New interview with
Amanda Havard, author of
The Survivors. Thanks Amanda and the publishers for taking some of their time to answer our question. Especially since Amanda put so much effort in her answers :)
And yay for another author who saw
X-Men: First Class! Songwriter for a next choice of occupation? Next time i will ask for a poem miss Amanda ^^
Oh! And stay tuned for a review of Survivors, in the next week!
-Try to describe
your book in one sentence.
If your parents were Puritanical
supernatural beings who survived accusations of witchcraft in the Salem Witch
Trials, only to hide you and your 150 family members in a walled city in
Montana for 300 years, you’d want to get out, see the world, find more
creatures like you, live like a human, and try to become a mortal too.
-Your genre in The
Survivors is YA Fantasy right?. You did that on purpose, or you just start
writing?
I definitely did it on purpose, but if I had just
started writing it would have happened that way anyway. Interestingly, I wanted
to sort of push the issue on what counts as YA. To me, it’s a voice. It’s a set
of experiences. It’s the figuring of one’s self, life, family, place, and
circumstance. My characters are mostly over 100 years old, but they’re still
having these very formative experiences that are the kinds we experience and
see in YA lit. That’s the part I wanted to include, technical age aside. I
wanted their story to be about the figuring out.
-What inspired you
to write, you took any ideas from other books, movies etc?
I think we get out inspiration from everything we
see, hear, and touch. I get my inspiration from all those things, at least.
Every book I’ve ever read, every song I’ve heard, movie I’ve watched,
conversation I’ve had, song I’ve written, practically meal I’ve eaten… you get
the idea. They all matter. Our experiences become a part of us, and those
experiences are where I find my inspiration, and I sense it’s where many others
do too.
-Did you do any
research before start or during of the writing of the books?
Definitely. There was a lot of research that went
into THE SURVIVORS and even more that
was required for the subsequent books in the series. I like accurate detail on
a sort of obsessive level. Every hotel room Sadie stays in, road she drives on,
place she visits, piece of clothing she wears, music she listens to… it’s all
real. What’s more is that the same goes for history and mythology. All the
supernatural creatures in the books—save for Survivors themselves—are from
actual mythology and lore from cultures all over the world, throughout history.
And any historical event referenced is a real one that has a lot of unanswered
questions so that my story fits into the question marks. It leaves this little
bit of a sense that it could be true
because we don’t know that it’s not.
-Which scenes were
the hardest to write?
Having Sadie as a protagonist makes a specific
challenge in many scenes. She can sense things off people around her, and she
has this analytical inhuman brain that makes her observe things you and I wouldn’t
necessarily—and then she tells you about those things. Add that to the typical
things you expect like action, dialogue, basic description, then there always
seems to be a lot happening, and so sometimes the challenge is to make sure
Sadie and reader both understand and can process all of those elements. But
sometimes Sadie can’t process everything—so if you ever feel frantic reading
parts of it, then that’s just because she does to, and you’re getting that from
her.
-How long has it
taken you to write a book ?
I wrote The
Survivors in 27 days. Conversely, it took me years to write my first book
that I never even pursued publication for. So far I don’t really have a
pattern.
-What’s the best
part of writing for you?
Creativity is pretty much my favorite thing because
of the process and product. Though I love the book at the end, the process is
this sort of frenetic but joyful experience that I’m addicted to. Creating
characters, worlds, and storylines is sort of what I live for. I love that I
get to do this.
-Are you reading or
writing something else at the moment?
I’m one of those crazy people who is always reading
three or four different books at once—unless one just grabs ahold of me and
then I must read it straight through. But as for writing, we’re wrapping up
book 2 in THE SURVIVORS Series, which
is set to come out next year. Then I’m ready to write book 3!
-Did you have
support at the beginning and/or during your writing?
I had support in a lot of different ways. I had an
editor who mentored me on that aforementioned book that took years to write and
rewrite and rewrite and rewrite. She has been most instrumental in my
development as a writer. She’s taught me how to craft a story into a book. I
also had friends who were just amazing during the process. My good friend,
Meghan, really conspired with me to create this giant world of The Survivors. She was practically
inside my head the whole time, and I have no idea what I would have done
without her. My friend, Danielle, also read each chapter as I wrote it and came
back to me with meaningful feedback—plus she cheered me along the whole way. It
certainly made it easier.
-Did you always have
it in mind to be a writer or did it just happen?
A little bit of both? Though I definitely said all
along that I wanted to be a writer, I’ve been telling stories my entire life,
and so I’m not really sure which came first. Eventually I started writing those
stories down. If I weren’t a writer by profession, I’d still be writing.
Characters come to me, storylines come to me, random things inspire me to think
of a whole world I’ve never thought of. That’s how it works. I can’t really
turn it off.
-How important you
find the communication between you and your readers? Do you reply to their
messages or read their reviews?
I think that communication between reader and
writer is hugely important, and I have made myself available in a number of
ways to try to facilitate this relationship. To me, it’s one of the unique
advantages of writing in this era of social media. On my website, I have a fan forum so that you can
create a login and talk to me and to other readers. I’ve put my email up there
so if anyone needs me they can find me. And I’m on Twitternot replied to a message or @
reply sent to me there. Come and find me. I love talking. constantly, and I’ve
never
-Are you working on
any other projects except writing, right now?
Yeah I’ve got a lot going on. The Survivors really has a transmedia campaign where we’ve written
original songs, created Twitter accounts for my characters, and so on. I’m
constantly working on these things too—like we just recorded a song I wrote for
the series called “Breaking” that will be coming out this summer. It will join
the already-released single “Pretty
Girl” that’s out now. Between writing songs, writing the books, traveling
to promote, recording songs, shooting music videos, working on upcoming
elements… I’m a busy girl.
-Something special
you want to share with us?
When I think of The
Survivors and of my favorite fictional bookworlds, I think interacting with
them is really the best part. I’ve set up a number of ways for people to be
able to immerse themselves in the world of Survivors, and you can expect a
number of those to come in the future from me and from my publisher, Chafie Press. To start you can listen to, watch the
video for, or download
“Pretty Girl” as it really communicates a lot about the story and can be very
emotional for some readers. Plus, you can hang around my website where my blog can give you insight into the
characters, their style (they almost all love fashion), the music that inspires the
series, the world maps of character
travels, and, of course, the Twitter feeds for
the characters’ accounts. Connecting to these things will really make the
experience whole—I hope you take advantage of it.
Now some simple
questions and more fun
-Your favourite
books and author? Five-way tie between Janet Fitch, Curtis
Sittenfeld, Sandra Cisneros, Sylvia Plath, and J.K. Rowling for authors. Books?
So many, but a few include… Harry Potter,
Paint It Black by Janet Fitch, A
Farewell to Arms by William Faulkner, The
House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld, Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn, The
Unbecomming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin
-Your favourite
band/singer? I could never pick just one! But some I LOVE are
Coldplay, The Killers, The Black Keys, Manchester Orchestra, Muse, The Bravery,
Augustana, Old Crow Medicine Show, Sara Bareilles, Adele, Regina Spektor, Franz
Ferdinand, Ingrid Michaelson, and so so so many more.
-Favourite place in
the world? Bigfork, Montana (the Monterey peninsula in
California and Portland, Oregon are tied as close seconds)
-Last movie you
watched at the cinemas? X-men
First Class
-The last book
you’ve read? I’m always reading several, but the last book I
finished was an ARC of The Unbecoming of
Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin
-Have you ever
googled yourself? Oh yes.
-Writing, reading or
hanging out with friends? Writing. Always. (Much to my friends’ dismay.)
-If you wouldn’t be
a writer, what you would be? A songwriter, screenwriter, or... Oh
wait, those are all still “writers.” Hmm. Perhaps a professor of education and
human development. I guess I do have two degrees in those for a reason.
-And last
one....printed or ebooks?
I’m torn. Love the ease of eBooks but I can’t live
without real ones!
In 1692, when witch
trials gripped the community of Salem, Massachusetts, twenty-six
children were accused as witches, exiled, and left for dead. Fourteen of
them survived.The Survivors is the first installment of the
tantalizing tales of the fourteen ill-fated Survivors and their
descendants, who have been content in hiding for over three centuries.
Isolated on a Montana mountainside, only Sadie, the rogue daughter,
dares to abandon the family's sacred hiding place. But no matter how far
Sadie runs, something always pulls her back.
On a muggy summer
night in Tennessee, she witnesses a shocking scene that will change her
life forever. It is the first in a sequence of events that will drag her
from the human world she's sought to belong to for over a century and
send her back to her Puritanical family and into an uncertain future
filled with cunning witches, mysterious nosferatu shape-shifters,
dangerous eretica and vieczy vampires, millennia-old mythology, and the
search for her own mortality. After all...
HOW DO YOU KILL A SURVIVOR?
or 
A drama that is centered around a troubled teenage girl and a family that is trying to get over the loss of their son.
