What’s the story behind the story? What inspired you to write Unwilling Souls?
I was really captivated by a few ideas I thought of separately but wove into a single setting for a short story: a world where the gods had tried to exterminate humanity and had summoned up great beasts to trample the human cities flat. But both the gods and their beasts had been beaten, the gods imprisoned inside the hollowed-out center of the planet and the beasts reduced to bones that a triumphant humanity used to rebuild civilization. In the short story, two star-crossed-lover teenagers decide they are going to sneak down to the gods’ prison to see what all the fuss is about. Very bad things ensue.
I loved the story on its own, but it got me thinking. What if this pair wound up having a child together? What if all the trouble the parents caused was left to their daughter to fix? Ses, the protagonist of Unwilling Souls, is that daughter.
If you had to pick theme songs for the main characters of Unwilling Souls, what would they be?
Imagine Dragons was taking off when I first was working on this series. The song “Nothing Left to Say” off their first album always makes me think of Ses, though I’m not certain why.
What’s your favorite genre to read? Is it the same as your favorite genre to write?
I read more widely than what I write, but my favorite books do tend to fall within the sci-fi/fantasy/horror umbrella. That’s how I stay excited for my projects: I write the kinds of books I most like to read.
What books are on your TBR pile right now?
Too many to name! I’m still behind on Adrian Tchaikovsky and Tamsyn Muir, two of my favorites.
What scene in your book was your favorite to write?
Since this is a full series, I’m going to cheat and pick more than one. Then I’m going to double-cheat and pick them both from the final book, Unfinished Dead. The book has two climaxes.
One I think of as the mystery climax, where I finally reveal to readers why this world is the way it is. It was immensely satisfying to finally put it all down on the page!
The other climax is of the plot and action, which I’d had in mind since the first book. Some of the details had changed, of course, but the overall concept hadn’t. It was very gratifying to finally arrive and see that it actually did work just as I hoped it would.
Do you have any quirky writing habits? (lucky mugs, cats on laps, etc.)
I like to pick music that evokes the kind of book or scene I’m working on and then put it on repeat to try and get into a flow state, but I don’t know how odd that is. My books are sometimes odd, but I guess my writing habits are not!
Do you have a motto, quote, or philosophy you live by?
You have to acknowledge your weaknesses before you can work on them.
If you could choose one thing for readers to remember after reading your book, what would it be?
There’s nothing I love more when I read a story than feeling a sense of awe and wonder in the discovery of possibilities I’d never considered. My hope is that readers will feel the same about my books and remember it.
And that The Dying World, Book 2 of my sci-fi series Mutagen Deception, comes out on April 25th
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