Glitter girls, you have pressing questions for your favorite authors and we have their answers. Welcome to our weekly segment, Author Crush Fridays.
We love asking questions and we love the answers from some of our favorite authors. Today we’re talking to Vicki Weavil, author of Fascimile (March 8, 2016; Month9Books). Month9Books is also offering an e-book copy of Fascimile to one lucky reader! 🙂 Thank you for talking to us today, Vicki! We’re honored!
GLITTER: For those who haven’t read your book yet, how would you describe Facsimile?
VICKI: Seventeen-year-old Anna-Maria “Ann” Solano has one goal — ditch her frontier planet to emigrate to Earth. But two very different yet equally attractive young men, an endangered species, and a secret in Ann’s DNA force her to fight for something bigger than her personal dream.
GLITTER: Who was your favorite character to write in Facsimile?
VICKI: I enjoyed writing Ann — she’s independent and intelligent while still very much an ordinary teenage girl. She isn’t the smartest or most talented person in the room, and has no super-special “gift,” yet she’s a dynamic and interesting person. She also has a growth arc that touches on many aspects of real life, such as coming to terms with one’s parents as individuals. Ann’s no YA “orphan” — she interacts quite a bit with her dad and grandparents, and her relationship with her mother is rather unique, I think. It was rewarding to include a strong family dynamic in this YA novel, along with adventure, love, and many scifi elements.
I also loved writing about the creatures Ann and her friends discover in the underground caverns on their planet. They are animals with some ability to mentally communicate with humans, and were great fun to develop as “characters” in the story.
GLITTER: Is it part of a series? Please say yes!
VICKI: Yes, there will be a sequel — Derivation — coming out in 2017.
GLITTER: How much research went into writing Facsimile?
VICKI: I definitely had to research several things mentioned in the book, like hydroponic gardening, underground caverns and lakes, and solar bikes. I also did some reading on the legend of Atlantis, which doesn’t impact Facsimile that much, but is important to the overall series. Some background work was more fun than my typical research — I binge-watched scifi shows like Firefly and Defiance that really capture the “frontier in space” sensibility I was striving for in Facsimile.
GLITTER: If you could live in any fantasy or book world, which book would that be and why?
VICKI: I don’t actually yearn to live in a fantasy world — they tend to lack indoor plumbing and antibiotics, just to name a few drawbacks. But if I had to live in any fantasy book, I think I’d enjoy C.S. Lewis’s Narnia. Magical creatures, adventure, new lands to explore, and the companionship of many loyal friends sounds good to me.
GLITTER: What are our favorite books to use when writing?
VICKI: Whatever research books I need for the story I’m writing, a dictionary, and a thesaurus.
GLITTER: What are you currently working on?
VICKI: I am writing the sequel to Facsimile, titled Derivation. It continues the adventure, transporting my main characters to new planets and even the Earth, where they discover a connection between the ancient tale of Atlantis and their own lives!
ABOUT VICKI WEAVIL: Vicki L. Weavil is represented by Fran Black of Literary Counsel. Her Young Adult Fantasy, CROWN OF ICE — a dark YA retelling of H.C. Andersen’s “The Snow Queen” — is published by Month9Books. Two companion books to CROWN OF ICE — SCEPTER OF FIRE and ORB OF LIGHT — will be published in 2016 and 2017. Her YA SciFi — FACSIMILE — will be published by Month9Books in 2016, with a sequel, DERIVATION, to follow. A new YA Fantasy, THE DIAMOND THIMBLE, will be published by Month9Books in 2018. She also writes adult SciFi.
WHERE TO FIND HER:
