Paperback, 400 pagesPublished November 11th 2014 by Tor Teen
Nadia Lake and Nate Hayes find themselves at the center of a horrifying conspiracy in this action-packed finale of Jenna Black’s SF romance series that began with ReplicaFrom the author of the Faeriewalker series comes the stunning conclusion to the young adult science fiction thriller series that began with Replica and continued in Resistance.
At the conclusion of Resistance, Nadia Lake and the Replica of her best friend, Nate Hayes, found themselves at the center of a horrifying conspiracy. Framed for murder and wanted by the government, they have no choice but to go underground and seek refuge in the dangerous, gang-ridden slums of the Basement.
Jenna Black brings readers an action-packed final installment that will have them racing to the finish.
Jenna Black is your typical writer. Which means she's an "experience junkie." She got her BA in physical anthropology and French from Duke University.
Once upon a time, she dreamed she would be the next Jane Goodall, camping in the bush making fabulous discoveries about primate behavior. Then, during her senior year at Duke, she did some actual research in the field and made this shocking discovery: primates spend something like 80% of their time doing such exciting things as sleeping and eating.
Concluding that this discovery was her life's work in the field of primatology, she then moved on to such varied pastimes as grooming dogs and writing technical documentation. She writes paranormal romance for Tor and urban fantasy for Bantam Dell.
1. What gave you the inspiration to write this book?
At the time I wrote the Replica series, I worked for a company that developed software for the elections industry, which meant I spent a lot of time around techie people--and a lot of time making sure I always had backups of my work. Even when we were very careful about backing up our work, when we ended up needing to restore from backup, there was always some amount of work that had happened since the last backup had occurred, and restoring sometimes felt like going back in time. Yes, you have a backup, but it's not exactly the same as the work you just lost, so it's very imperfect. Perhaps normal people don't jump from something like that to thinking about making backups of people and having those backups be imperfect, but writers' brains don't seem to work quite like other people's do
2. Who is your favorite character in the book?
Well of course my protagonists, Nate and Nadia, are my “official” favorites, but I must admit I really grew to love Agnes in this book. When I first introduced her in Resistance, I did not mean for her to be a recurring character and meant to have her out of the picture by the end of the book. Her role was merely to be the girl Nate didn’t want to marry, and I didn’t envision much of a personality for her. But over the course of Resistance, she proved to be a little more interesting than I expected, and she grew a bit of a backbone in the end. In Revolution, she has a much larger role, and she continues to grow and blossom when she’s out of the public eye and no longer trying so hard to impress everyone.
3. Which came first, the title or the novel?
I knew the titles of all three books before I started writing the series. I find that if I don’t come up with a good title right away, I never seem to be able to find one I like at all. (That’s when the fact that publishers often change the title sometimes comes in handy.)
4. What scene in the book are you most proud of, and why?
The scene I’m most proud of would probably be one of the big climactic scenes that I can’t talk about without spoilers, so I’ll go for a smaller-scale favorite. There’s a scene where Agnes and Nadia are going to meet with a prominent gang-lord who’s “hosting” them in the Basement. Neither Agnes nor Nadia have anything but the clothes on their backs, so the gang-lord’s brother provides them with cocktail dresses to wear. Agnes’s red dress is way more showy than Nadia’s—and way more flattering than the shapeless clothing she usually wears—and she goes to great lengths to convince Nadia that somehow the dresses got switched and the sedate black dress is meant for her. It turned out to be a great way to reveal the dissonance between how Agnes sees herself and how she really is. Even Nate pays her a compliment on how she looks in the red dress, but it’s obvious she has trouble accepting it.
5. Thinking way back to the beginning, what’s the most important thing you’ve learned as a writer from then to now?
It’s hard to limit it to one thing. Writing has such an enormous learning curve, and it never seems to end. Maybe the most significant thing I have learned is to always have an open mind. Many people have a certain writing process that they use for every book they write. Over time, I’ve found that I don’t have that single writing process, and every book is different. Often, things I thought I absolutely couldn’t do turn out to be exactly what I need to do to get through a particular book. Replica is a perfect example, because before I wrote it, I was convinced I couldn’t write a scene out of sequence. And yet when I was totally stuck at one point, I decided to go ahead and try writing a future scene, despite my discomfort. Lo and behold, doing that helped me find my way around the problem spot. If I hadn’t been open to trying something I didn’t think I could do, I don’t know how long it would have taken me to finish this book.
6. What do you like most about the cover of the book?
I love that the cover artist captured the sense of chaos and ruin of the Basement. Things get very bleak for a while in this book, and I think the cover art with its fire and smoke reflects that nicely.
7. What new release book are you looking most forward to in 2015?
This may be considered cheating a little, since I just received an ARC and therefore don’t technically have to wait for it, but I’m really anticipating The Third Twin by CJ Omololu. I spent some time with CJ last year and heard her talk about the premise of this book and have been waiting impatiently for it ever since. A pair of teenage twins have taken turns pretending to be another girl, a third, nonexistent twin they can blame for everything that goes wrong. But then third twin becomes wanted for a crime, and all their harmless pretenses become not so harmless anymore. I don’t know where the story’s going to go, but the concept absolutely fascinates me.
8. What was your favorite book in 2014?
Wow, that’s a hard one! Looking over the books I read in 2014, I seem to have a large list of books by people I know personally, and whom I therefore don’t want to play favorites with. To pick a book not written by a friend of mine, I’d have to go out of YA (mostly), and pick Nathan’s Run by John Gilstrap. The protagonist is a kid (around 13 or 14 years old, if memory serves), but the book is really an adult thriller about a young boy who escapes from a juvenile detention center and ends up hunted both by the police and by a killer. It was Gilstrap’s first novel, and since reading it I’ve been steadily working through his backlist. If you like page-turning adult thrillers that keep you up past your bedtime, I highly recommend his books.
9. What’s up next for you?
My next YA project is a horror novel that’s currently scheduled for Spring 2016. I’m hoping to write and publish a standalone YA horror novella sometime next year, but that’s not a sure thing at this point.
10. Is there anything that you would like to add?
Thank you for having me! Readers who are interested in learning more about my books can visit my website at www.JennaBlack.com. I’m also on Twitter (@JennaBlack) and on Tumblr (jennablackbooks.tumblr.com) and Facebook (www.Facebook.com/jennablackbooks).
Great interview! The book sounds really good and I wish you lots of luck with it, Jenna.
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