I was thrilled to be invited to join the brilliant Project UKYA blog tour that's being organised by Lucy, and even more excited when she arranged for me to run a post by Emma Pass, whose dystopian thriller ACID was such a fantastic read! Here's Emma on why she wrote her upcoming book The Fearless.
My first novel, ACID, was one that 'brewed'
for a long time – 14 years, to be precise. But The Fearless was born much more
quickly. The first spark came just a few months before ACID sold to my
publisher in 2011 – I was attending a conference about children's books and
writing as part of my day job (I'm a library assistant) and had the chance to
take part in a workshop run by Julie
Bertagna. She talked about how she often got ideas for her books from
newspaper and magazine articles, then handed out some articles and asked us to
use them to come up with story ideas.
The article my group was given was similar
to this
one, about scientists developing a drug to stop Post Traumatic Stress
Disorder (PTSD). PTSD is an anxiety disorder caused by traumatic events, and
causes serious problems such as flashbacks, aggression and insomnia. It can
start many years after the event that triggered it, and is particular problem
among military personnel, who witness many terrible things while on active
service. According to this
article in the Telegraph, one charity expects PTSD rates to rise by up to
12% each year until 2018, so any drug that could help reduce this rate is surely
a very good thing indeed.
But as our group discussed the article, I
started to wonder, what if the drug
stopped people from feeling any fear at all? Or love? Or empathy? What if it
turned them into murderous psychopaths?
These questions were to become the basis
for the new novel I started writing shortly afterwards.
The Fearless imagines what happens after a
drug given to UK and Allied troops to stop them suffering from PTSD and make
them into more effective fighters is discovered to have a terrible side effect
– it strips them of any humanity or empathy. By the time people realise what's
going on, the enemy have managed to get hold of the formula and strengthen it
so that the side effects start immediately, and then they start forcing it on
anybody and everybody. Country after country falls to these super-soldiers,
known as the Fearless, until at last, they invade the UK. Cass, the
protagonist, is just ten when this happens, and after her father is taken by
the Fearless, has to flee with her mother to an island off the south coast of
England, where her little brother, Jori, is born. Seven years later, Jori is
snatched by a Fearless too, and Cass must return to the mainland for the first
time since the Invasion to try and rescue him, helped by a mysterious boy named
Myo who seems to know more about the Fearless than he's letting on…
The Fearless was a lot of fun to work on. I
love playing around with 'what if' scenarios and I've always wanted to write a
post-apocalyptic novel, imagining what the UK would be like after a disaster
has wiped out most of society. How would people survive? What would places
familiar to me look like once they were abandoned? As with ACID, many of THE FEARLESS's
settings are based on places I know, in particular Sheffield railway station
and Meadowhall shopping centre (I considered using London, but as that was such
a major setting in ACID, I decided to go somewhere different). I was also
hugely inspired by reading blog posts and articles about Hashima Island in
Japan, upon which I based Hope Island, the refuge Cass flees to at the start of
the book.
But most of all, I wanted to write a book
where the monsters might not really be monsters after all – where the good guys
could turn out to be the bad guys, and where nothing was quite what it seemed… I
hope people enjoy it!
Emma Pass has been making up stories for as
long as she can remember; she reckons it's the most fun you can have without
attracting attention from the authorities. She wrote her first novel, aged 13,
in maths lessons with her notebook hidden under her work. After school, she
went to art college, but soon realized she wasn't cut out to be a painter and
decided to stick with writing.
Many years later, the late nights, early
mornings and large amounts of coffee and angst finally paid off. Her debut
novel, ACID, a dystopian thriller with a kick-ass heroine who goes on the run
from a sinister police force, is out now from Corgi/Random House, and will be
published in the US on 11th March 2014 by Delacorte. THE FEARLESS, a
post-apocalyptic thriller about a girl trying to rescue her brother from
psychotic super-soldiers, is out on 3rd April 2014 from Corgi/Random House and
in early 2015 from Delacorte. She is represented by Carolyn Whitaker at London
Independent Books.
By day, Emma works as a library assistant
and lives with her husband and crazy greyhound G-Dog in the North East
Midlands.
Emma Pass can be
found at EmmaPass.com and on her blog, as well as on Twitter and Facebook. She
is a contributor to The Lucky 13s and Author Allsorts. If you want to get in
touch with her, contact her on emmapassauthor@emmapass.com,
or pass publishing-related queries onto her publishers at childrenspublicity@randomhouse.co.uk
(UK) or rhkidspublicity@randomhouse.com
(US).
A post-apocalyptic thriller for young
adults, coming 3rd April 2014 from Corgi/Random House Children's Publishers
(UK) and early 2015 from Delacorte (US).
The
Fearless. An army, powered by an incredible new serum that makes each soldier
stronger, sharper, faster than their enemies. Intended as a force for good, the
serum has a terrible side effect – anyone who takes it is stripped of all humanity,
empathy, love. And as the Fearless sweep through the country, forcing the serum
on anyone in their path, society becomes a living nightmare.
Cass
remembers the night they passed through her village. Her father was Altered.
Her mother died soon after. All Cass has left is her little brother – and when
Jori is snatched by the Fearless, Cass must risk everything to get him back.
I'm so glad you liked ACID - thank you! And thanks for hosting me on the blog tour! I'm really enjoying everyone's posts.
ReplyDeleteOoh, this sounds fabulous! And I'm *very* familiar with Meadowhall, so it'll be even more fun.
ReplyDeleteOoh. The Fearless sounds really interesting! I loved hearing more about it and where the idea for it came from...
ReplyDelete