The wonderful Jackie Morse Kessler is here today on her tour for LOSS, the upcoming book in her Riders of the Apocalypse series.
Leave a comment below for a chance to win a Loss poster!
Loss if the third book in the Riders of the Apocalypse series. How do you come up with your main characters? Do you have a certain image in mind or do you let them form as you go along?
JMK: I tend to have a basic idea when I start writing, and then the characters get fleshed out as I go. They reveal themselves to me gradually. With Billy, the protagonist of LOSS, it took longer than it did for either Lisa (from HUNGER) or Missy (from RAGE). Part of that might have been because Billy’s a guy, but I think most of it was because he has two consuming issues—he’s horribly bullied, and he’s a caretaker for his Alzheimer’s-suffering grandfather—whereas the protagonists of the earlier books had one consuming issue each (eating disorders in HUNGER; self-injury in RAGE).
If you were to see these characters come to life on the big screen, are there any particular people you would like to see as the actors?
JMK: Ooh. Well, Death looks, sounds and sings like Kurt Cobain, so if they ever make that biopic about him, whoever plays Kurt would be perfect. Or, you know, I’d settle for Matt Damon or Jared Padalecki, because I luv them. Deep luv. Much luv.: ) For the Conqueror, please, please, please, Robert Carlyle. So love him on Once Upon A Time! For everyone else, I’m very open.
Do you have a specific routine while writing or do you just wing it and see what happens?
JMK: There’s a lot of winging going on.: ) But when the words are flowing, everything else falls away. Which can be problematic when, say, dinner is in the oven. When I’m on deadline, I do my best to hit a specific wordcount goal for the day. There may be chocolate involved.
Loss by Jackie Morse Kessler
Publisher: Graphia (March 20th, 2012)
Reading Level: Young Adult
Paperback: 272 pages
Series: Riders of the Apocalypse #3
Fifteen-year-old Billy Ballard is the kid that everyone picks on, from the school bullies to the teachers. But things change drastically when Death tells Billy he must stand in as Pestilence, the White Rider of the Apocalypse. Now armed with a Bow that allows him to strike with disease from a distance, Billy lashes out at his tormentors… and accidentally causes an outbreak of meningitis. Horrified by his actions, Billy begs Death to take back the Bow. For that to happen, says Death, Billy must track down the real White Rider—who is lost in his memories.
In his search, Billy travels through White Rider’s life: from ancient Phrygia, where the man called King Mita agrees to wear the White Rider’s Crown, to Sherwood Forest, where Pestilence figures out how to cheat Death; from the docks of Alexandria, where cartons of infested grain are being packed onto a ship that will carry the plague, to the Children’s Crusade in France—all the way to what may be the end of the world. When Billy finally finds the White Rider, the teen convinces the man to return to the real world.
But now the insane White Rider plans to unleash something awful on humanity—something that could make the Black Death look like a summer cold. Billy has a choice: he can live his life and pretend he doesn’t know what’s coming, or he can challenge the White Rider for his Crown. Does one bullied teenager have the strength to stand his ground—and the courage to save the world?
GIVEAWAY DETAILS:
LOSS by Jackie Morse Kessler comes out March 20, 2012!
GIVEAWAY: One lucky commenter below will win a small cover poster of LOSS —and will be entered in the grand prize drawing! The grand prize winner will receive signed copies of HUNGER, RAGE, and LOSS—and will get to name a character in BREATH, the fourth book in the Riders of the Apocalypse series. The grand prize winner will be picked on Sunday, April 1, 2012. No foolin’.
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