Author Interview: Jadah McCoy, author of Artificial!

Today I'm interviewing Jadah McCoy, fellow CQ author!

Tell me three interesting facts about yourself!

Three interesting things about me! Hmm… I like to pole dance, I’ve been to seven countries so far, and I do drunk book reviews on my YouTube channel, The Tipsy Reader!

Summarize your book in one line.

A girl goes on a quest to an android city to reverse the genetic splicing done to her and stop the person doing the splicing.

Tell me something cool/crazy/quirky about the book – it can be anything!

Because one of my main characters is an android in the sex industry, I did a bit of research on how an android’s sex organs would work. Interesting stuff! The things I do for my books...

Why did you decide to write this particular book?

I wanted to write something post-apocalyptic. I had this world in my head that was desperate to get out, and that made the whole world-building process easier. The characters and plot came after!

Best part of the writing process?

Writing ‘the end!’ Nothing feels better than finishing a book!

Share one thing you learned writing this book.

I learned to not take writing so seriously. What you’ve written can always be changed. It’s best not to judge yourself on a first draft, so just get the story out first and worry about polishing it later!

Tell me about one strange experience you’ve had. Again, it can be anything!

I’ll tell you a strange and wondrous experience. I was in Indonesia last December, getting my certification to teach yoga. I was sleeping, and not fitfully due to the storm raging outside. The retreat was a few minutes walk from the beach, and it was normally windy. But that night felt different. The storm was loud, like it was right on top of us. I lay in bed in some dream-haze when the loudest sound I’d ever heard woke me up. I knew something terrible had happened, but was too sleep-laden to get up.

When I awoke the next morning, it was to a giant tree resting where our pool used to be—only ten feet from my room. If the wind had pushed the tree even a few feet to the right, it would have landed in my second story room, probably killing—or at least badly injuring—me and my roommate. I think things happen for a reason, and I was fascinated with how close I came to serious injury, yet it didn’t happen. Perhaps some Indonesian spirit saw fit to spare me that night. Either way, it was a strange occurrence.

Name one fictional place you’d love to visit.

I’d love to visit the underground goblin city in The Hollow Kingdom. Or, heck, just take me to Jareth’s Labyrinth!!

Name one real place you’d love to visit.

Japan! It’s next on my travel list! I’ll be doing some research for my next book series. >:]

Share one sentence/mini-excerpt from the book!

Sure! Here’s the opening of Artificial!


There is a sign, dingy and broken, half buried in the water and moss in front of me. Faded brown handprints streak across the large board, staining it with dried blood. It reads: If you died today, where would you spend eternity?

I’ve heard stories of places called heaven and hell—children’s tales meant to keep you in line, make you act right.

There is no “act right” on this planet anymore. The only line I follow is the edge of my blade plunging into the throat of one of those goddamn Cull. And if there’s anything I know, it’s that hell can’t be any worse than this place.

About Artificial


She struggles to feel human.


In 2256, the only remnants of civilization on Earth’s first colonized planet, Kepler, are the plant-covered buildings and the nocturnal, genetically spliced bug-people nesting within them: the Cull. During the day, Syl leaves her home in the sewers beneath Elite City to scavenge for food, but at night the Cull come looking for a meal of their own. Syl thought gene splicing died with the Android War a century ago. She thought the bugs could be exterminated, Elite city rebuilt, and the population replenished. She’s wrong.

Whoever engineered the Cull isn’t done playing God. Syl is abducted and tortured in horrific experiments which result in her own DNA being spliced, slowly turning her into one of the bugs. Now she must find a cure and stop the person responsible before every remaining man, woman, and child on Kepler is transformed into the abomination they fear.

He struggles not to.

For Bastion, being an android in the sex industry isn’t so bad. Clubbing beneath the streets of New Elite by day and seducing the rich by night isn’t an altogether undesirable occupation. But every day a new android cadaver appears in the slum gutters, and each caved in metal skull and heap of mangled wires whittles away at him.

Glitches—androids with empathy—are being murdered, their models discontinued and strung up as a warning. Show emotion, you die. Good thing Bastion can keep a secret, or he would be the next body lining the street.

He can almost live with hiding his emotions. That is, until a girl shows up in the slums—a human girl, who claims she was an experiment. And in New Elite, being a human is even worse than being a Glitch. Now Bastion must help the girl escape before he becomes victim to his too-human emotions, one way or another. 

Goodreads link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28682101-artificial 

Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/Artificial-Jadah-McCoy-ebook/dp/B01CDAA1IA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1459098442&sr=8-1&keywords=artificial+jadah+mccoy



Author Facebook page  Twitter

Jadah currently lives in Nashville, TN and works as a legal coordinator. When not babysitting attorneys, she can be found juicing her brain for creative ideas or fantasizing about her next trip out of the country (or about Tom Hiddleston as Loki - it’s always a toss up when she fantasizes).

She grew up in rural Arkansas, yet can still write good and sometimes even wears shoes! She did date her first cousin for a while but they decided against marriage for the sake of the gene pool.

Her true loves are elephants, cursing, and sangria - in that order. If you find an elephant that curses like a sailor whilst drinking sangria, you’re dangerously close to becoming her next romantic victim - er, partner.

She cut her writing teeth on badly written, hormone-driven fanfiction (be glad that’s out of her system), and her one true dream is to have wildly erotic fanfiction with dubious grammar written about her own novels. Please make her dreams come true.