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Friday 22 August 2014

Author Interview - Pippa Jay, author of Restless in Peaceville

Welcome to my latest author interview! Today, I'm talking to Pippa Jay, whose latest book, Restless in Peaceville, was released on Wednesday!


Tell me three interesting facts about yourself!
I love to do freestyle street dance for exercise, I have a celtic butterfly tattoo on my right wrist, and my nickname as a child (even into my teens) was Dormouse due to my habit of curling up in a nest of blankets to sleep.

Summarize your book in one line.
Luke Chester thought being dead would solve all his problems, but being undead sucks worse.

Tell me something cool/crazy/quirky about the book – it can be anything!
I have a fight between a vampire and a zombie, something I’ve not seen anywhere else. Want to place bets on who wins?

Why did you decide to write this particular book?
I got absolutely obsessed with a film called Warm Bodies, despite not being a fan of horror, zombies, or anything remotely scary or gory. I loved how it made me feel sympathy for a character that should be seen as a terrifying monster. Also I’d read books with zombies that weren’t like the classic Hollywood creatures (by Terry Pratchett and Piers Anthony), so I started researching how the brain eating thing began and really digging into the whole zombie mythology. What I learned was so interesting--and inspired by Warm Bodies--I decided I wanted to write a book about a different kind of zombie.

Best part of the writing process? Finishing. Lol.

Share one thing you learned writing this book.
That I really can’t say I won’t write a particular genre. Because every time I’ve thought “This isn’t my kind of thing to write” I’ve gone ahead and written it anyway, and been really happy (if slightly freaked out) by the results. Never say never!

Tell me about one strange experience you’ve had. Again, it can be anything!
Hmm, not so much me exactly, but when my husband and I were first living together, we rented an old house near the centre of our home town. One evening he went into the second bedroom, light off, and saw someone standing there. He thought it was me waiting to jump out on him, but a moment later I came out of the bathroom and the figure disappeared. He was really spooked! We’d also had our stereo system switch itself on a couple of times, yet it never did it before we’d moved into that house, and never did it again after we moved out.

Name one fictional place you’d love to visit.
Pern. It has dragons!

Name one real place you’d love to visit.
Louisiana. I set my book there and had to rely on research, Google maps, and friends who live and/or were born there to get the details right. I’d love to go there and see it for real! And of course meet the people who helped me with it.


Share one sentence/mini-excerpt from the book!
The demon rolls its glowing red eyes. “Die of stupidity, did we?”

Book info:
Welcome to Peaceville, population 2067 and rising...from the grave...

Luke Chester has had enough. He’s the school geek, the girls laugh at him, he’s lost his dead-end job at the pizza place, and in the midst of the world’s messiest divorce his parents don’t even know he exists. An overdose of his mom’s tranquilizers and a stomach full of whiskey should solve all his problems...

But they don’t. Instead, Luke finds himself booted out of the afterlife for not dying a natural death, with nowhere to go but back to his recently vacated corpse and reality. How the hell is he going to pass for one of the living without someone trying to blow his brains out for being one of the undead?

And it just gets worse. He’s got to fight his own desperate craving to consume the living, evade the weird supernatural hunter who’s having a field day with the new undeads rising, and there’s this creepy black shadow following him around. Add to that the distraction of female fellow undead Annabelle burning to avenge her own murder, and clearly there’s no rest for the wicked. Jeez, all he wanted to do was R.I.P.

Restless In Peaceville, a YA supernatural story coming 20th August from Lycaon Press. Add it to your Goodreads shelf here - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22062985-restless-in-peaceville
Sign up to my newsletter for release info here - http://www.pippajay.blogspot.co.uk/p/artwork.html

 
Author bio:

After spending twelve years working as an Analytical Chemist in a Metals and Minerals laboratory, Pippa Jay is now a stay-at-home mum who writes scifi and the supernatural. Somewhere along the way a touch of romance crept into her work and refused to leave. In between torturing her plethora of characters, she spends the odd free moment playing guitar very badly, punishing herself with freestyle street dance, and studying the Dark Side of the Force. Although happily settled in the historical town of Colchester in the UK with her husband of 21 years and three little monsters, she continues to roam the rest of the Universe in her head.
Pippa Jay is a dedicated member of the Science Fiction Romance Brigade, blogging at Spacefreighters Lounge, Adventures in Scifi, and Romancing the Genres. She’s a double SFR Galaxy Award winner, been a finalist in the Readers Favorite Contest, the Heart of Denver RWA Aspen Gold Contest (3rd place), and the GCC RWA Silken Sands Star Awards (2nd place), and a semi-finalist in the Kindle Book Review’s 2013 Best Indie Book Awards.

You can stalk her at her website http://pippajay.co.uk, or at her blog http://pippajay.blogspot.co.uk, but without doubt her favourite place to hang around and chat is on Twitter as @pippajaygreen.

2 comments:

  1. Enjoyed the interview with Pippa. Your new story sounds very, very interesting.

    ReplyDelete