UFI welcomes Author Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff . Thanks for Joining us!!
What can you tell my readers about yourself that they might not know from looking on your bio or reading in another interview?
Good question! Jay used to be in a band (and he had looooong hair), and Amie used to work as a sailing coach!
What do you enjoy doing on your down time?
We’re often on deadline, so when we get downtime, we get pretty excited. The list usually goes something like this: reading, seeing all the friends who thought we died because we went missing over deadlines, video games, board games, live music gigs. Oh, and sleeeeeeeep.
What is your Favorite part of writing?
Co-authoring is very different to writing something solo, which means it comes with different favourite parts. When it comes to co-authoring, we both love the fact that we can hand the book back and forth every day and get instant feedback. There’s nothing like writing a scene, and then finding out straight away that you punched the other one in the feels.
Do you have any certain routines you must follow as you write?
Not really – we can both write pretty much anywhere, any time. We often have to work while we’re on tour or on the road, so we’ve learned to be flexible. If we get our choice, though, we both prefer to write at home, hanging out with our dogs. (Our dogs think we have the best jobs ever, because they get to lie on top of us for hours while we don’t move.)
What are some of your Favorite books or Authors in the Urban Fantasy/ Paranormal Genres?
Can we call Ransom Riggs’s books paranormal? If so, he’s definitely on the list! Also lots of stuff by Sarah Rees Brennan. We’d add in Kiersten White and Laini Taylor’s work as well, and Victoria Schwab’s latest book, This Savage Song, is high on our to-read lists.
How would you pitch The Illuminae Files series to someone who has not heard of it before?
We like to describe Illuminae as ‘Battlestar Galactica meets Ten Things I Hate About You’, and its sequel, Gemina, is a little bit like ‘Die Hard meets Alien’. They’re action/adventure/thriller stories set in space, with lots of romance and explosions.
Can you tell us a little bit about the world that The Illuminae Files series is set in?
The series is set in our own world, but several centuries into the future. Humans have spread throughout the galaxy, jumping through hyperspace to cover vast distances in the blink of an eye. Our particular story starts with the invasion of a planet, and sees our characters run for their lives aboard a refugee fleet, with the enemy in hot pursuit.
Do you have a favorite scene in Gemina?
Aaaaah, that’s really hard! We don’t want to spoil too much, but there’s a fight between our heroine and a mercenary that takes place on a moving train, and it’s epic.
Which one character out of all your books was your favorite to write about? What about the hardest to write about?
Our favourite is always whoever we’ve most recently written, because you end up falling in love with that character after you spend so much time together. So right now we love Hanna, heroine of book two, because she’s so totally kickass, and defies expectations in a lot of ways. And we love Nik, who seems like a bad boy on the surface, but has a loooot going on. As for the hardest… these books are such a joy to write, that’s difficult to answer!
What Other Projects can we look forward to reading from you?
Amie already has the Starbound Trilogy out, which is co-authored with Meagan Spooner, and starts with These Broken Stars. Jay has the Lotus War Trilogy, which starts with Stormdancer, and his most recent release is the first in The Nevernight Chronicle, Nevernight, which just came out in August! We’re also already signed up for a new series together, which will start when The Illuminae Files end.
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Find Amie and her books
Find Jay and his books
Website / Goodreads / Twitter
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GeminaThe Illuminae Files #2
The highly anticipated sequel to the instant New York Times bestseller that critics are calling “out-of-this-world awesome.”__________________________________
Moving to a space station at the edge of the galaxy was always going to be the death of Hanna’s social life. Nobody said it might actually get her killed.
Hanna is the station captain’s pampered daughter; Nik the reluctant member of a notorious crime family. But while the pair are struggling with the realities of life aboard the galaxy’s most boring space station, little do they know that Kady Grant and the Hypatia are headed right toward Heimdall, carrying news of the Kerenza invasion.
When an elite BeiTech strike team invades the station, Hanna and Nik are thrown together to defend their home. But alien predators are picking off the station residents one by one, and a malfunction in the station’s wormhole means the space-time continuum might be ripped in two before dinner. Soon Hanna and Nik aren’t just fighting for their own survival; the fate of everyone on the Hypatia—and possibly the known universe—is in their hands.
But relax. They’ve totally got this. They hope.
Once again told through a compelling dossier of emails, IMs, classified files, transcripts, and schematics, Gemina raises the stakes of the Illuminae Files, hurling readers into an enthralling new story that will leave them breathless.
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