Interview with Kat Ross

Today I have an interview with Kat Ross, author of Some Fine Day. This was one of the books orphaned when Strange Chemistry went under. From memory I think it was two weeks from publication when it was cut. I had already read and reviewed it when the news broke. Since then, Some Fine Day was picked up by a new publisher, Skyscape (an imprint of Amazon's publishing arm), given a new cover and is slated for release in a week and a half (on 17/2/2015). I've included the new cover and blurb below, followed by the interview and, right at the end, some information about a giveaway, so be sure to scroll all the way down.

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A generation ago, continent-sized storms called hypercanes caused the Earth to flood. The survivors were forced to retreat deep underground and build a new society.

This is the story that sixteen-year-old Jansin Nordqvist has heard all of her life.

Jansin grew up in a civilization far below the Earth’s surface. She’s spent the last eight years in military intelligence training. So when her parents surprise her with a coveted yet treacherous trip above ground, she’s prepared for anything. She’s especially thrilled to feel the fresh air, see the sun, and view the wide-open skies and the ocean for herself.

But when raiders attack Jansin’s camp and take her prisoner, she is forced to question everything she’s been taught. What do her captors want? How will she get back underground? And if she ever does, will she want to stay after learning the truth?

You can check out the book trailer here.

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First off, the obvious question: why hypercanes? Where did the idea come from? (And how many hypercanes are there in the Southern Hemisphere? I have to know!)

I started thinking about mega-storms after reading an amusing piece in the Onion about a hurriphoonado wreaking a path of destruction across the planet. Of course, it was more amusing seven years ago, before Typhoon Haiyan and Hurricane Sandy and all the mounting evidence that our climate is going seriously haywire from the burning of fossil fuels. Anyway, I sat on the idea for a while but I always had it in the back of my mind. When I stumbled across a theoretical class of extreme storms called hypercanes, I thought, hmmmm. What if this actually happened? And what if they didn't go away? How would we cope? I have a little page on my website about them here.

I liked that your society wasn't as extremely totalitarian as it could have been. As one of the characters says, it's "vaguely fascist" but I think that makes it more realistic. What led you to that choice, rather than something more extreme?

Yes, Jansin's world is tottering on the brink when the story takes place. There's still an illusion of civil liberties, but they're being steadily eroded. And I think that's how it often happens. There's no coup d'etat or military takeover or single dramatic event. It's more of a slow slide into the abyss. The story doesn't have a cult of personality; there's no single bad guy at the top. The underlying problem is a scarcity of resources underground and competition for them with other prefectures, which is not an easily fixable problem.

Underground is not a very common setting, can you tell us a bit about the research you had to do to write it?

I did a lot! You have to think about every single aspect of life, especially the basics: where does the food come from, the water, the air? What about Vitamin D deficiency from never seeing the sun? What if there's a fire? Or an earthquake? What kind of jobs would there be? How do people organize themselves differently underground? A big one was the temperature increase as you go deeper into the earth's crust. I initially had set the prefecture very deep, mainly because it sounded cool (I'm on a magnetic bullet train speeding through the darkness at four hundred miles per hour, and that train is about six miles beneath the Earth's surface…) but in one of my later edits, I realized that it would be way too hot at that depth. For every 328 feet [100 metres — T] below ground, the temperature increases about 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit [3º C]. So I revised it to a little more than a mile down (which is still WAY deeper than I would ever want to go!)

Will we be seeing more of the post-apocalyptic world? (From the ending of Some Fine Day we have some idea of where the next book will probably start, but after that...?)

I really hope so! I do have about 50k words of the second book already written, and would love to finish if I get a greenlight from my editors. Hopefully I will have more concrete news on that in the next few months. Avoiding any major spoilers, I can say that most of the action in the sequel takes place above ground, in the continental U.S. I really wanted to explore what it could be like nearly 100 years from now if runaway climate change continues: we're talking massive wildfires, record-breaking tornadoes, basically a giant desert from the Mexican border to the Rockies. And there's definitely some surprises in store about who lives up there!

Thanks, Kat, for those interesting answers! You can find out more about Kat and her books on Twitter (@katrossauthor) or at her website.

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And now for the giveaway! To celebrate the launch of Some Fine Day there are five awesome prizes up for grabs:

• Grand Prize: Kindle Paperwhite with custom cover, preloaded with Some Fine Day
• Second Prize (2): Signed copy of Some Fine Day
• Third Prize (2): CD audiobook of Some Fine Day

This contest runs from February 7 to March 7 and you can enter using the Rafflecopter widget below. Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Interview with Kim Curran

Today I am very pleased to bring you an interview with Kim Curran, author of Shift and Control. You can read my review of Shift from last year. Control, out in August, is the second book in the series.

But first some competition news:

To celebrate the release of Kim Curran's Control, Strange Chemistry are offering 5 Signed Copies of Control and Shift! To enter, all you need to do is tell us what embarrassing moments you'd change if you could shift! Simply tweet @strangechem and use the hashtag #Control to tell us what red-faced moment you'd like to erase. Winners will be picked at random; the competition is open to international entrants; and competition ends on 31 August.

Now, without further ado, on to the interview!

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Some of my readers are also writers. Could you tell us a bit about your publishing journey and what it's like to work with Strange Chemistry, a relatively new imprint?

My journey was, in some ways, a pretty familiar one. I wrote my first book – a YA urban fantasy – and started submitting it to agents. At first, all I got was form rejection letters. But I kept working on the book. And I guess it got better and better, because pretty soon I was receiving full requests with every submission. But after 20 or so ‘liked it but didn’t love it’ letters, I put that book away and started a new one.

The book I started then was Shift. It seemed to flow out of me and I wrote it in about three or four months. One of the agents who had passed on my first book saw me tweeting about how Shift was inspired by quantum physics and, as a fan of physics himself, asked me to send it to him when I was done.

I did – emailing the MS from a hammock in Mexico where I was travelling with my husband. The agent, Sam Copeland of RCW, DMed me to offer representation about a week later.

About six months after that, I signed with Strange Chemistry.

Working with the team at Strange Chemistry has been a joy. And it’s been especially interesting to be working with an imprint who, just like me, are just starting out. There’s an amazing family feeling at SC and I’ve become very close friends with many of the other authors on their list – something I haven’t seen much with big publishing houses.

We all want each other to succeed and the support network has been invaluable. Especially as in this business, the heartache and rejection never really goes away. Even after you’ve been published.


I read that Shift was inspired by quantum physics. Being a physicist myself, I find that intriguing; could you tell us more about that?

I have zero training in physics beyond my GCSE. But it’s a topic that has always fascinated me. Especially on the quantum level where it seems as if all the ‘usual’ laws of physics are thrown away. After all, they say if you think you understand quantum physics, you don’t. The one experiment that messed with my head most is the Double Slit experiment. I won’t take up space explaining it here, as I cover it in Shift or you can watch this video.

There are two things we can learn from it. First, that light acts as a wave and a particle. And two, that whether it acts as a wave or particle changes depending on whether the experiment is being observed.

This idea niggled away at me. That the very nature of matter is altered by human presence. And one day, when I was sitting on a bus, looking down at all the people below, and wondering about the decisions they have all made and whether they would like to change them the idea came to me: what if someone had the power to change their decisions, the way that light changes from particle to wave. And BAM! Shift was born.


I saw on your website that your day job involves writing copy for videogame ads. Do you think this has influenced the kind of books you write?

I have always loved games. I didn’t have a computer growing up, but I spent a large amount of my time and pocket money in arcades, playing games like Golden Axe and Street Fighter. And when the first PlayStation came out when I was at university I wasted days and days killing zombies. Now, as you say, I write adverts for video games. And I’d love to one day write the games themselves, rather than just the ads for them.

So it’s unsurprising that games have been a huge influence on my work. The first chapter in Shift is actually the main character playing a Zombie Survival game (maybe all those hours playing Resident Evil weren’t wasted after all).

For me, games are just another storytelling medium.


There's a third book in the Shifter series, isn't there? Can you tell us about that and any other future writing plans?

There is indeed. The third is called Delete and should be coming out next year. It will be the last of the Shifter series and I hope to go out with a bang.

As for what comes next, I’m not entirely sure. I have another YA novel I’m currently looking for a home for. A Middle Grade series I’ve started working on and a notebook filled with other ideas. I’m also interested in exploring all the other avenues open to writers these days, such as KickStarter and self-publishing.

I’d also love to make the move from novelist to screenwriter, comic writer and, as I’ve already said, I’d love to write for games.

The industry is going through interesting times. And those who will come out the other side still successful are those who are able to embrace change.

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Thank-you very much for taking the time to answer some questions, Kim! And thanks to Caroline from Angry Robot for organising this. And if you want to win copies of Kim Curran's books, don't forget to enter the competition!

For more info on the books, see Strange Chemistry's pages for Shift and Control or Kim's website.