Authors Are Rockstars Tour - Robin LaFevers

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!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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.

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 3^rd person POV to 1^st, 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 1^st 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.

Find Robin LaFevers Online: Website :: Blog :: Twitter :: Facebook

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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. 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Grave Mercy - Robin LaFevers

Synopsis: Seventeen-year-old Ismae escapes from the brutality of an arranged marriage into the sanctuary of the convent of St. Mortain, where the sisters still serve the gods of old. Here she learns that the god of Death Himself has blessed her with dangerous gifts—and a violent destiny. If she chooses to stay at the convent, she will be trained as an assassin and serve as a handmaiden to Death. To claim her new life, she must destroy the lives of others. Ismae's most important assignment takes her straight into the high court of Brittany—where she finds herself woefully under prepared—not only for the deadly games of intrigue and treason, but for the impossible choices she must make. For how can she deliver Death’s vengeance upon a target who, against her will, has stolen her heart? (From Goodreads)

Grave Mercy is so freaking awesome, I can hardly stand it. As soon as I heard "assassin nun" I was so in. Beyond knowing there would be a convent and a lot of bad-assery, I had no preconceived notions about this book. Even if I did, I still think I would have been blown away. It's everything that used to drawn me to historical fiction, plus fantasy, plus a strong heroine, the ideal man, a whole lot of politics that I can actually understand, AND it is still wonderfully relevant to present day society and issues- even if it takes place in 15th century France. In my opinion, the best books both contribute to a conversation, a movement, or idea and tell a captivating story at the same time. This is one of those books.

If you're still not convinced, read the first few pages - heck, read the first page and tell me you aren't immediately in awe. It's a whirlwind beginning that starts out as dark, disturbing, and intriguing. It begins with a girl who has no control and it turns into this incredibly empowered tale of said girl gaining strength, wisdom, and freedom to make her own choices. It's also one of those books where you finish and you think of the very first scene and just think - wow, she ended up so far from there. I finished it feeling like I'd been through the whole journey with Ismae, had made her decisions, and couldn't believe where I ended up. The journey was fast paced, intense, and so beautiful.

One of the most heartbreaking parts of this book was the struggles that women had to go through. The poor duchess is practically being auctioned off and used as a bargaining tool. Seeing her as a strong girl, but still having no control over her own life or her own decisions was frustrating. Then you have the girls in the convent who are using their hatred towards men, or at their negative experiences with men and channeling it into violence. Even these girls think they've gained control over their own lives, but really that hatred is just allowing men to still control them (Ok rant over). I won't go too much into the portrayal of religious institutions here, but I loved the way that the Christian religion was in the process of evolution and was turning into something like the Church we are familiar with today. Not to mention the mixture of religion and politics fit amazingly with the story, but has valid application to contemporary issues.

I have a bajillion more things to say about Grave Mercy but I'm going to stop for now. Although if you want to discuss more I'd love to carry on. But seriously. Read this book.