I am way freaking excited to have Robin LaFevers on the blog today answering a few of my questions and offering an awesome giveaway as part of the Authors Are Rockstars Tour hosted by Fiktshun and Two Chicks on Books. I'm ecstatic to be a part of this tour because..well..authors ARE my rockstars. And if I ever get lucky enough to meet Robin LaFevers I'd definitely have to unleash the fangirl. I'd heard a lot of great buzz about Grave Mercy, but it wasn't until I heard someone say "assassin nun" that I knew I needed a copy of this book. Do you ever have books that you read and you know that you'll read anything that author writes? Yeah, that's Robin LaFevers for me. You can read how much I LOVED Grave Mercy here. You can also add Grave Mercy to your TBR here and the second book in the His Fair Assassin trilogy here!
So with that, I'd like to welcome Robin to the blog!
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Since you write for the young adult crowd, what were
you like as a teenager?
I was one big tangled knot of shyness and uncertainty—about pretty much everything. I had a fairly dysfunctional family growing up, complete with wicked stepmother, three stepfathers, a passel of stepbrothers, and much trauma. When I was twelve, my mother packed up me, my two brothers, and our three dogs and we left in the middle of the night, running away from a womanizing, alcoholic stepfather. Two years later I had a new stepfather who was addicted to painkillers and an all around interesting guy. At that time I also acquired a new stepbrother—who was one of the star players on the high school football team. Talk about awkward!
Suffice it to say, I was so busy adjusting to the emotional
drama going on on a daily basis that I never had a chance to get my feet under
me. I was terrified a lot, not in terms of physical safety but in an emotional
sense. The term hypervigilant springs to mind—I was always bracing for the next
disaster and wondering which direction it would come from. I was also utterly
powerless with regards to the major influences in my life at the time, which is
no doubt where my core theme of empowerment comes from and why I write books
for kids and teens.
I know
that you’ve published middle grade novels before, but was there anything that
surprised you about publishing a young adult novel? Have you found that your
young adult readers are different from your middle grade readers?
With middle grade books, so very few readers are active online or even choosing their own books! Middle grade authors rely heavily on gatekeepers—teachers, librarians, or parents—to put the books into the hands of their readers. Also, there are few adults who read middle grade books, while there are many, many adults who read and are passionate about YA. The book blogging community, for example, is a HUGE force in YA, but much less so in MG. I’m not used to having my book so visible, and while it is HUGELY exciting and wonderful, it takes a wee bit of getting used to. Especially since one of the mental games I play in order to give myself freedom to tell the most authentic story I can, is that no one is going to read it. The reception the book and blogging community gave GRAVE MERCY pretty much blew that little mind trick out of the water, but it has also been immensely heartwarming and gratifying.
Was it hard to convince your agent or your editor to
buy this book? Can you talk a little bit about how you sold this book for
publication?
No! My agent showed my editor the
first 50 pages and after that she could not wait to get her hands on it, but I
wanted to give it another rewrite or three. When it was finally ready, my agent
felt it was a strong enough project that we could take it wide and generate a
fair amount of interest, but I adore my editor and my publisher (Kate
O’Sullivan at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) and luckily they were able to make a
pre-emptive offer that made everyone happy.
If you were raised as an assassin like Ismae, what would
your weapon of choice be?
I’ve always been drawn to the idea that death can be merciful or a gentle release, so I would definitely want a gentle weapon. A benevolent poison perhaps, or the misericorde.
I’ve always been drawn to the idea that death can be merciful or a gentle release, so I would definitely want a gentle weapon. A benevolent poison perhaps, or the misericorde.
Women suffer quite a bit in this world you created,
and Ismae’s profession seems to be a rebellion against such suffering. Did you
intend to send a girl-power message? What would you say is the one thing a girl
can do to ensure she has control over her own life?
I definitely intended to send a message of empowerment. In this book, it was girl power, but in my other books I have also dealt simply with kid power, realizing not every boy emerges from the chute with his own power grasped firmly in hand.
It’s hard to narrow the advice down to just one thing! But I
guess, if I had to pick only one, it would be this: Girls need to exercise
their critical analysis skills and question authority. And yes, I know that
sounds very radical 60’s feminist, but the thing is, when we give someone
authority, we give them power over us.
Some authorities are non-negotiable, the state, law
enforcement, government, etc. But there are many areas of life where we get to
choose who we give power—and authority—to. Our friends, peers, boyfriends, the
media and cosmetic industry, and after we reach a certain age, even our
parents. You don’t have to listen to guys or peers if what they want or tell
you goes against your core truth or beliefs or desires. You don’t have to hold
yourself to the ideals the fashion and cosmetic industry promote in order to
convince you to spend billions of dollars to meet impossible standards. You get
to choose. That also, or maybe even especially, applies to life’s Big
Questions. We owe it to ourselves to wrestle with our concepts of love and
faith and honor and duty. We get to decide for ourselves what those mean and do
not have to swallow whole the concepts handed to us by others.
There is actually quite a bit of politics that
saturate your novel, yet the political situation isn’t overwhelming or hard to
understand. How much of this was made up and how much was the actual situation
between France and Brittany? Also, was it hard to insert the political
situation while balancing the plot of your story?
About 90% of the politics and intrigue in Grave Mercy was factual. The tensions between France and Brittany, the twelve year old duchess who inherited a kingdom teetering on invasion, and who had been promised in marriage to at least a half a dozen suitors, if not more. Most often in exchange for promises of aid in her father’s struggle to maintain independence against France.
All of her councilors were factual, except for one, and they
all betrayed her in precisely the same way as portrayed in the book. If
anything, I greatly simplified the intrigue! There were actually more of her
Breton barons who rose up against her, or contested the duchy passing to her.
The hardest part of weaving the political intrigue into the
book was that all that drama and all those larger than life characters really
threatened to swamp Ismae’s story. She kept getting lost. So I switched from 3rd
person POV to 1st, which really helped her stand out from the
historical background, but her own story still seemed to evaporate when others
were around. As a journaling experiment, I tried writing her in a 1st
person present tense POV, and that’s when everything clicked and her story
became front and center, no longer overshadowed by the other things going on in
the book.
Can you dish a bit on what we can expect from Dark
Assassin? How will Sybella’s story
be different from Ismae’s? Will Ismae and Duval be making cameos at all?
Sybella is such a different
character than Ismae! For one, she is noble born, not the daughter of a turnip
farmer. But she has had a much darker and more traumatic past. And she is far
angrier and more unstable than Ismae ever was, and has far more dark impulses
of her own that she struggles to control. For all the bad things that had
happened to her, Ismae was fairly innocent. Sybella however, has made some bad
choices that have truly haunted her.
For Ismae, love was something
that opened up the world and helped her see beyond the simple views she’d been
exposed to. For Sybella, love will be a step away from the dark edge she
teeters on and, hopefully, mover her toward healing and hope and, ultimately,
forgiveness.
And yes, Ismae and Duval will
make appearances in this book, as well as Book Three, Annith’s story.
Since this is a celebration of authors as rockstars, I’d
love to know what authors you follow, worship, admire, or would just generally
fangirl over meeting.
Well, I am a confirmed introvert, so I would never be brave enough to fangirl over anyone. I would probably just stand back and watch them from afar, my mouth hanging open in admiration. J But some of my favorite authors are Lois McMaster Bujold, Juliet Marillier, Mary Stewart, Jacqueline Carey, Ann Lammot, Barbara O’Neal, Sarah Addison Allen, Libba Bray, Cate Tiernan, Elizabeth Bunce, Megan Whalen Turner, and Suzanne Collins.
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Robin has generously offered a signed copy of Grave Mercy and a Tshirt to one lucky winner!
So quick rules - you must be 13 or older. Giveaway is US only and will run until 12:01 AM EST on Monday, September 3. All you have to do is fill out the Rafflecopter form.
