well. Then I started translating those epic tales to paper, in the earliest days without using quotation marks for dialogue!

I guess I’ve always been drawn to hero’s journeys. Whether it’s Luke Skywalker, Frodo Baggins, Harry Potter, or Peter Parker, the possibility of even the most ordinary everyman becoming extraordinary is a timeless and irresistible tale. And “The Familiars” is a story not so different: about the unlikeliest of heroes rising up against insurmountable odds and finding greatness within them.

–Andrew Jacobson

About the authors: ADAM JAY EPSTEIN spent his childhood in Great Neck, New York, while ANDREW JACOBSON grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, but the two met in a parking garage out in Los Angeles. They have been writing for film and television together ever since. This is their first book.

Adam Jay Epstein lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Jane, their daughters, Penny and Olive, and a black-and-white alley cat who hangs out in their backyard. Andrew Jacobson lives with his wife, Ashley, and their dog, Elvis, four traffic lights away.

About the book:

Running to save his life, Aldwyn, the street-wise orphan cat, ducks into a strange store. Moments later Jack, a young wizard-in-training, comes in to pick out his familiar – a magical animal companion. Aldwyn’s always been clever. But magical? Apparently Jack thinks so—and Aldwyn is happy to play along. Anything to get out of town!

Once home with Jack in Stone Runlet, Aldwyn thinks that he’s got it made—a life of ease with a boy who loves him. He just has to convince the other familiars—the know-it-all blue jay Skylar and the friendly tree frog Gilbert–that he’s the telekinetic cat he claims to be.

Then, after the sky lights up with an omen, the unthinkable happens. Jack and the other young wizards are captured by the evil queen of Vastia. Together Aldwyn, Skylar and Gilbert must save them—but how?

On their thrilling quest across the land, the familiars will face dangerous foes, unearth a shocking centuries old secret, and discover a mysterious destiny that will change them all forever.

You can read more about the book at the website The Familiars.

GIVEAWAY DETAILS:

We have TWO ARCs (Advanced Reading Copies) of The Familiars up for grabs. The contest is open to ALL, and will run until Saturday, August 21st at 11:59 PM (PST). To enter, simply leave a comment here letting us know which animal would you pick as a familiar. ONLY ONE ENTRY PER PERSON, PLEASE! Multiple comments will be disqualified. We will announce the winners in our Sunday stash. Good luck!

Welcome to our fourth guest post of YAAM, the 2010 edition. As part of our celebration of all things YA, we have invited authors from different genres to write articles about the books and the genres they write.

Today we are proud to be the tenth and final stop on the Traveling to Teens book tour, celebrating the release of author Y.S. Lee’s latest novel in The Agency series, The Body at the Tower. When we were asked if we wanted to participate in the tour, we of course were thrilled having heard nothing but praise for Ms. Lee’s work – and so it is our honor to present you, gentle readers, with a guest post from the author herself.

Please give a warm welcome to Y.S. Lee, as she tells us a bit more about some Notorious Victorians!

Welcome to the eighth and last installment of my Notorious Victorians blog tour, celebrating the publication of The Body at the Tower. Over the past fortnight we’ve looked at firebrands, reluctant revolutionaries, scandals and spectacles, and now deliberate rebels – all figures who have changed the way we live. Today’s essay focuses on the Edinburgh Seven – women who, like Florence Nightingale, challenged social expectations to pursue careers in medicine. Yet these women took it several steps further.

In 1869, Sophia Jex-Blake got permission to attend lectures at the Edinburgh medical school. (She had previously been rejected by Harvard and various medical colleges in England because of her gender.) Following immediate and vigorous opposition from students and some faculty members, the university reversed its position: it would not permit coeducational classes and could not offer private tuition to a single lady. Jex-Blake seized the loophole – she advertised for female classmates. Joined by Mary Anderson, Emily Bovell, Matilda Chaplin, Helen Evans, Edith Pechey and Isabel Thorne, the women agreed to fund their own separate lectures and began their studies that autumn.

Debate continued to rage at the school and in newspapers. Soon, the confrontation became physical: one day, when the women were scheduled to take an exam, a few hundred students – and possibly teaching assistants – massed in front of the building, heckling the women and throwing garbage at them. After the examination, Jex-Blake refused to slip away through a side door, but instead confronted the rioters. The school made a very faint show of disciplining the students for this outburst, fining three of them for “breach of peace”.

Despite this hostile environment, more women registered to study. There was good reason to be optimistic. Yet in 1873, while the women were still students, the university refused to grant them degrees. A court decision supported this position, and ruled further that women should never have been admitted in the first place.

On leaving Edinburgh, Jex-Blake went to London where she helped to establish the London School of Medicine for Women, which opened in 1874 with 14 students. Even so, some colleges of physicians refused to grant licenses to practise medicine to female students. As a result, many of the original students received their MDs in Switzerland, France, and Ireland. Women students were eventually admitted to Scottish universities a generation later, in 1892.

Sophia Jex-Blake and her classmates were able to challenge Edinburgh University and become pioneering physicians because of their social and financial advantages: they were not required to earn a living, their families tolerated (although they did not necessarily encourage) their radical notions, and they could afford the expense of a long and experimental education. Using their privilege and financial advantage for the common good made them rebels not only against the university, but against social expectations for young ladies of birth and breeding.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Y S Lee was born in Singapore and raised in Vancouver and Toronto. In 2004, she completed her PhD in Victorian literature and culture. This research, combined with her time living in London, triggered an idea for a story about a women’s detective agency. The result, A Spy in the House, is her first novel.

Ying is also the author of Masculinity and the English Working Class (Routledge). She now lives in Kingston, Ontario with her husband and young son.

Things I’m learning to like, out of self-defense:
Early mornings (see son, above)

Thank you, Ying, for the awesome post! For more about Ying, you can visit her website, or follow her on Twitter.

If you missed any of the earlier stops on the tour, make sure to check them out:

Mon. 8/2 – Kristi (The Story Siren)
Tues. 8/3 – Kristen (Bookworming in the 21st Century)
Wed. 8/4 – Sarah GreenBeanTeenQueen
Thurs. 8/5 – Lizzy (Cornucopia of Reviews)
Fri. 8/6 – Ari (Reading in Color)
Mon. 8/9 – Mariah L (A Reader’s Adventure)
Tues. 8/10 – Steph Su (Steph Su Reads)
Wed. 8/11 – Cecilia (The Epic Rat)
Thurs. 8/12 – Laura (Laura’s Review Bookshelf)
Fri. 8/13 – The Book Smugglers

Also, make sure to stick around as later in the day, we’ll post our review of The Body at the Tower.

Welcome to our first guest post in the YAAM – 2010 edition. As part of our celebration of all things YA, we tried to invite authors from different genres to write articles about the books and the genres they write. Michael Grant is the author of the Gone books (so far with three books published: Gone, Hunger and Lies), one of Thea’s favourite Dystopian series. Please give it up for Michael Grant!

The GONE series. Oh, good lord, why did I write the GONE series? Approximately 550 pages each. Times 6. Which — if you can believe the calculator app on my laptop — totals 3,300 pages.

Would this be a good point to mention that I don’t touch-type? Two fingers. Left and right index. Occasionally, if it’s something exciting like an action scene, I can use the middle finger on my right hand. Middle finger on my left hand? Totally useless. I swear that finger contributes nothing and I hate it.

Where was I?

The GONE series (GONE, HUNGER, LIES so far and PLAGUE, DARKNESS and LIGHT still to come,) has a simple premise: one day for reasons no one understands at first, everyone 15 and over disappears from the town of Perdido Beach, California. The kids left behind soon discover three salient facts: they are trapped inside an impenetrable dome, some of them are mutating in fairly disturbing ways, and your 15th birthday doesn’t necessarily call for a party.

So, one day I was thinking about 1) LOST, 2) THE STAND and 3) This half-formed idea I have called GUNS AND DRAGONS. (How great is that name? Guns are cool, Dragons are cool. Put them together and it’s a case of coolness squared.)

And one last thing: I was thinking about Disney movies. What do Disney movies always do? Aside from recycling dance sequences? And going with the cute animal sidekick? They kill Mom. Little Mermaid? Dead mom. Bambi? Dead mom. Aladdin? Dead mom. Nemo? Mom was a Filet-O-Fish sandwich some kid ate half of and then threw out.

A slight digression: Everyone said when THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG came out that the cool thing was to have an African-American heroine. That was cool. And about damn time. But the amazing thing, the knock-me-down Disney revolution was: mom was not dead! An actual mother. In a Disney movie!

So, anyway, LOST, THE STAND, GUNS AND DRAGONS and every matricidal Disney movie ever made. That’s what I was thinking about. And suddenly, I had it. A group of characters cut off from the outside world, in an existential struggle between good and evil, with the laws of nature rewritten, and not just dead moms, not even both parents dead, but everyone over the age of 15 wiped out!

Wiped out! Gone! By Michael Grant.

With GONE I started with an over-the-top fantasy/science fiction/horror premise, and then wrote it with absolute seriousness and all the realism I could bring to it. The basic idea may be crazy, but the way it plays out is realistic. My characters aren’t all good or all bad. (Well, except for Drake who is definitely all bad.) My characters make mistakes, do stupid things, do mean or short-sighted things. Some go well beyond short-sighted all the way to evil. But I work at making sure all the characters stay real — even when that frustrates readers.

The result with GONE is a very dangerous, violent, intense world. Because although good often triumphs over evil, it takes its sweet time doing it. There is love and romance in GONE but it’s not the main focus. Characters in GONE are mostly paying attention to finding food, avoiding being eaten by killer worms, avoiding being purged by sick-minded bigots and dealing with the fact that Drake is walking around with a ten foot tentacle where his arm used to be. When they have the time they have romance. But their first priority is survival.

So, it’s a mix of the hot and the horrifying. Kind of like the Megan Fox – Brian Austin Greene marriage.

I have a simple goal as a writer. I don’t care much whether I get good reviews. (Although I do get them.) And I don’t care whether I hit bestseller lists. (Although, it’s kind of cool when I do.) I really set out every day to write a story that makes readers stay up all night reading.

The thing that is special about science fiction, fantasy and horror — and GONE fits somewhere on that spectrum — is that in addition to keeping readers up all night neglecting their homework, I get to think about some interesting ideas. In GONE we deal with politics: who’s in charge, who should be in charge? And there’s just a bit of philosophy: what is true and how do we know it? And moral issues: are right and wrong always the same or do they change when circumstances change?

There are even sneaky bits of history. A rather obscure case is that of Zil and Human Crew. Zil is modeled on the rise of Hitler. Zil’s main supporters are Turk, Hank, Lance and Antoine. Without going into too much boring detail, I’ll say that each is based on a member of Hitler’ inner circle. (One easy clue: Lance means spear, and spear in German is speer. As in Albert Speer, the handsome, well-educated architect who gave Hitler some glamor.) In LIES Zil and Human Crew even stage a sort of burning of the Reichstag, the German parliament building, which was burned by the Nazis who then tried to use the ensuing chaos to take power.

Of course I don’t really expect anyone to see all that while reading the book, but in the course of doing my main job — frightening readers and keeping them up all night — a science fiction sort of premise gives me an opportunity to write about some interesting issues, and I hope make readers think a little about good and evil, and the ease with which good people can cross the line.

It adds a level of interest for me as well as for readers. And that makes it fun to use those two (and occasionally three) fingers to type those 550 page manuscripts.

A quick note on where the series stands. I have completed book #4, PLAGUE. (Which sounds like a happy book, doesn’t it?) And I have just crossed the 200 page mark on DARKNESS.

And still my left middle finger contributes nothing to the writing process. Although it occasionally helps me when I’m driving in traffic.

Thank you Michael!

“Inspirations and Influences” is a series of articles in which we invite authors to write guest posts talking about their…well, Inspirations and Influences. The cool thing is that the writers are given free reign so they can go wild and write about anything they want. It can be about their new book, series or about their career as a whole.

Today’s guest is the esteemed Jonathan L. Howard, author of the delightfully comic and macabre Johannes Cabal books. Jonathan’s books (Johannes Cabal The Necromancer and Johannes Cabal The Detective) chronicle the Faustian titled character, Johannes Cabal’s adventures – dealings with Satan, running a honest-to-goodness carnival of souls, jumping across zeppelins and all other kinds of whatnot. Thea is a newly converted Cabalian (yes, that is what we are calling fans of the Jo-man), and when we received word that Jonathan would be willing to write us an I&I post, we were thrilled.

Ladies and gents, please give it up for the knowledgeable, Dr. Who-lovin’ Jonathan L. Howard!

I remember a great deal about my infancy, which is to say my life before I went to school. It astonishes me when people tell me that they cannot remember a thing before they were six or seven, when I can recall so much. I remember the late Victorian or Edwardian end of terrace house I was born in, and its long garden. It was demolished to make way for a bland pair of five storey blocks of flats, but the fact that there was room for two gives some idea of just how long that garden was. It ended with an earthen bank with some small trees and shrubs to mark the boundary. It was on that bank that I first managed to eat a whole ice lolly without dropping any. As I say, I remember a great deal about my infancy.

I remember the house, and I remember how quiet it was. My father was at work, my brother and sister at school, and my mother was busy around the place keeping it tidy, but I remember the quiet. I couldn’t read, and the only books I remember were not mine. I’m not sure I even had any books. I remember the Children’s Encyclopedia Britannica in twelve volumes plus index and two annual addenda for 1965 and 1966, assorted Ladybird books including one for science experiments, a larger book about technology (it was the ‘sixties, the era of “the white heat of technology” when people were excited about science rather than celebrities), and a thick, battered copy of all the Grimm’s Fairy Tales that I never remember having a cover. I couldn’t read, but I could pore over the pictures in all of these; rockets and goblins, submarines and dragons, fractional distillation columns and lonely towers in the forest. They were all equally wonderful, all – as far as I knew – belonging to a single world.

I wanted to read. There is a photograph of me in the back garden, sitting on a sun lounger and studying the newspaper intently. It was taken without my knowledge, snapped surreptitiously by my mother, presumably because I looked so cute, sitting there, pretending to be daddy. The thing is, I remember that day, and I know I wasn’t pretending to be anyone. I was trying to read by sheer force of will, staring at the words until they would give up their meaning. But they didn’t. I had to wait until I went to school to learn how to perform that miracle. At least I wasn’t lacking in motivation; I picked the skill up very quickly.

Television consisted of three channels, and none broadcast much during the day. At lunchtime the BBC transmitted “Watch with Mother,” which I usually watched by myself. That’s not to say anything against my mother; parenting then encouraged independence at a much earlier age than now, and anyway, just how many episodes of “Andy Pandy” can a woman reasonably be expected to sit through? Not that I was a fan of “Andy Pandy.” I liked watching “Bill and Ben the Flowerpot Men,” but I disliked “The Woodentops.” Spotty Dog was forever hiding behind the fence, and it always took the other puppets forever to find him, despite the obvious forest of strings rising from behind the fence and up into the painted heavens. It was also the only place Spotty Dog ever hid, and the Woodentops’ inability to remember that frustrated me greatly.

Years later I discovered that Bill and Ben were voiced by Peter Hawkins, who also voiced the Daleks and the Cybermen for “Doctor Who” in the ‘sixties. Things like that make me happy.

Sometimes BBC2 would transmit “Trade Test Transmissions,” just to have something to show during the day. It’s unimaginable that the modern BBC, hedged around with regulations to prevent it showing anything that might be regarded as advertising, used to blithely transmit short films produced by major multinationals well into the ‘70s. They were interesting though, not least because they were often scientific. I learned how the stained glass windows for the Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral (aka “Paddy’s Wigwam”) were manufactured. I learned about the safety protocols for storing inflammable spirit aboard tankers. I watched, fascinated, footage from the Brussels’ World Fair of 1958, full of mechanical contrivances for a better world.

So, when I watched “Stingray” and “Thunderbirds” and “Doctor Who,” it was difficult to say where fact stopped and fantasy started. It was all wonderful and so exciting, fairy tales and scientific romance mixing into one – rockets launching from Woomera and Tracy Island, the TSR-2 racing Fireball XL5.

But, alas, time passes. All too soon I grew up, and put such childish syntheses aside.

Bollocks I did.

When I am travelling by train, looking all moody and artistic as I watch the countryside go by, I am in all probability imagining giant robots stomping around the hill tops while Lovecraftian horrors mine up from the Earth’s core. The North Sea under a stormy sky is a dramatic sight in itself, but at least part of me is watching Godzilla wading ashore beneath the lightning.

Somewhere, Rapunzel is dropping Flying Monkeys with her Barrett XM500 as they assault her tower. Somewhere, a blue goblin is comparing mobile ‘phone specifications. Somewhere, Johannes Cabal, a necromancer of some little infamy, is… Oh, hold on. That’s what I’m supposed to be writing at the moment.

Jonathan L. Howard is a game designer and scriptwriter who has worked in the computer games industry since the early nineties, notably co-scripting the first three Broken Sword adventure games. He lives near Bristol with his wife and daughter.

Thank you, Jonathan!

Now, for the giveaway…

The Giveaway:

Courtesy of the publisher, Random House, we are giving away SIX copies of Johannes Cabal The Detective. The contest is open to ALL and will run until July 17 at 11:59 PM (PST). To enter, leave a comment here letting us know who your favorite necromancer or detective is. Only one entry per person please – duplicate or multiple comments (and we COUNT ISPs) will be automatically disqualified. Good luck!

“Inspirations and Influences” is a series of articles in which we invite authors to write guest posts talking about their…well, Inspirations and Influences. The cool thing is that the writers are given free reign so they can go wild and write about anything they want. It can be about their new book, series or about their career as a whole.”

Today’s guest is awesome author Jackie Kessler, writer of Urban Fantasy, Comics (she is part of the Buffyverse CANON) and Young Adult books (her YA debut Hunger will be coming out in a few months). She also pens the Icarus Project Series, a superhero series written in collaboration with Caitlin Kittredge. The new book in the series Shades of Gray (Shades of Night in the UK), comes out tomorrow in the US. Ana is a huge fan of the series and has reviewed both books.

To celebrate the release of Shades of Gray we invited Jackie to talk about some of her Inspirations and Influences:

I Blame Neil Gaiman
By Jackie Kessler

Back in the early 1990s, I thought I was done with comic books. Seriously. Firstly, they were expensive, and without my dad to bankroll my sequential-art habit, all of my cash had to go to textbooks and Ramen noodles. Secondly, I was getting a little fed up with many of the storylines and some of the art. I thought I’d had enough of Good versus Evil in illustrated form. If I really wanted, I could watch Michael Keaton as the Batman again and call it a day.

And then, something happened that changed my life. Multiple choice time! What was the event that changed my life?

A) Lightning hit a row of chemicals in beakers, and all those electrified chemicals spilled on me, giving me super speed and the uncanny ability to wear a skintight red outfit and manage to look slender.
B) I was bitten by a radioactive spider, giving me the proportional strength, etc., of a spider (yuck).
C) I discovered, when I took off my glasses, that I had super strength, was able to fly, and had a weird allergic reaction to kryptonite.
D) My roommate plunked down a copy of SANDMAN #23 on my bed and told me I had to read it.

If you guessed A, B, or C, bless your geeky heart. Sadly, no, I still have no super powers (unless you count selective hearing, but I consider that an art form more than a super power).

When my roommate gave me SANDMAN #23, he* insisted that I stop everything and read it. I told him, rather wistfully, that I didn’t read comic books anymore. And he said, “This isn’t just a comic book. It’s amazing. You have to read it.” So partially to shut him up, I read it.

And then I went out and immediately bought A DOLL’S HOUSE graphic novel collection.

And then I got my hands on every back copy of SANDMAN that I could find. (And afford.)

That one story — from its dynamic writing to the incredible art to the way Morpheus spoke in dialogue balloons made of awesomesauce**— was enough to rekindle my love of all things comic book. I still limited myself in terms of what to buy (see the above about me being insanely poor), but man, there was nothing like looking forward to hitting the comic book shop and seeing what the new week would bring in terms of spandex, capes, and anthropomorphic personifications.

It also paved the way for my professional crush*** on Neil Gaiman. I devoured his work. I read GOOD OMENS (coauthored with Terry Pratchett, and still one of my favorite books of all time, right up there with Christopher Moore’s LAMB), eagerly sought out rare chapbooks, found the occasional HELLBLAZER, and so on. When I was in the hospital with my first child, I had AMERICAN GODS to read during those rare minutes when I wasn’t nursing or sleeping. I waited on a looooooooooong line to have Neil sign my ENDLESS poster (framed, hanging in my home office). I registered for the Fantasy Matters convention when I heard he was one of the keynote speakers and was second on line for autographing (I actually gave him signed copies of HELL’S BELLES and THE ROAD TO HELL. He gave me a kiss on the cheek.**** I definitely got the better end of the deal.)

Why am I a writer? I blame Neil Gaiman. On that framed ENDLESS poster, he’d written: To Jackie: Dream On! And my dream was to be a novelist. He gave me permission, you see. He made the dream not some ephemeral thing, not this fleeting notion, but rather an actual goal. There’s a reason why Neil is one of the people I acknowledge in BLACK AND WHITE: he got me to stop thinking about writing as something lofty. Thanks to Neil, writing for me became a passion…one that I’ve been fortunate enough to also make one of my professions.

So even though Morpheus doesn’t wear spandex (thank God) and the notions of Good versus Evil in SANDMAN are like nothing I’d previously read about in the Justice League or the Avengers (and didn’t see with superheroes until Moore and Gibbons’ WATCHMEN and Miller’s THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS), Neil Gaiman got me to love comic books again. And I’m forever grateful.

* Yes, my roommate was a guy. Okay, technically, he was a suitemate. There were five of us. But really, “suitemate” doesn’t flow as well as “roommate,” and if this is the part of the story that’s concerning you, then you’re missing the point.

**** I still haven’t washed that cheek.

From Gaiman-fangirls to another: thank you, Jackie!

And now, for the giveaway:

GIVEAWAY DETAILS

Courtesy of the author, we are giving away 1 signed copy of Shades of Gray.The contest is open to ALL and will run until Saturday June 26 at 11:59 PM (PST). To enter, leave a comment here answering who is your favourite Superheroine or Supervillainess. Only one entry per person please! Good luck!

“Inspirations and Influences” is a series of articles in which we invite authors to write guest posts talking about their…well, Inspirations and Influences. The cool thing is that the writers are given free reign so they can go wild and write about anything they want. It can be about their new book, series or about their career as a whole.

I am rolling out the red carpet today for our guest author is no other than John Green: Contemporary YA author extraordinaire, winner of many awards (including the prestigious Michael L. Printz Award ) and YouTube vlogger behind the infamous Brotherhood 2.0 with his brother Hank. I started reading his books this year and fell in love with them completely: Looking For Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines, Will Grayson, Will Grayson and Paper Towns have been reviewed recently. In celebration of the release of Paper Towns in the UK, we invited John Green to write a piece for this feature and to our utmost delight, he said yes.

From Wikipedia

Here is what John Green has to say about writing Paper Towns:

Although my books are printed on thinly sliced pieces of trees, they would be utterly impossible without the Internet, which probably inspires my writing at least as much as books do. My books would be impossible without the Internet. Paper Towns, for instance, is built around this weird cartographic phenomenon wherein mapmakers intentionally put fake places on their maps–which incidentally is common practice in maps of London, much to the confusion of tourists and locals alike. There was some research into this kind of thing before the Internet, but it took the crowdsourcing talents of the Internet to show how widespread and weird this practice was.

But I rely on the Internet not only for information but also for inspiration. Here’s what I find inspiring about the Internet:

At its best, the Internet makes stuff not for glory or profit or fame but because making things for people is valuable and beautiful even if no one ever sees the thing you make. There’s something very beautiful to me about the sheer amount of stuff that people create on the Internet, the endless collection of blogs and facebook fan pages and twitter updates and deviantart sites: All of us making stuff for each other, and trying to make the stuff as good and finished as possible. A really good example of this that has absolutely nothing to do with Paper Towns or anything else I’ve ever written is this:

That picture is known online as “Gary Busey Family Portrait.” (Gary Busey is an American film actor who is insane and drug-addled. He is our Pete Doherty.) The person who made Gary Busey Family Photo–s/he is anonymous–must have worked for many hours on this, because it is so beautifully photoshopped that your eyes believe initially that this really IS a family portrait, which is absolutely vital to the joke. The hours of pixel-by-pixel editing was motivated not by some desire to become rich or famous or beloved but because this person wanted to make something that would make us laugh–and also maybe something that would make Gary Busey question whether, you know, he should maybe sober up.

The best stories come from the same place as Gary Busey Family Portrait: They are books that exist because someone wanted to tell us a story, wanted–as William Faulkner once said–”to create out of the material of the human spirit something which did not exist before.” (Faulkner, who like me was from the American South, is another big inspiration for me.) This is why I spent three years writing Paper Towns: I wanted to try to get each pixel right in the picture. To this end, I am inspired not only by photoshopped images but also by the novelists whose precision and dedication I have admired over the years. The list of writers who are better than I am is, I’m afraid, a very long one–from Toni Morrison to M. T. Anderson, from Markus Zusak to Jane Austen–but it is through marveling at their dedication to craft and respect for their readers that I am able to get up every morning and work on my writing.

About the author: John Green is the New York Times bestselling author of Looking for Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines, and Paper Towns. He is also the coauthor, with David Levithan, of Will Grayson, Will Grayson. He was 2006 recipient of the Michael L. Printz Award, a 2009 Edgar Award winner, and has twice been a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Green’s books have been published in more than a dozen languages.

Green’s book reviews have appeared in The New York Times Book Review and Booklist, a wonderful book review journal where he worked as a publishing assistant and production editor while writing Looking for Alaska. Green grew up in Orlando, Florida before attending Indian Springs School and then Kenyon College.

You can read more about the author at his (brand-new) Website.

GIVEAWAY DETAILS

We are giving away 15 COPIES of Paper Towns, courtesy of Bloomsbury PLC. The contest is open to ALL and will run until June 12 at 11:59 PM (PST). To enter, leave a comment here answering what is your favourite John Green book (or if you haven’t read any, tell us about a fave contemporary YA author). Only one entry per person please! Good luck!

“Inspirations and Influences” is a series of articles in which we invite authors to write guest posts talking about their…well, Inspirations and Influences. The cool thing is that the writers are given free reign so they can go wild and write about anything they want. It can be about their new book, series or about their career as a whole.

Today’s guest is author Marta Acosta famous for writing the Casa Dracula series as well as blogging at Vampire Wire. Now, under the pen name of Grace Coopersmith she is releasing a vampire-free contemporary romantic comedy: Nancy’s Theory of Style. To celebrate its release, we invite the writer to talk about the inspirations and influences for writing the novel.

Please give a warm welcome to Grace Coopersmith/Marta Acosta!

When I was in first-grade, I improvised a story for my class and they burst into laughter. Really, if you haven’t made a roomful of six-year-olds laugh, you haven’t lived. The reaction surprised and delighted me. I’ve been making up funny stories ever since.

My agent says I’m not supposed to tell people that I write romantic comedies. For some reason the publishing crowd in Manhattan hates this term. I think it’s a perfectly good phrase. Romance and comedy? Seriously, what is not to like?

Most of my favorite stories are romantic comedies. I keep going back to Jane Austen’s novels and the complications and excitement of young women falling in love. I especially like Austen’s moral clarity, even while she makes her villains seductive and her heroes difficult. I love her secondary characters, each detailed and specific. You can see the author’s fondness for the chattering Miss Bates in Emma, and it’s clear that she was having great fun writing the odious Mr. Collins in Pride and Prejudice.

Her stories are timeless, because falling in love is timeless. Making mistakes is timeless. Trying to negotiate problems of social class is timeless.

Many people scoff at women’s fiction as insignificant stories about domestic life. I think dismissing these stories as unworthy is dismissing the importance of life as a wife, mother, sister, aunt, daughter…

Those young women looking for love are the basis of our society.The same warm hearts that fall in love are the warm hearts that care for sick children, aging parents, a husband going through difficulties. Their hope, faith, and love carry all of us through. In each older woman, that girl still lives and remembers what it is to be in love, to feel that current of attraction, to wonder if this one is the one, to awake excited about every day.

Those emotions are what inspire me to write romantic comedies. I want to capture that point of life when a young woman is discovering the world and herself. She makes mistakes and tries to fix them. She learns how to laugh at herself. She is challenged by problems and finds the inner fortitude to deal with them. She is gullible, not because she’s stupid, but because she believes in the goodness of others. She tries to be flexible and sometimes compromises too much.These experiences will shape her and bring out her true character.

And if I’m laughing, I’m laughing with her, not at her, because I don’t think she’s silly. I think she’s magnificent.

About the author:

So here’s the scoop. I’m from the San Francisco Bay Area and I can never seem to get away from here for long despite my continual fear of earthquakes. Yes, that’s all I got out of the geology classes I took at Stanford. That and a nifty rock pick. If you haven’t gone to the desert and smashed things with a rock pick, you don’t know what you’re missing.

I’ve won some awards for my writing, but I get a real thrill when a fan sends me an email, or readers say they like the nonsense on my blog. My priorities have always been skewed.

You can read more about the author at her website.

Giveaway details:

We are giving away one copy Nancy’s Theory of Style. The contest is open to residents of the US and Canada only and will run until May 29 at 11:59 PM (PST). To enter, leave a comment here answering what is your favourite romantic comedy? Only one entry per person please! Good luck!

“Inspirations and Influences” is a series of articles in which we invite authors to write guest posts talking about their…well, Inspirations and Influences. The cool thing is that the writers are given free reign so they can go wild and write about anything they want. It can be about their new book, series or about their career as a whole.

Today’s guest is Urban Fantasist & Romance author Jennifer Estep. Jennifer is the author of paranormal romance series Bigtime (Karma Girl, Hot Mama, & Jinx), but this year she has thrown her hat into the Urban Fantasy ring with her Elemental Assassin series. The first book in this new series, Spider’s Bite follows Gin Blanco, known better by her assassin moniker, Spider – she’s the best at her job in all of Ashland, and has the ability to work magic in the elements of stone and ice. The second book in the Elemental Assassin series, Web of Lies his stores next week on May 25th!

To celebrate the upcoming release, we have invited Ms. Estep to talk about her writing, influences and inspirations for her Elemental Assassins series. (Plus, we also have a giveaway)

Please give a warm welcome to Jennifer Estep!

Greetings and salutations! First of all, I want to say thanks to the Book Smugglers for inviting me to guest blog today. Thanks so much!

As some of you may know, I’m the author of the Bigtime superhero paranormal romance series – Karma Girl (2007), Hot Mama (2007), and Jinx (2008). I also write the Elemental Assassin urban fantasy series and have three books coming out in that series this year – Spider’s Bite (which came out in February), Web of Lies (which debuts on May 25), and Venom (October).

The Smugglers asked me to talk a little bit about my writing inspirations and influences today, and one of the topics that they suggested was what got me interested in writing urban fantasy since I had previously written paranormal romances. So why did I switch to urban fantasy?

Well, the short answer is because I like kick-butt heroines.

I’ve always loved books, movies, and TV shows where the heroine is just as strong – if not stronger – than the guys around her. Buffy Summers, Sydney Bristow, Wonder Woman – these are the kinds of female characters that I admire, girls who are just as comfortable dressing up to go to a party as they are diffusing a nuclear bomb or saving the world from vampires, aliens, and other creepy crawlies.

Don’t get me wrong. I think the heroines in my Bigtime paranormal romance books are pretty kick-butt themselves, especially Fiona Fine, the star of Hot Mama. But I had been wanting to write something darker and grittier with an even tougher heroine for a while. I’ve also always liked reading about assassin characters in fantasy literature, and I figured that urban fantasy was a genre that would let me combine all these things at once. Plus, there are so many great heroines in urban fantasy, folks like Rachel Morgan and Karen Murphy, and I wanted to add my own character to the mix.

So I came up with my toughest heroine yet – Gin Blanco, an assassin known as the Spider. Gin makes no bones about the fact that she kills people for money, something that she’s very, very good at. I figured that if I was going to write an assassin character, I might as well go big or go home. There’s nothing worse than a whiny assassin.

As much as I like shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, it seems like vampires are everywhere these days, and I knew when I started writing Spider’s Bite that I wanted to have some different kinds of magic/creatures in my books as well. So I decided on vampires, giants, dwarves, and elementals, or folks who can control one of the four elements – Air, Fire, Ice, and Stone.

For the record, Gin happens to be a Stone and Ice elemental, meaning that she can control both of those elements. But she’s just as happy to introduce you to the sharp end of the five silverstone knives that she carries with her at all times as she is to blast you with her magic. Like Gin says, there are dozens of ways to help people quit breathing, and she doesn’t need her magic to help her with that.

I’ll admit that it’s been a bit of a challenge to write such an unapologetic assassin character like Gin and make her likable at the same time. Gin isn’t your typical hero – she’s not inherently good like a Sydney Bristow or Buffy Summers is. But you know what? Bad girls always have more fun anyway. I think Faith on Buffy is a prime example of that.

So there you have it. Some of my inspirations for my girl Gin Blanco and the Elemental Assassin series. Writing Gin’s adventures has been a blast so far, and I hope that folks have as much fun reading the books as I do writing them.

What about you guys? Who are some of your favorite heroines, urban fantasy or otherwise? Share in the comments.

About Jennifer:

Jennifer’s books have been fea­tured in Cos­mopoli­tan, Enter­tain­ment Weekly, South­ern Liv­ing, and a vari­ety of other publications.

You can read more about Jennifer on her website, or catch her on her blog.

Giveaway Details:

We are giving away TEN AUTOGRAPHED copies of Spider’s Bite and Web of Lies to ten lucky winners! The contest is open to residents of the US and Canada only and will run until May 29 at 11:59 PM (PST). To enter, leave a comment here answering Jennifer’s question – who are some of your favorite heroines, fantasy or otherwise? Only one entry per person please! Good luck!

“Inspirations and Influences” is a series of articles in which we invite authors to write guest posts talking about their…well, Inspirations and Influences. The cool thing is that the writers are given free reign so they can go wild and write about anything they want. It can be about their new book, series or about their career as a whole.

Today’s guest is Fantasy Author M D Lachlan – the pen name for the author and journalist Mark Barrowcliffe. His first Fantasy novel, Wolfsangel, a tale that combines Norse Mythology, Vikings and the myth of the werewolf, is being published by Gollancz this month. To celebrate its release, we invited the author to talk about the ideas behind the book.

Please give it up for M D Lachlan!

It’s a bit strange to talk of inspiration just because I’m not entirely clear how it works for me. I’m sure there are some people in the arts (Noel Gallagher, for instance) who see or hear something they like and think ‘I’d like to do something just like that’ and do. That’s actually an under-rated talent and one that can produce some great work. It’s also a good thing to do for people who are starting off. The poet Philip Larkin wrote his first works with a book of WB Yeats open on the table in front of him. It taught him the fundamentals of poetry, which enabled him to go on and find his own voice.

I don’t work like that, not from any high-minded principle but just because I don’t think I could do it very well. Some people can take a top thriller, virtually copy it, and produce a convincing top thriller. They then buy their house in the Bahamas and continue writing from there. I’m not so lucky. For some reason I just can’t do that and I know I can’t because I’ve tried.

So I’m pretty much stuck with originality, whether I like it or not. That sounds like a statement full of lightly veneered hubris but I genuinely think that originality is an unhealthy aim in any art form. I’m pleased that I’ve done something people consider original but my aim was to produce a bog standard fantasy story. My failure to do so was, luckily, a failure people seem to like.

Originality seems to have replaced beauty, truth or just entertainment as the yardstick by which the arts are judged. You can see why. It’s easier to say if something’s new, rather than if it’s any good. This, I fear, has been the curse of conceptual art. I don’t say there’s no good conceptual art, just that there’s an awful lot of bad stuff that people hesitate to condemn because it appears to be original.

I think we should be suspicious of originality. The reason something may not have been done before might be because it’s inherently rubbish. If something’s never been seen in human history, the likelihood is it’s been considered and dismissed at some point in the past and for good reason. However, as a writer, sometimes you do come up with something that you consider new and worth showing to other people. This was the case for me with Wolfsangel – a book that surprised me when I wrote it because things buried deep in my mind seemed to come bubbling to the surface, seize the fantasy novel I thought I was writing by the throat and drag it down, like Grendel, into the mire.

Wolfsangel is a historical fantasy, set in the Viking period and containing various supernatural elements – witches, werewolves and Norse gods. Just a warning, there are some mild spoilers, to do with the theme of the book below. I don’t give away plot but if you want to read Wolfsangel totally unsullied by explanation then you might want to look away now.

I don’t think I was inspired by any one thing to write this book. It’s more that certain things I’ve read and watched on TV have created a sort of mental microclimate into which I step every time I sit down write the book. If you think that’s a pretentious statement, try the next one. If the book is a landscape, these are the things that rained on it, blew on it and scraped across it to form it. I know that seems a pompous description but it seems about right.

Inspiration comes from the fact that I love dark fantasy. By this I don’t mean fantasy with dark characters – evil or psychopathic characters don’t really interest me as a writer – but something where the protagonists seem to be up against strange and unknowable forces. When I say I don’t want to write about evil characters – I like bad people in my books but I like you to know why they’re bad. One person’s evil is another’s unsentimental self interest.

TV obviously had an enormous effect on people of my generation and no more so than Children of the Stones – a tea time series in the 1970s. I could tell you all about it but it’s better to just listen to the theme tune (not the HTV bit, which comes first, clearly) Kids today would need counselling if you stuck this on a TV programme. It’s about ancient supernatural forces impacting on modern life – not too dissimilar from the theme of Wolfsangel. It also contains the idea of ancient stories playing out in the modern day.A book with a similar theme is Alan Garner’s Owl Service – set in Wales with a different mythology, that of the Welsh Mabinogion. I have to say, I enjoyed the idea of this book – ancient stories playing themselves out through modern people – more than the book itself when I was a kid. I’d loved his Weirdstone of Brisingamen with a passion and The Owl Service seemed a bit subtle and dated for my tastes back then.

The film The Wicker Man has a related feel. Please, in the name of sanity, don’t confuse this slice of 1970s genius with the Nick Cage remake, for which crime I think he should be set upon by pagans and sacrificed to the darkest god available within a four hour car journey. I said at the time it had all the charm of watching a dear old friend beaten to death. The 1973 Wicker Man has a great look to it and a superb plot – it involves a staid police inspector going to investigate the disappearance of a child on a remote Scottish island. Christopher Lee, pictured, takes a great part as the lord of the island.

Without wishing to spoil the plot I will say that it’s full of surprises – one of which I have just realised is very near to a surprise that comes up in Wolfsangel. Perhaps these influences have a more direct effect than I’d thought.

Very often when I’m writing a book I’ll have a tune that comes insistently into my head. For Wolfsangel it was Psychic TV’s Thee Full Pack. I can only really find it on Spotify so I can’t post a link. It’s a semi-pretentious, very atmospheric song which could really be about Odin, the chief god of Wolfsangel. ‘He is the father of fear…ripping the line of the time.’ It also includes the sound of a dog attack, treated through some sort of synthesiser, which is very werewolf-like. I’d recommend giving a listen because it’s very interesting and doesn’t give a hoot for being commercial. The one in my head with the book I’m writing at the moment is this, which is clearly a work of sublime genius by the greatest female artist ever to draw breath – The Hounds of Love by Kate Bush.

This is what I mean by not striving for originality. I have the strong sense that she was just writing songs. They happen to be totally original and mad as a sack of badgers but that wasn’t her aim – she just wanted to write something good. I could be wrong about that, of course, but I don’t think I am.

Some things you don’t even have to see or read for them to have an effect on you. I have no memory of ever seeing the western A Man Called Horse but it seems certain that it informed my view of Sioux magic as a quest for magical insight brought on by pain rituals. I tried to check to see if this was based on actual practices but drew a blank so this must have been my source for it.

However, other rituals that certainly stuck in my head were the pain rituals and human sacrifice of the Mayans, Incas and Aztecs – with practices such as body piercing or drawing a rope of thorns through a slit in the tongue.

I had a view that the important magical aspect of the human sacrifice was the terrible and horrific effect it had on the priests. This led me to the idea that a magical reality could be accessed by shocking the conventional mind into numbness. That’s not my real view but it was an interesting one to follow for the purposes of the book.

Of course, there is no Mayan or American Indian culture in Wolfsangel. The specific inspiration for that came from The Edda – the collection of Icelandic texts that give us our picture of Norse mythology. Edda means grandmother in old Norse – indicating that the stories were old at the time they were written down.

I was particularly fascinated by the figure of The Fenris Wolf, here pictured fighting Odin, I think, though the horse seems to only have four legs and Odin’s has eight:

Here is the wolf again in a wonderful picture by the Swedish painter John Bauer. It’s taking the hand of the God Tyr in his mouth as an insurance against the gods tricking him into allowing itself to be tied with unbreakable bonds. This is among my favourite sort of fantasy art.

Unfortunately it’s a bit staid for modern publishers to put on the front of books! The story of the Fenris Wolf is rather long for this blog but interested readers can find in on Wikipedia here.There is a chilling prophetic verse concerning the death of the gods at their final day which I carried in my head throughout the writing of Wolfsangel.

‘The fetters shall burst and the wolf run free
Much do I know and more can see.’

This is a mean wolf, he eats gods.

I was also fascinated by the self sacrifice of Odin (the chief Norse god, sort of), losing his eye and hanging on a tree for nine nights to gain magical knowledge. Here is an image I like from eighteenth century Iceland of the one eyed god riding his eight legged horse Slepnir. I’ve always preferred this sort of stuff to conventional fantasy art, from Roger Dean to men in hoods.

This is a key verse from the Edda, spoken by Odin.

‘I know that I hung on a windy tree

nine long nights

wounded with a spear, dedicated to Odin

myself to myself

on that tree of which no man knows

from where its roots run

No bread did they give me nor drink from a horn,

downwards I peered;

I took up the runes, screaming I took them,

then I fell back from there.’

This is a superb piece of writing that contains many of the ideas present in Wolfsangel – self sacrifice, the hanged god, and – of course – the runes, magical symbols.

The runes were a big influence on my writing an I think my interest in them stems directly from Tolkien and the mysterious writing Gandalf (this name appears in The Edda, meaning ‘magic elf’ in old Norse) carves on Bilbo’s door.

The one area where I do concede I tried to be original is where I sent my protagonists. I’d first decided to send them with the Viking fleets to Celtic Ireland but I thought the Celtic tradition had been well done by others. So I sent them north into the Sami lands, for which I had to do a lot of research. I shan’t say much about it, other than here is a Sami rune drum.

Another influence on my work is that I played Dungeons and Dragons to the point of Vitamin D deficiency when I was a kid. I loved it and would have to say that it must influence my writing. I’m not sure how, exactly, other than meaning I spent a youth with a head full of elves. However, I found its idea of magic too different to my own concept of magic.

The biggest influence on the feel of the magic in Wolfsangel comes from my early reading of books on the history of witchcraft. I used take these books to bed with me and scare myself stupid reading stories of witches vomiting pins or the excesses of the witchfinders. I think it’s the look of the illustrations I liked. Everyone has their own preferred sort of fantasy art and I think mine is woodcuts. It’s the strangeness of them that I like so much. This is the sort of book I used to read, or rather secondary texts that would contain quotes and pictures from this sort of thing.

The other magical practice – at least we assume it was a magical practice – that fascinated me as a kid was connected to the discovery of bog bodies.

These are presumed ritual sacrifices that have been preserved in peat bogs. Again, it’s the alien and strange nature of these images that appealed to me. Mire magic – you can’t really say bog in a modern novel without eliciting smirks – is a big part of Wolfsangel.

So all these things and more influenced me while I was writing Wolfsangel, or at least these were the things that I think helped form the mental climate in which the book was produced.

Thank you, Mark! And now for the giveaway:

GIVEAWAY DETAILS

The Viking King Authun leads his men on a raid against an Anglo-Saxon village. Men and women are killed indiscriminately but Authun demands that no child be touched. He is acting on prophecy. A prophecy that tells him that a child of the Gods will be found among the Saxons. If Authun takes the child and raises him as an heir, the child will lead his people to glory.

But Authun discovers not one child, but twin baby boys. Ensuring that his faithful warriors, witness to what has happened, die during the raid Athun takes the children and their mother back to Norway and the witches who live on the perilous mountain known as the Troll Wall. He places his destiny in their hands.

And so begins WOLFSANGEL, the first of a stunning multi-volume fantasy epic that will take a werewolf from his beginnings as the heir to a brutal Viking king, down through the ages. It is a journey that will see him hunt for his lost love through centuries and lives, and see the endless battle between the wolf, Odin and Loki – the eternal trickster – spill over into countless bloody conflicts from our history. This is the myth of the werewolf as it has never been told before and marks the beginning of an extraordinary new fantasy series from Gollancz.

We are giving away ONE copy of Wolfsangel to a lucky reader! Entry is simple – just leave a comment here telling us what your favorite werewolf book/movie is. The contest is open to ALL, and will run until Saturday, May 22 at 11:59 PM (PST). Only ONE comment per person, please! Multiple comments WILL be disqualified. Good luck!

“Inspirations and Influences” is a series of articles in which we invite authors to write guest posts talking about their…well, Inspirations and Influences. The cool thing is that the writers are given free reign so they can go wild and write about anything they want. It can be about their new book, series or about their career as a whole.

Today we have the lovely Mira Grant (also known as Seanan McGuire) over. Mira is the author of the brand spankin’ new Newsflesh trilogy; book 1, Feed was just released at the end of last month (you can check out Thea’s review HERE). To celebrate the release of Feed, we decided to invite Mira Grant to talk about her new book and her Inspirations and Influences.

Please give it up for Mira Grant!

Hi, Ana and Thea! Thank you so much for inviting me to do an Inspirations and Influences post for you. I’m really excited. And not just because I haven’t actually slept since December.

The question “where do you get your inspiration?” sort of drives me crazy, largely because my answer tends to drive everybody else crazy. I was literally once inspired to write a book by the combination of jetlag, a woman on the plane to London who was wearing a sweater the same color as mine, and trying to navigate the Tube system while I was so tired that my eyes were crossing. Another book—actually another series, but that’s another story—basically grew out of listening to a Counting Crows song while half-asleep and commuting.

Okay. So a lot of my ideas start with sleep deprivation. But today, I’m going to talk about the inspirations for the Newsflesh Trilogy, and for Feed in specific.

I love horror movies. The first movie I consciously remember watching was Alien. I was three. When I was eight, my cat got a burr in her eye. After a midnight trip to the emergency vet to have the burr removed—the cat was fine, in case you were worried—we returned to the house, and my mother let me watch The Blob on Channel 20 to calm down before I went to bed. (I did not go to school the next day.) This has basically wired my adult brain to follow certain logical paths. Never say “Be careful” or “I’ll be right back.” Never go outside to see what that noise was, because it wasn’t the wind. And never, never date a man named Johnny.

My passion for horror movies might just have resulted in my having a really weird DVD collection (which it did). Unfortunately for my mother’s sanity, I went and combined it with a highly analytical mind, and a tendency to pick things to pieces. Why did the monster want to eat people? How did the vampires decide who to convert into their undying companions, and who to treat as a Happy Meal with legs? If King Kong had been eating women for years, what was it about the blonde chick that really got to him? The list went on, and drove most of the adults around me crazy. Even after I became an adult, it kept driving most of the adults around me crazy, as they were forced to sit through my analysis of the horror movie of the week as I twisted it to start, well…making sense.

So I love horror. And I love things that make sense. That, more than anything, was the initial genesis of the Newsflesh Trilogy. What would it take to set up a classic horror movie apocalypse, and have it make sense? Real, solid, pick-it-apart sense? I started chewing on the question, and decided that the best apocalypse—where “best” is defined as “the most fun for me”—was the zombie apocalypse.

I love zombies. But I bet you guessed that part.

One of the most illogical things about your standard horror apocalypse is the way nobody in a horror movie has ever seen a horror movie. They hear the funny noise and they go running toward it. Their loved ones come shambling into the room with blood circling their mouths, and they hug, rather than aiming for the head. I know too many people with apocalypse plans and weapons in their closets to believe that things would go that bad, that fast. So what happens when you combine the apocalypse with a world that actually knows how to react? And how would those people share information in a fast, efficient manner?

Enter the Internet. Thanks to social media and the blogging community, a whisper is now capable of circling the globe in less time than it takes to shout. So say the Internet gets involved in the zombie apocalypse. How much difference will it really make? And what will the mainstream news media have to say about the things that are going on out there in the world? Probably nothing good.

So I started tinkering with my apocalypse. I spent, oh, about a year having a happy apocalypse party to which all my friends were invited, whether they wanted to be or not. It was the end of the world, and they knew it (many of them did not feel fine). And in the process of hashing out my apocalypse, I realized…I didn’t want to write that. It’s been done. By everybody. If you’re going to tell a zombie story, you’re going to tell the apocalypse. So screw it, I said. I’m not going to write the apocalypse.

I’m going to write what comes after.

The Newsflesh Trilogy is about the world as it exists twenty years after the dead rose, the Internet mobilized, and we managed to come out on the other side still kicking. Everything has changed. Everything. The whole structure of society has shifted, because the threat of the dead isn’t going away. The virus that caused the initial outbreak is still around, and everyone in the world is infected, making all of them quietly ticking time bombs just waiting to blow.

But that’s setting. That’s not story. Story arrived later, in my friend Michael’s kitchen. I was complaining—okay, whining—about the fact that I had this fantastic world and nothing to set there. He looked at me, and asked, “Well, have you considered writing about a Presidential campaign?”

I’m pretty sure he was just trying to shut me up. That doesn’t really matter, because the question had been asked, and the snowball was rolling down the hill, gathering speed as it went. Before dinner was over, I had a protagonist, Georgia Mason, named after George Romero—like half of her generation—with a serious yearning for the truth. I had her adopted brother, Shaun. Both of them were reporters, working in different facets of the Internet news media. And they were going to follow a man along the campaign trail, hoping for a crack at the truth.

Another friend of mine asked another question later in the process, this one about the way my zombies worked, and changed everything all over again. But that was two hundred pages in, and that’s another story.

When will you rise?

About the Author: Seanan McGuire is the good twin. Mira Grant is the evil twin. One of them is planning to destroy the world one day, but no one’s really quite sure which one it is, and nobody really wants to ask. When not plotting world domination or watching horror movies, Seanan writes semi-constantly, which explains how she’s completing three books a year. The lack of sleep probably helps with that, too. She studied folklore in school, and continues to study zombies and pandemic disease as a hobby. She sometimes claims to be the lost Disney Princess of Halloweentown. There’s a good chance that she’s right.

Seanan McGuire and Mira Grant live in the same body, and the body lives in Northern California, which has three seasons, Dry, Wet, and Actively On Fire. Feed is her third book, and the first published under the name Mira Grant.

Ana and Thea will now give things away. I appreciate this. They will not, however, give you a zombie army.

Sorry.

Thank you Mira/Seanan! And now, for the giveaway.

Giveaway Details:

We are giving away ONE copy of Feed to a lucky reader! Entry is simple – just leave a comment here telling us what your favorite apocalyptic horror book/film/tv show/comic is. The contest is open to residents of the US and Canada only, and will run until Saturday, May 8 at 11:59 PM (PST). Only ONE comment per person, please! Multiple comments WILL be disqualified. Good luck!