Blog Tour + Author Interview: HEX by Thomas Olde Heuvelt

Today I am taking part in the blog tour for HEX by Thomas Olde Heuvelt. Today I’ll be sharing a Q&A with the author, who has kindly answered some questions that I posed to him. When I was offered a chance to take part in the tour by Hodder & Stoughton, there were two things that immediately drew me to the book. Firstly, the fact that it is written by a Dutch author and popular in my adopted second home country, the Netherlands. And secondly… well, just look at the blurb:

Whoever is born here, is doomed to stay until death. Whoever comes to stay, never leaves.

Welcome to Black Spring, the seemingly picturesque Hudson Valley town haunted by the Black Rock Witch, a seventeenth-century woman whose eyes and mouth are sewn shut. Blind and silenced, she walks the streets and enters homes at will. She stands next to children’s beds for nights on end. So accustomed to her have the townsfolk become that they often forget she’s there. Or what a threat she poses. Because if the stitches are ever cut open, the story goes, the whole town will die.

The curse must not be allowed to spread. The elders of Black Spring have used high-tech surveillance to quarantine the town. Frustrated with being kept in lockdown, the town’s teenagers decide to break the strict regulations and go viral with the haunting. But, in so doing, they send the town spiraling into a dark nightmare.

And if somehow that’s not enough to convince you that this book is wonderfully spine-tingling, then take a look at this TERRIFYING trailer for the book:

Freaked out yet? I’m pretty sure I’ll be sleepless again after watching that – because the book certainly kept me wide awake… I’ll be sharing my full review tomorrow, but today as part of the blog tour I have a small Q&A with Thomas!

Q&A with Thomas Olde Heuvelt

Rinn: Why was the book moved from The Netherlands to the USA in the translation?

Thomas: I love the fresh perspective that comes with reading fiction from different cultures. Being Dutch, about 90% of all the books I read come from abroad, as The Netherlands is such a small country. Sometimes I even want to be taught about these cultures. The Kite Runner gave me a much more nuanced view about Afghanistan than Fox News. Murakami taught me more about Japanese customs than any sushi restaurant I’ll ever visit. But there’s also a limit to what I want to be taught. Some books I just want to read for the fun of it. The thrill. Or the scare. And I realized my novel, HEX, was such a book. My favorite comment from Dutch readers is that it makes them sleep with the lights on (Rinn: Me too…). I have literally hundreds of those. I could care less about what the story taught them about social values in communities or the depravity of mankind, as long as it gave them nightmares. Some literary critics will probably shoot me for this statement, but there’s nothing wrong with a good scare every now and then, right?

To thoroughly scare readers, you have to create a perfect sense of familiarity in a story and then rip it to pieces as soon as they’re hooked. And here’s where the Dutch setting became problematic, once the book was sold to publishers in the US and the UK. If I’d read a horror story set in, say, rural Azerbeidzjan (Azerbaijan), I’d be worrying all the time about what the place actually looks like, what’s the norm for these people, what are they scared of and oh, by the way, how do you even pronounce their names? Bang! Familiarity gone, and a missed opportunity to make me scream at night. I imagined it would be the same for British and American readers when they read about a Dutch setting. I mean, how do you actually pronounce Olde Heuvelt? (Rinn: Having lived in the Netherlands, I would’ve loved this book set there too. But I completely understand your reasoning, it would definitely make it difficult for readers who aren’t familiar with the country. Maybe I’ll get myself a copy of the Dutch version!)

That’s why I decided to change the setting. And I had tremendous fun doing it! It was an exciting creative challenge. I had a book that I loved, I had characters that I loved, and here I had the opportunity to relive it all, without having to face the horrors of a sequel.

Rinn: Did this have any big effect on the story?

Thomas: It’s still the same story about a modern-day town haunted by a seventeenth-century witch. One if its strengths I think is the utter Dutchness of the book. The secular nature of Dutch small-town communities and the down-to-earthness of its people, for instance (Rinn: I can definitely vouch for the down-to-earthness of the Dutch!). If a sane person sees a seventeenth-century disfigured witch appear in a corner of the living room, he runs for his life. If a Dutch person sees a seventeenth-century disfigured witch appear in a corner of the living room, he hangs a dishcloth over her face, sits on the couch and reads the paper. And maybe sacrifices a peacock.

The new version left all of that intact. It’s a remake, an enhanced version, a HEX 2.0 if you will, with all new rich and layered details, culturally specific legends and superstitions, but without ever losing touch with the Dutch elements of the original. Katherine Van Wyler, the original Dutch seventeenth-century witch, came to the new land on one of Peter Stuyvesant’s early ships. The rural town of Beek became the Dutch trapper’s colony of New Beeck, later renamed Black Spring. The Dutch characters became Americans, but with the down-to-earth quality of the Dutch. The dishcloth stayed. So did the peacock. I think it has become a better book.

Rinn: What were your inspirations behind the legend of the Black Rock Witch?

Thomas: I wanted to write a story about a witch ever since I was traumatized by Roald Dahl’s book The Witches, and the 1990 movie adaptation of it (Rinn: Ahh they were both terrifying!). The moment when Anjelica Huston, the Grand High Witch, takes off her mask… gosh, I was seven years old, and I didn’t trust any women for the next six months. Imagine what my winter was like, with women wearing gloves all the time. I saw witches everywhere. Then I watched The Blair Witch Project when I was fifteen, and of course, the scary part there was did you did not see the witch. Katherine van Wyler, the witch in HEX, has influences of both (Rinn: I did wonder if there was an element of Blair Witch – it certainly had the same effect on me.). Of course she has this horrible, disfigured face because her mouth and eyes are sewn shut… but for exactly the same reason, you never really get to see her. If you can’t see someone’s eyes, you’ll never know what they think. That makes her so scary.

Me whilst reading HEX.

Rinn: What gave you the idea of mixing technology in with the supernatural?

Thomas: It kind of follows naturally, if you have a town that needs to hide a dirty secret like this. I love the practicality of it. The witch keeps popping up randomly in public spaces, and there’s always a chance of outsiders spotting her, so the HEX service workers have all these props and scenarios ready. Like the elderly choir that surrounds her and walks along wherever she goes, practicing hymns. Or the construction shed if she stands at the side of public roads. And you gotta be on top of her to make it work. You gotta be fast. So everybody in town has a special Hexapp on their iPhone, which has GPS, and they’re obligated to report immediately when they spot her. I’d personally love to have an app to report ghost sightings.

Rinn: Was it difficult to write a book with such a large cast, and still bring each resident of Black Spring to life?

Thomas: I deliberately avoided to use a large cast in order to make the town come alive. Stephen King is a master in doing so – some of his novels have more than twenty point-of-view characters. But the downside of that is that often, the more POV characters you have, the less attached you feel to them as a reader. I think King’s novels that tell the story from only one or a few point-of-views, are his strongest, and much more emotionally gripping. So in HEX, I tried to paint the town from the perspectives of only four characters, two of them from the same family. This gives the reader a lot more space to start caring about these people, which is one of the most important things if you let bad things happen to them. (Rinn: To me the cast felt quite large, even with just a few POV characters – quite a few named residents and very minor characters, but maybe it’s just my perspective!)

Thank you so much to Thomas for taking the time to answer some questions, and to Hodder for organising the blog tour. Look out for my review of HEX on the blog tomorrow, and let me know if you dare read this bone-chiller of a novel! 😉

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Blog Tour + Review: The Sisters of Versailles by Sallie Christie

4 out of 5 stars | Goodreads

I received a copy of this book for free from the publisher, in exchange for an honest review.

I’m pretty picky about the blog tours I take part in nowadays, and will only sign up if I know I’m going to enjoy the book. So of course I knew I would enjoy The Sisters of Versailles – whilst I’m not a fan of romance novels, I do enjoy a bit of steamy historical fiction – but I didn’t realise just how much I would enjoy it. Told from the point of view of the Nesle sisters, this novel is unique in that whilst its main characters were historical figures, very little has been written about them in English. Four of the five Nesle sisters became mistresses to King Louis XV of France, and whilst this was of course a huge scandal at the time, it doesn’t seem to be something that has been recorded quite as much as you would think. In fact, I’m pretty sure more people would be nore familiar with Madame de Pompadour, another of Louis XV’s mistresses, than Louise, Marie-Anne, Hortense, Diane or Paulie Nesle.

From the very first chapter of the book, I got a really clear and vivid image of life at Versailles. It seemed so colourful and fast-paced, but there was also something darker hiding in the shadows, hinting at what was yet to come. The reader sees it all at first through the eyes of Louise, the eldest of the Nesle sisters and the first to go to Versailles. From the moment the sisters become of a suitable age for marriage, they are obsessed with the idea of it – so it is so sad that Louise’s marriage, to a man twenty years her senior, makes her feel so lonely. Her husband is an imbecile and a horrendous person; when her mother dies he complains of the ‘inconvenience’ of having to travel to Paris to help his grieving wife. Therefore it is completely understandable when she is persuaded by the ladies of the court to have an affair, after all everyone is doing it. But then Louise comes to the attention of the king, and everything changes.

Whilst each sister narrates at least one chapter each, their voices didn’t feel entirely distinctive. They had very clear cut personalities though: Diane the slob, Louise the naive one, Hortense the pious one, Marie-Anne a revolutionary in the making, and Pauline, determined to get whatever she wanted despite the consequences. Pauline’s letters, not so subtly hinting to Louise that she deserved a visit to Versailles, were kind of hilarious. At first I quite liked Pauline, but her later actions turned me against her. Watching her steal the man her sister loves, then reading Louise’s point of view of the whole experience was pretty heartbreaking. Marie-Anne was a surprise, going from seemingly innocent to a real schemer.

As time went on, I didn’t know whether to feel sorry for Louise or whether I want to just shake her and shout ‘Get a grip!’. It was sad watching her pine after someone she couldn’t have, who was clearly not interested in her anymore, whilst sister after sister replaced her. I don’t know how Louis XV is represented in history (having studied his grandson Louis XVI in much more depth), but in this he felt so shallow. He wasn’t outright mean, but the way he treated people, especially women, as objects that he could just use and then toss aside when the next exciting thing came along, was abhorrent. He did it without people even realising they were being replaced until it was too late.

I’m so glad I got the chance to read and review The Sisters of Versailles. I have found the whole ancien regime period of French history very interesting ever since I studied it in school, and I’m always happy to read historical fiction set in that era. What I really loved here was learning about historical figures that aren’t widely written about, and the whole scandalous history of the Nesle sisters. How is the fact that Louis XV slept with four sisters not as widely known as his affairs with Madame de Pompadour? History does love a good scandal, after all.

Thank you to TLC Book Tours and Sally Christie for giving me the chance to read and review this one! 🙂

 

Links

• Author Website
• Buy on Amazon.com
• Buy on Amazon.co.uk

Blog Tour: A Gathering of Shadows + Guest Post by V.E. Schwab + Giveaway

I’m really excited to say that today I am hosting V.E. Schwab, author of the Shades of Magic series, as part of her blog tour for the release of A Gathering of Shadows. I read and reviewed the first book in the series, A Darker Shade of Magic last April, and absolutely loved it. I finished A Gathering of Shadows just a few days ago and loved even more than the first… it’s worth the wait, everyone! I hope to have my review up in the next couple of days. For her post today, Victoria will be answering the question:

If I was a character in A Gathering of Shadows, who would I be and why?

‘This is a hard question to answer, because there’s a difference between who I’d LIKE to be — who I find aspirational — and who I think I actually am. Delilah Bard is flawed in many ways, but she’s also strong in ways I wish I was. She’s unencumbered by fear, doesn’t psych herself out, is willing to shoulder risk for reward. And while I am these things to a certain degree, I know that I’m much more like Kell: neurotic, perpetually concerned by the world around me, and searching for my place in it.

If I had to choose a new character instead of a continuing one, though, I’d say that I’m most like Alucard Emery, the captain of the Night Spire. Alucard is the onion of the series, a character wrapped in layers upon layers, and even in AGOS, we only see the first few. He’s different things to different people, a performer shifting to fit the audience. He knows his strengths, and guards his weaknesses, and he wants to win.’

I really love Victoria’s answer – especially her description of Alucard as the onion of the series! He was definitely my favourite character of the book, and I can’t wait for more of his layers to be revealed! 😉

Thanks so much to Titan Books for inviting me to be part of this blog tour and for sending me a copy of A Gathering of Shadows, and thank you also to Victoria for writing a piece for the blog and of course, writing the book itself! A Gathering of Shadows is out to buy now!

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Blog Tour + Review: Moriarty (Sherlock Holmes #2) by Anthony Horowitz

3 out of 5 stars | Goodreads

I received a copy of this book for free from the publisher, in exchange for an honest review.

This review is part of the TLC Book Tours tour for Moriarty by Anthony Horowitz.

I’m not really one for blog tours nowadays – or rather, I’m very picky about which books I go for. However, having read Anthony Horowitz’ first Sherlock Holmes reboot, House of Silk, I knew I would be more than happy to join the tour for its sequel, Moriarty.

As with House of Silk, Horowitz immediately captures the spirit and style of Arthur Conan Doyle’s writing, and honestly if I was given a sample of writing from the two of them, I’d be hard pressed to tell them apart. Therefore these books fit seamlessly into the Sherlock Holmes universe, and I really do believe that Anthony Horowitz was the perfect choice to take on this big task. His Victorian London is dark and atmospheric, and it’s easy to imagine Holmes and Watson solving crime there. It was also interesting to meet a character so similar to Sherlock – or rather, a man so obsessed with him that he had begun to mimic Sherlock’s ways and techniques.

Unfortunately, despite the fantastic writing, I wasn’t hugely drawn in by the story. House of Silk kept me reading, turning pages and following the mystery, but I just wasn’t quite as interested in Moriarty. I felt the ending was a little predictable, although I have to admit it wasn’t until about half way through that I worked it out – I had someone else in mind for the first fifty percent or so.

Overall, a good addition to the Sherlock Holmes universe, and I stand by my word when I say they could not have picked anyone better than Anthony Horowitz to carry on writing about Holmes. Not quite as enjoyable as House of Silk for me personally, but a fun mystery novel nonetheless, with a wonderful cover to boot.

Blog Tour + Guest Post: Adam-Troy Castro, Book of Apex Vol 4

Here is my fourth and final post as part of the Book of Apex Volume 4 Blog Tour – a guest post by author Adam-Troy Castro. As part of the tour so far I’ve shared my review of the Book of Apex Volume 4, an interview with Adam-Troy Castro and an interview with author Rahul Kanakia.

Things Seen By The Story Guy

by Adam-Troy Castro

You see, the thing is, I’m a story guy.

I would be a story guy even if I wasn’t also a writer of fiction and therefore a producer of stories myself.

My hunger for story is insatiable; it is in large part what drives me. It probably drives me too much. I live what is very likely too much of my life following lies about nonexistent people, caring about them as if their troubles impact my own.

I can bore you senseless, just on the subject of Batman.

But part of being enamored of any form of art is growing so familiar with its various manifestations that you recognize when a practitioner has done a half-assed job. This makes us incomprehensible pains in the ass to those whose love of the art in question is not quite so fervent.

As a story guy, I am therefore in the position I observe when a music guy (or for that matter gal) insists on telling me that a certain song is a three-finger exercise, a piece of hackwork shit, when I am less sophisticated myself and know only that it’s something I can hum.

Few things demoralize a story guy more than when we point out that a given story contradicts its own premises, makes up its rules as it goes along, makes no sense, depends entirely on you completely forgetting in any given five minutes what happened five minutes earlier, and is morally reprehensible to boot, and the friend not a story guy sniffs, why do you have to analyze everything? Can’t we just, you know, enjoy it?

Yes, I suppose you can.
If you’re not a story guy.
Me, I always see where the scaffolding has been left behind when the story has been declared done.
Always.

Even in classics.

I see how this one brilliant writer I can name, whose talent I venerate and whose prose is driven by rich sensual description and an unerring sense of place, inevitably runs into a wall at the two-thirds mark of his novels, when he realizes that the story he’s been writing will soon have to be wrapped up; and he’s still only midway through the first act. I see how his prose becomes less lush, how his narrative speeds up to the point of desperation, and how he is all too clearly in the part of his tale that he didn’t plan for and must somehow wrench to an end anyway. I see that this never quite works. I still think he’s brilliant. But plot is not something he excels at.

I see how one very popular series of novels works only because the writer happens to be very good at making sure you don’t ask some pressing questions about its universe. I further notice that there was a vast and important element of the background that the writer just didn’t want to get into at all, and that the solution was having everybody tell you that the only person who could tell you about it was so boring he put people to sleep. I see how this fulfills the desired function of putting all that dull stuff aside, and I have actually praised the solution as perversely brilliant. But I also see how it renders the narrative all foreground, dependent on you the reader not asking questions you might otherwise be moved to ask.

I see how in this classic epic story that the entire world loves, the writer maneuvered himself into a situation where his characters were so thoroughly screwed that the only way to get them out of trouble was to invent a whole bunch of previously unestablished supernatural allies. I see how this story is driven by many such cases of the author playing favorites with his characters, acting as a kind of benevolent God to make sure they all make it through okay. I see how this becomes harder and harder to ignore on subsequent exposures.

I see how in one of the greatest books in all of American history, the writer established a murder mystery, somehow didn’t find the time to get back to it in a story that happened to be about matters richer to the human condition; and how, with the end of the book in sight, he threw in some half-assed shit on the last page, just to wrap it up.

I see how in one of the most important works by one of our most beloved genre writers, he found himself wandering around for the length of a shorter book trying to find the story again; and how he finally did find it again, and how he managed to hide the fact that what happens between then and the end of the book still doesn’t quite work.

I see how one of the greatest works by one of the greatest writers who ever lived builds to an unbearable tragedy at about the 2/3 mark, that results in the protagonist being estranged from his whole support system; and how he simply returns not long afterward to grins and smiles and to disastrous consequences that an idiot would have been able to see coming.

I see how another great work by yet another of the greatest writers who ever lived depends on coincidence; how a love story subplot is the deadly dull poison pill at the center of it; how the young couple involved are pretty damn intolerable; how it is impossible to go without that subplot but it’s less a compelling story element of its own than a McGuffin that wrenches a lengthy tale into its final act.

These are all books.

One of my favorite movies is built around the search for all-important documents that, at the end, don’t have much to do with anything. Another depends on a ruthless villain somehow failing to do the most practical thing, which she has actually threatened to do. Another depends on a trapped protagonist not realizing until the last five minutes that he can defuse a dangerous situation by doing something that he could have done hours earlier.

These are all, mind you, things I see in stories I love.

They are all real examples, so real that I suspect story guys (and gals) reading these words may be able to identify the individual works by their capsule descriptions.

I am still capable of loving the stories I cite because I also see what they do well. I see how they illuminate. I see how they resonate. I see how they are flawed gems and not just rickety structures. I get to the point where I regard the flaws I’ve mentioned with bemused affection, as the imperfect elements that make the surrounding beauty possible. I see the achievement. But I can feel solidarity with even the greatest of writers, losing rhythm while spinning plates.

So when I point at some much lesser work and say, no, this doesn’t work at all because of this, this, this, and this; when I conclude that the sins overwhelm the virtues, and that the story just isn’t very good; when people accuse me of being a picky scold out to ruin things for everybody else, I absolutely understand how they feel.

But I’m a story guy.

I honestly can’t help myself.

And when your defense of a work you love is a sputtering, “It’s just a story! You’re over thinking it! It doesn’t HAVE to make sense!”, I simply don’t understand you at all.

Blog Tour + Author Interview: Rahul Kanakia, Book of Apex Volume 4

Time for my third post as part of the Book of Apex Volume 4 Blog Tour! My previous posts include an interview with author Adam-Troy Castro and my review of the Book of Apex Volume 4. Today I have an interview with Rahul Kanakia, who has written for many short story collections and anthologies.

Rinn: I would first of all like to say thank you Rahul, for letting me interview you. Tomorrow’s Dictator was a pretty harrowing story – peoples’ emotions and behaviours being modified and optimised. How did you come up with the idea for ‘adjustments’?

Rahul: During college, I lived in a vegetarian co-op: a huge house with about fifty students who all cooked and cleaned and lived communally. We were a pretty motley and disorganized lot, except for one girl who was incredibly efficient and well organized. She woke early, exercised frequently, ate right, slept on a mattress out on the porch, and lived in a room with almost no furniture or possessions. She was also extremely even-tempered and never raised her voice or appeared to be visibly annoyed. As such, she was the only person whose complaints and ‘suggestions’ I’d ever take seriously, because, quite frankly, her perfection was quite eerie.

Our coop also ran by consensus, which means that every single person has to agree on a proposal in order for it to be enacted. In practice, this meant that nothing ever got enacted and that everyone did whatever they wanted. At one point, I suggested that we–as per ancient Roman tradition–unanimously acclaim this girl as our dictator (a joke that, of course, she did not particularly enjoy). And that’s where the story came from.

As for adjustments, I’m not sure. That’s something that I played around with in a bunch of stories, and it never quite worked out right. In a world where anyone can be adjusted to be any way that you want, there’s not much room for stories, since most stories are basically about how the protagonist got adjusted to be one way or the other. In this case, though, the story fit just right and everything came together.

Rinn: If you could ‘adjust’ one emotion or behaviour, what would it be? I know I take things too personally and get quite hung up on it, so I would change that!

Rahul: I’d probably adjust myself to be less self-important and condescending.

Rinn: Do you prefer to write short stories over longer works?

Rahul: I prefer to write longer works. Short stories are harder and less enjoyable, because the least enjoyable part of any work is figuring out all the basics: setting, character, conflict, voice, character arc, etc. And the most enjoyable part is when you’ve figured all of that out, and the story starts writing itself. In a short story, the moment you figure that stuff out, then you can write it in about a day. But in a novel, you’ve got months of fun before it ends. However, once you write a short story, you can send it out and sell it and have it published in a fairly short span of time. With novels, the gratification takes much longer.

Rinn: Have you got any particular favourite stories in the Book of Apex Volume 4?

Rahul: Yes! I really liked David J. Schwartz’ “Bear In Contradicting Landscape.” It’s a surrealist story that comes together with that perfect dream-logic that writers are always trying (and failing) to fake. You can tell that the events in the story–though they are seemingly arbitrary–are actually determined by some intuitive aesthetic sense on the part of the author.

Rinn: Have you always been a big fan of science fiction?

Rahul: Yep, ever since I was about ten years old and my mom gave me a copy of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation (Which was a book that she’d enjoyed as a girl growing up in India in the 1960s!)

Rinn: Is there anything you’d like to see left out of science fiction?

Rahul: I’m a bit tired of books and stories that are merely fun adventure stories. I like to see something else: new ideas, new settings, new character types. I don’t like books that are just trying to give readers the same thing that they felt when they first read Heinlein or Asimov or Clarke. In literature, there is no going home again. Each book is an non-replicable experience. And if you aim to duplicate it, then you’ll inevitable end up with something worse than the original.

Rinn: Are there any other genres you would encourage people to delve into?

Rahul: Yes! All the genres! But, most particularly, realist literary fiction. There’s something of a bias against it in science fiction circles, which I don’t understand. Oftentimes SF fans will say that realist fiction is boring and that all the most interesting things are being done in the science fiction world. But that makes no sense to me. Do these fans really see no value in stories that are about ordinary, real-world lives? Realist fiction has a wealth and denseness of detail that purely imaginary settings can’t replicate.

Oh, also, I really like crime fiction! And chick-lit!

Rinn: Who, or what, are your inspirations?

Rahul: Lots of people. I’m inspired by Asimov, Heinlein, Ted Chiang, Aimee Bender, Tolstoy, Willa Cather, Sinclair Lewis, among others.

Rinn: I note that you are currently enrolled in a MFA Creative Writing program – do you have a strict routine for this?

Rahul: Yes, I do. During the week, I write for one hour on two days (usually Monday/Wednesday), two hours on three days (usually Friday/Saturday/Sunday), four hours on Tuesday, and eight hours on Thursday. I also try to read at least one hour a day (although it usually ends up being much more than that). And I try to begin writing by 9 AM and do at least one hour before 10 AM.

Rinn: And finally, you’re stranded on a desert island. You can take five books and one other object. What do you take?

Rahul: I’ll leave out the jokey answers (How To Get Off A Desert Island) and just deliver some serious ones. If I had to be alone for extended periods of time, I’d want books that allowed me to think about how and why I should continue to live. And they should also be really long and dense. So I’d probably go for In Search Of Lost Time, Anna Karenina, Atlas Shrugged, War And Peace, and The History of Western Philosophy.

Thank you so much to Rahul for letting me interview him!

Blog Tour + Author Interview: Adam-Troy Castro, Book of Apex Volume 4

For my second post as part of the Book of Apex Volume 4 Blog Tour (the first being my review posted yesterday) I have an interview with one of the authors featured in the book, Adam-Troy Castro. Adam has written many books of different genres and for different ages, just a small selection of which is shown below. If you’d like to learn more about the tour, then please click the banner above.

Rinn: Firstly, thank you for letting me interview you! When I read your short story, During the Pause, in the Book of Apex Vol 4, I was surprised by the style as I haven’t read much (or anything!) written in second person plural. What inspired you to write  this particular piece?

Adam-Troy: I’m afraid certain stories have no brilliantly informative genesis myths, and this is one of them. I seem to recall working my way back from the final line, and trying to come up with something that would render it horrific beyond measure. I have actually done a number of prior second-person stories in my career, including my first fiction publication, “Clearance to Land” and my zombie story “Dead Like Me,” but I kind of think that this will be the only second-person to all of humanity I’ll ever do.

Rinn: It certainly was horrific, I had chills down my spine whilst reading it! What I particularly liked about it was that the reader might immediately assume it was an alien race, talking down to humans. But who’s to say it wasn’t us, addressing an alien race in the future? There was a lot of ambiguity that left it open, which I thought was very clever.

Adam-Troy: It’s clever of you. That never occurred to me. But now that I think about it, I realize your theory doesn’t work. The species speaking say at one point that they have no concept of religion, and that the species they’re addressing do.

Rinn: I did think that, but I also thought that perhaps if it was the human race very far into the future, maybe there is no concept of religion any more? Very far-fetched I know… But moving on. How would you react if aliens invaded and relayed a similar message to the human race? I feel that it would be all my nightmares from science fiction at once…

Adam-Troy: Oh, I would freak out, certainly. I suspect that there would be a lot of yelling during that five seconds.

Rinn: Will you be working on any more short stories linked to this one, or does it link to any of your current or upcoming works?

Adam-Troy: Nope, this is a stand-alone.

Rinn: Have you got any particular favourite stories in the Book of Apex Vol 4?

Adam-Troy: I am particularly fond of Christopher Barzak’s “The Twenty-Four Hour Brother.”

Rinn: Have you always been a big fan of science fiction?

Adam-Troy: Since being ruined forever by Asimov, Clarke, and Ellison pre-10. (And Godzilla.)

Rinn: Who, or what, are your inspirations?

Adam-Troy: I think the last answer covers some of it, but there are always new voices, new discoveries. Every new gem by someone I never heard of, is an occasion for gritted teeth and a determined, “Well? Oh Yeah?”

Rinn: One of my favourite things is discovering a brilliant new author or series. So exciting! Do you often use the online book community as a resource for your work ie. reading reviews of your books, interacting with readers. It’s always interesting as a blogger to see how our reviews and comments are used.

Adam-Troy: I am told that the time I spend on social media, bitching about one thing or another, really needs to be applied to a blog. Sooner or later, I suppose I shall.

Rinn: Haha, social media is the worst thing ever for procrastination. I note that you are a movie buff! What are your recent favourites? I’m hoping to go and see American Hustle and The Wolf of Wall Street some time soon.

Adam-Troy: Most recent theatrical film to blow me away was All Is Lost, with Robert Redford. I watch an awful lot of Korean and other Asian films these days: they really do have a sensibility we’ve lost in our stampede toward formula, that stories need to play for keeps, and that anything can happen.

Rinn: And finally – who would be at your fantasy dinner party? And what would you serve?

Adam-Troy: My biggest problem with most of these fantasy dinner parties is that many of the great figures of history didn’t smell all that nice, by our standards. Shakespeare’s funk would clear a modern-day restaurant, and Twain would insist on lighting up a cigar, afterward. I wouldn’t mind meeting some of these people, but I would have to turn off my sense of scent first. One thing I would like to do, really, is take the Donner Party out for pizza.

Rinn: I have to say, I never thought of that before and you make a very good point! I also wonder how some of them would interact, and it would definitely make for some interesting and possibly rather difficult dinner conversation…

Thank you so much to Adam-Troy for letting me interview him!

Blog Tour + Review: Book of Apex Volume 4

I am taking part in the Book of Apex Blog Tour hosted by Little Red Reviewer, so you will see a couple of features linked to the tour over the next few weeks. Please note that my review is based on the short stories of the authors I will be interviewing, Adam Troy Castro and Rahul Kanakia.

 

Tomorrow’s Dictator by Rahul Kanakia

This short story reveals a world where ‘adjustment’ is possible – a process where people’s emotions and behaviours can be adjusted at will by another, resulting in an incredibly hard-worker who doesn’t need a break, a totally devoted lover who never strays, completely obedient children and more. It is a very scary idea – the loss of total free will, and people voluntarily give it up without really realising what they’re doing.

The main character of the story, Sasha – I don’t really want to call her a protagonist because of what she’s done – uses the process, both on her employees and her husband, George. George has been reduced to a simpleton, following Sasha around like a puppy and responding to her every word and command. What is especially terrifying is how George asked for the process, and how Sasha agreed to it.

Although we don’t get much time to get to know the characters, I instantly disliked Sasha because of how she treated others. Perhaps she was just doing her job, but as she brought adjustment into her personal life then she couldn’t really have that big of a problem with it. This tiny glimpse into a world devoid of free will is pretty terrifying and harrowing. For this reason, I’m awarding the story four stars – Kanakia gets a lot across in just a few pages.

 

During the Pause by Adam Troy Castro

This short story immediately struck me as unusual in that it is written in second person plural – and it’s not so much a story as a fictitious warning or message from an alien race, claiming they will wipe ‘you’ out. Like Rahul Kanakia’s story, a real sense of fear for the situation is created in a short amount of time. One of my thoughts after reading the story was that it could even be humans talking to another alien race – although there is mention of how they do not understand religion. However, my idea was that it was humans far into the future, a future where religion no longer had any real meaning – but I suppose it is rather far-fetched!

The message sounds incredibly arrogant, the attackers looking down on their victims as if they are ants they could easily squish with just one step.  Which is pretty terrifying – and reminds me of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds. Hopefully these invaders will succumb to the same thing as Well’s tripods too! I also want to award this particular story four stars – for the chills it sent down my back whilst reading it.

 

If you want to learn more about the Book of Apex blog tour, or would like to check out the schedule, then please take a look here.

Blog Tour + Author Interview: Samantha Sutton and the Winter of the Warrior Queen by Jordan Jacobs

Today I’m taking part in the blog tour for Samantha Sutton and the Winter of the Warrior Queen by Jordan Jacobs, a middle-grade/young adult book about a young girl with a passion for archaeology.

If you know me, you’ll know that I studied archaeology and ancient history at university, and my ambition is to one day be a museum curator. So how could I turn down the chance to read a book about a young archaeologist, written by an archaeologist?

For the blog tour I have an interview with the author, Jordan Jacobs, and I’ll be posting my review of the book tomorrow. So let’s begin!

Interview

Rinn: I studied archaeology myself, and I LOVED all the little references hidden in the book, like the Pitt-Rivers twins and the Aubreys. Will this be a running theme through the rest of the books?

Jordan: I’m so pleased you caught those!  Yes, there are a lot of little “easter eggs” in Warrior Queen for those who have some background in archaeology. There were some in the first book, too, just as there will be in the third.  I had some fun with that, especially with finding archaeological terms that also work as names (Cairn, Barrows….)

Rinn: I spotted those too! I thought it was so clever. What inspired you to start writing fiction about archaeology and archaeologists?

Jordan: I wanted to write books that I would’ve loved to read as a kid.  I was initially drawn to the adventure aspects of archaeology, but feel strongly that my books should have a scientific component as well, so that young readers could get a sense of how the discipline actually works and why it is important.

Rinn: I loved the book at my age now, but I wish there’d been something like it when I was Samantha’s age too! Is Samantha influenced by your younger self at all? I love her enthusiasm and passion for archaeology.

Jordan: Oh, definitely.  But while my earliest impressions of archaeology leaned more towards the adventure side of things, Sam’s interest lies firmly in the science–which she has some real knowledge of, thanks to her archaeologist uncle.

Rinn: So far, Samantha’s travels have taken her to the Peruvian Andes and Cambridge. Where do you think she’ll go next?

Jordan: I know precisely where she’s headed… but I’m not telling!  I’ll just say that it’s somewhere very different from the first two settings, and involves an aspect of archaeology that Samantha has never encountered before.

Rinn: Experimental archaeology? GIS? Thermoluminescence dating? *throws around random terms* What periods of history or particular locations would you love to write about next?

Jordan: Well, next up is Samantha Sutton Book 3.  But historical fiction is something I’d love to attempt.  I’ve always been fascinated by contact stories: the first English delegations to the Mughal court, Esteban’s arrival at Zuni… these incredible moments in human history where two vastly different worldviews encounter one another and are forever changed.

Rinn: Those are also moments I don’t know much about, so I’d definitely be interested in reading more about them. How did you go about researching for the books? Were they already time periods/locations you’d researched previously or perhaps dug at?

Jordan: All the books are set in places where I’ve worked, studied, or spent a significant amount of time. As an undergraduate, I lived in the Peruvian Andes for a summer-long project. I did my graduate archaeology work at Cambridge, so I know the area well. This made research much much easier, because much of it I’d done years before–and for course credit!

Rinn: I can tell you all about Silchester if you ever feel like writing about it, haha! That’s where I worked throughout university. What is your usual writing process? Do you like to stick to a schedule?

Jordan: With a toddler at home and a full-time job, I don’t have the luxury of a schedule. But I happily write whenever I can (a glance at my clock tells me that it’s 5:30am right now. Yikes!).

Rinn: Eek, that’s dedication! Well thank you very much for taking some time to answer these questions. If you were given a time machine, where and when would you go and why?

Jordan: I’d love a glimpse of Plantagenet England.  I’m sort of a Richard the Lionheart groupie–though I don’t think we’d have similar views on anything–and it would be interesting to see how things functioned in his time.  But I’m also a fan of Back to the Future, and would know to be extremely cautious (rift in the space time continuum and all that).  I might just stick my head out for a second or two.  I don’t think I’d linger long.

Rinn: This is more of a personal question, as someone who is going on to study museum studies and heritage. I see that you have worked at many museums and for many heritage organisations – what advice would you give to someone interested in that field?

Jordan: Network. Request informational interviews.  It’s the kind of work that draws passionate people, and it’s important that employers can sense your commitment to the field.

Rinn: Thank you so much for that advice! And finally, which historical figures would you invite to your fantasy dinner party?

Jordan: Ada Lovelace, Howard Carter, Gustav Mahler, and Boudica (before her troubles began). I’d make burgers.

About the Author

The author with Richard I.

Jordan Jacobs has loved archaeology for as long as he can remember. His childhood passion for mummies, castles and Indiana Jones led to his participation in his first excavation, at age 13, in California’s Sierra Nevada. After completing a high school archaeology program in the American Southwest, he followed his passion through his education at Stanford, Oxford, and Cambridge. Since then, Jordan’s work for the Smithsonian, the American Museum of Natural History and UNESCO Headquarters in Paris has focused on policy and the protection of archaeological sites in the developing world.

Jordan’s research and travel opportunities have taken him to almost fifty countries– from Cambodia’s ancient palaces, to Tunisia’s Roman citadels, to Guatemala’s Mayan heartland and the voodoo villages of Benin.
Jordan now works as Head of Cultural Policy at UC Berkeley’s Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology. He lives in San Francisco with his wife and daughter.

Thank you so much to Jordan for letting me interview him, and to the publisher/Netgalley for a copy of the book.

Are you a fan of archaeology or books based around historical events? Give Samantha Sutton and the Winter of the Warrior Queen a try!

Blog Tour + Review: I Am Venus by Bárbara Mujica

4 out of 5 stars | Goodreads

I received a copy of this book for free from the publisher, in exchange for an honest review.

Today I have a review of Bárbara Mujica’s I Am Venus for you, as part of the TLC Book Tour. The book follows the life of artist Diego Velazquez, told through the eyes of those closest to him.

Narrated by the woman who posed for his portrait of Venus, this semi-biographical novel of Diego Velázquez is a wonderful piece of historical fiction. Mujica’s writing flows very smoothy, apart from the occasional untranslated Spanish word which may cause the reader to falter. I loved the tone of the book, it was both easy to read and informative.

I can’t fault Mujica’s descriptive writing. She creates some wonderfully vivid images of seventeenth century Spain, causing the reader to experience the smells and sights of Madrid. She also clearly sets out current events at the time, meaning that any reader who does not know too much about seventeenth century European history should be able to follow the story with few issues. As I studied this period of history in school, it was really fun to see familiar names and figures brought to life. The one thing that may confuse the reader at some points however, are the similar names and rather wide cast of characters. Whilst this is obviously not the fault of the author, the characters having been real people four hundred years ago, it would have perhaps been nice to have a list of characters in the book somewhere.

The major issue I had with the book is that the point of view was often confusing. I understand that the author wanted the identity of Venus to be a mystery (she is unknown to this day) whilst also having her narrate the book. This lead to some odd narratives, often switching between first and third person and in fact making the book feel like it had several narrators. I think the idea behind it was good, but it perhaps was not pulled off correctly.

I wouldn’t so much refer to this book as a ‘story of scandal’ – especially when in the context of history that makes me think of things like the corruption of the Borgias or the supposedly inbred Hapsburgs – and the book doesn’t actually focus too much on what is going on in the wide world, but more on domestic and smaller issues relating to Velázquez. And whilst the book is about Velázquez, he is often absent for many chapters – as he was often absent from the lives of his loved ones – so it is more a story about the people in his life.

I particularly enjoyed this one because most historical fiction that I read is either ancient history, or based in medieval or Tudor England. So this was a nice change, and is definitely a recommended read for anyone with an interest in seventeenth century European art or history, or the Baroque period.

Click here to visit the other stops on the tour and also read about the author.