I just did an interview with my favorite Lady Geek, Space Pirate Queen aka Dianne. You should totally check them out for their take on movies, comic books and graphic novels, geek news, Los Angeles’ happenings, and much more. Oh yeah, and pies and ice cream. You can visit the site by clicking on this.
Here’s a review and an excerpt of the interview:
Ashes, Ashes focuses on survivor, Lucy “Lucky” Holloway, a teenage girl. While an epidemic killed her entire family and most of humanity, Lucy avoided becoming sick and dying from the plague. Then when natural disaster decided to wipe out what was left of human civilization, she still found a way to live.
Despite all the loss she had suffered through Lucy is still very much a teenager, clumsy and insecure. All on her own she found the courage to keep waking up every day with just a single survival guide to tell her how to live. It is lonely and brutal. Lucy thought she would have to keep hiding and scavenging for what little food was left for the rest of her life, however long that may be.
Then one day she met another survivor, a teenage boy named Aidan. Lucy had an aversion to other people and had trouble trusting them. In the end, people need other people and faith pushes Lucy to Aidan’s direction. She joins a community of other survivors where she learns again what it was like to live and work with other people. She also faces her fears, finds deeper courage and new truths begin to unravel. Is there hope for human beings to survive?
Ashes, Ashes is a dark imagining of what could happen to our world and exposes the fragility of human beings. The author, Jo Treggiari hones in to a world that gave you a feeling of: this could happen. Yes, I do recommend you read the book especially if you like young adult dystopian novels. It is very well written and the touch of suspense will definitely hook you. I love that the female main character is honest. Even though I am way past the age, she felt like a true teenager and someone relatable despite the extreme situation she is in.
I love Jo and I “twitter” with her constantly. I finally asked her to do an interview for the blog and was delighted that she said yes!
According do your mini-bio, you trained as a boxer and owned your own record label! How did writing Young Adult novels come about?
TREGGIARI: I’ve always written- journals, short stories, horrendous poetry, half-finished books. Writing down my thoughts and feelings was my way of dealing with whatever life threw at me. And I’ve been a voracious reader since I was a kid- I’d be the one with her head in a book in all the family photos, so it just felt natural to me to want to write. There was a bit of a gap when I had the label where I spent so much time writing press releases and publicity pitches, that I expressed myself through bad paintings instead, but eventually I found myself back to writing again. I could also draw many analogies between writing and boxing: getting knocked down, getting back up again, having the stuffing pounded out of you…
You can check out the entire interview over here