Whew! It's been a while since an interview has happened around these parts. Kat happily remedied this by reaching out to me and inviting me to participate in her blog tour for her debut novel. So I'm happy and proud to have her as a guest on the blog today. Give a virtual round of applause to Kat Ross, author of SOME FINE DAY.
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If you had to explain SOME FINE DAY in ten words or less, how
would you describe it?
Oh, this is hard! Here goes:
Girl gets kidnapped, meets boy, saves boy, ends up in…[insert
spoiler here]
SOME FINE DAY is your debut novel (which recently
released-congrats btw!). How did you celebrate on your release date? :D
Sipping lemonade on the beach in the Florida Keys! I'd booked
the trip before I knew my release date, but I tend to be an introvert, so I was
actually kind of relieved I didn't have to throw a big party (: (Lucky....I'd give anything to escape this arctic winter we've been having.)
When I looked into your debut, I read about hypercanes…which
sound legit scary. How did you discover hypercanes? What is it about them that
caught your interest?
I was researching extreme climate change scenarios and that
word just caught my eye. They're a (still theoretical, thank God) class of
mega-storm predicted by Kerry Emanuel at MIT, and yes, they are legit scary! I
thought I'd have to make something like that up, so I was delighted to discover
that under particular conditions, they could actually exist in the real world. We're
talking storms the size of continents, with wind speeds in the many hundreds of
miles per hour. And then I thought, what if there was more than one? And they never
went away, like the Great Red Spot on Jupiter? Things would get ugly in a
hurry.
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| I found this nifty chart that explains how hypercanes contrast with hurricanses. Gulp. Source |
What was your process for writing SOME FINE DAY? It seems like
you’d have to do a lot of research just to write about hypercanes.
I really enjoyed that part of it. One of the biggest
challenges was figuring out how people could survive so deep underground. Where
would the air come from? The water? What would they eat? How would they travel
and communicate? And conversely, how would you survive on the surface under
such hostile conditions? I tend to get obsessive about accuracy. There a scene
in the sequel (still unfinished) where the main character, Jansin, has to climb
out of one of the ventilation tubes, and I actually spent hours digging out
biomechanics studies about the maximum speed a human can climb a ladder (it's
something like three feet per second). (O_O!!!!)
Having gone through the process of publication (and knowing
what you know now), what advice would you give to your past self?
Be in it for the long haul. Don't let the bumps in the road
derail you. Just keep writing, and write what you want to, not what you think
will sell. This is supposed to be fun, after all.
If you could live in any fictional world, what would you
choose and why?
Maybe the alt-world London of Jonathan Stroud's amazing Bartimaeus trilogy—but only if I had my
own personal djinn. (Did you hear that thunk? It was the sound of more books being added to my TBR pile.)
What are some awesome books you’ve read lately? YA or
otherwise!
I adored Grasshopper Jungle by
Andrew Smith. He's just brilliant on every level, and does the best genre
mash-ups. Also Code Name Verity by
Elizabeth Wein, and Night Film by
Marissa Pessl. Now I'm reading Feed
by M.T. Anderson, which isn't new, but has one of the best first lines:
"We went to the moon to have fun, but the moon turned out to completely
suck."
Are there any characters from different novels that you’ve
read that you think would make a cute couple? Hehe. Or maybe a character of
yours paired up with another book’s character?
I could totally see Jansin having a major girl-crush on Amy
Gumm from the Dorothy Must Die series.
Do you have any fictional crushes? ;)
Team Gale, all the way. (THANK YOU. I totes agree.)
What “buzz words” or phrases in book descriptions make you
pick something up? Modern retellings, spies, forbidden romance….? There are so
many options. :D
Gothic, eerie, darkly funny, time travel, myths with a twist,
bad-ass girls…
And now.... Lightning
round!
Jane Eyre or Jane Austen? Jane Austen (especially if there's
zombies)
Brackets or parentheses? Parens
Star Trek or Star Wars? Star Trek
Night owl or early bird? Early bird, to an extreme
Gel pens or sharpies? Precise V7 rolling balls! I'm an
addict.
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Synopsis: A generation ago,
continent-sized storms called hypercanes caused the Earth to flood. The
survivors were forced to retreat deep underground and build a new society. This is the story that
sixteen-year-old Jansin Nordqvist has heard all of her life.
Jansin grew up in a
civilization far below the Earth’s surface. She’s spent the last eight years in
military intelligence training. So when her parents surprise her with a coveted
yet treacherous trip above ground, she’s prepared for anything. She’s especially
thrilled to feel the fresh air, see the sun, and view the wide-open skies and
the ocean for herself.
But when raiders attack
Jansin’s camp and take her prisoner, she is forced to question everything she’s
been taught. What do her captors want? How will she get back underground? And
if she ever does, will she want to stay after learning the truth
Clickables: {website} {twitter} {book trailer} {blog}
We hope you've enjoyed the interview! Kat is being super generous and hosting a giveaway with amazing prizes! The grand prize is a Kindle Paperwhite with a custom cover, preloaded with SOME FINE DAY while the other two winners will receive a signed copy of Kat's novel and a CD audiobook. Best of all, THIS IS INTERNATIONAL. So jump on it, friends!
Note: all images and GIFs were found via search engines. I've credited them as best as I can. Just to be clear--none of these belong to me.
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