I'd like to welcome Sue Edge who is the author of Dead Tropics for an interview on her book tour presented by the fantastic Innovative Online Book Tours. I'll introduce Sue then let you hear what she has t say about writing Zombie books and finally take a sneaky peak at Dead Tropics.
Sue was born in Malaysia to French and British colonialists, had a
very exciting childhood in the jungles of Borneo, the Australian outback and
tropical Queensland, and is the proud mother of three children.
She manages to steal the time to write by ignoring the state of
her house and pretending that the kids can look after themselves.
Sue Edge talks...
Other people discuss
the weather, politics and movies. My
girlfriends and I talk about urban fantasy books – the heroines, the gorgeous
heroes, what actors would play them best, the chemistry between the characters,
and the best quotes. If it’s a half
decent book, there’ll be a quote worth quoting.
“I’d said it before and meant it:
Alive or undead, the love of my life was a badass” (Blood Promise by Richelle
Mead) or “Must be a rule
in the ghost handbook—if in danger of evaporating, make sure you’re in the
middle of a dire pronouncement.” (The
Reckoning, Kelley Armstrong)
My mum just doesn’t
get it. “Zombies, vampires,
werewolves? What is it with you girls
today? What’s wrong with a normal man?”
I’d shrug. “Oh, you know, there’s no bad boy like a dead
bad boy” I’d say or “It’s the great hair and perfect white teeth”. The trouble was that I couldn’t really
articulate the reasons for my fascination with the genre. I knew that it went deeper than a man with
broad shoulders and uncannily sharp teeth (not that there’s anything wrong with
that…) but I wasn’t really sure what the ingredients were that made paranormal
books so endlessly intriguing.
So I put the question
to my friends, which led to much discussion – and arguing. In the end, we agreed it boiled down to a few
essential elements. Firstly, the worlds
are similar to our own. This is what
separates urban fantasy from plain fantasy.
There are a few significant differences – usually to do with magic – but
it a world we can recognize as our own and imagine ourselves in. Why is this important? Because urban fantasy readers are
romantic. While we love the lives we
lead and the partners we have chosen, we also dream of living life on the
bigger stage, of the road less travelled, of our untapped potential and who we
could have been under different circumstances.
Paranormal books give us that outlet.
“Oh sure, I’m a teacher but, hey, in another life, I might have been an
awesome kickass vampire hunter!”
Secondly, but related
to the first point, readers can relate to the kickass kind of woman one usually
finds in these books. In a world where
we hold our tongues politely, follow rules, get our hearts broken, do chores
when we’re tired and just want a long bath, it is refreshing to lose ourselves
in a heroine who has great lines, courageously faces her enemies and still has
time for passion with a great hero – or two.
And that leads us to
the third point, the heroes. The quirky
browed, smouldering eyed heroes who are helpless to resist the heroines (read:
us). In urban fantasies, the powerful,
ultra-masculine heroes are protective, humorous, intelligent, articulate men of
action. But most of all, they worship
the heroine. They see her faults and yet
they adore and desire her above all else.
Gee, we could all do with a bit of that in our lives!
My decision to write a
zombie book raised a few eyebrows amongst my family and friends but, to my
mind, it is just an extension of the urban fantasy world. It is still a world that is recognisably our
own, with a heroine who faces her adversaries with courage and the occasional
smart- ass quip, and there is even a hero who worships her. Lori doesn’t have magic powers but I think
she has something even stronger – the parent’s fierce instinct to protect their
children.
Let’s face it, we only
get to live one life, and while it’s a good life most of the time, it’s also
fairly mundane. So as long as authors
create worlds in which we, the reader, can immerse ourselves and emerge
satiated, the urban fantasy genre is here to stay.
Dead Tropics
"In
the midst of a catastrophe the world has never seen before, one woman will stop
at nothing to protect her family...
When
miners release an ancient and deadly virus, Lori, a nurse, finds herself at
ground zero of a deadly battle for survival. With time running out, can
she find the strength to fight an ever-increasing enemy and save her
family?"
You can find out more about Sue and here books around the web :-)
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