Debut Authors Bash 2014: Jessica Gollub Interview and Giveaway

Welcome to my stop on the Debut Authors Bash.  Thanks to YA Reads for hosting this, and allowing me to be a part of it once again.  You can click HERE to go see the schedule of the other debut authors.  The author I get to host this year is one I actually just finished reading, and loving, her debut book:  The Mark of the Hummingbird, which I reviewed yesterday and you can read it by clicking on its title.  I'm glad now that I got this author that was new to me until the sign-ups.  Below are the questions I sent her, along with her answers.

Jessica Gollub:

1.  Where did you get your idea for the story?

I don’t know what exactly led to the idea for this story,but I do know when it happened. I’d just given birth to my second child and he wasn’t a sleeper like my first. I ended up having to spend a lot of time in his room at night, nursing and rocking and cuddling, and in the dark with nothing else to do, my mind would wander. I don’t know if I dreamed it, or if it was a conscious idea, but the whole hummingbird tattoo/serum came to me then. The rest of the pieces came later (probably also in the middle of the night).

2.  What is your method of writing?  Do you know the whole story when you start?  Do you plan it all out before you start writing?  Or do you just start writing and go with it?

I wing-it by nature. I’ve got two preschoolers at home, so if I get to write, it’s maybe one day a week. I keep the general storyline in my head, and occasionally I type up a sketchy outline, but it pretty much always changes as I go. I think that a character would say/do something, but then as I write I realize he or she wouldn’t respond that way, and everything shifts, I delete the outline and keep going. Any time I do get to write, I find I can get a lot done because I’ve had a week (or more) to plan it out in my head.

3.  Do you have a favorite author or genre of books?

For me, it’s all about the story. I can read almost any genre if the story is interesting and engaging. It doesn’t matter if the genre is high fantasy or historical fiction, get me hooked and I’ll burn right through. I have a lot of respect for people like Diana Gabaldon and George R.R. Martin for the epic sagas they unfurl in their books. Anyone who can write books that size (and so many of them) without losing steam, amazes me. I can only hope to pull off a series (or even one book) like that one day.

4.  How long have you been writing?

I want to say my whole life, but that’s not exactly true. I have wanted to be a writer my whole life, and I have gone through spurts of writing at different times in my life. If I were to be honest, I have been seriously writing (with the full intention of actually publishing and getting out there) for about 3 years now.

5.  How can readers get in touch with you?  Blog?  Twitter?  Facebook?

Please do! I love to chat!

My website/blog: www.jessicagollub.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Jessica.Gollub.Author

Twitter: @GollubJessica

Purchase info:

The Mark of the Hummingbird 

The Song of the Sisters

Thanks so much to Jessica Gollub for being a part of the Debut Authors Bash on my stop. Because I enjoyed the story so much, I've decided to host my own giveaway for an e-copy of both books in the series. You have to be able to accept a Kindle e-book in order to win this.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Review: The Mark of the Hummingbird by Jessica Gollub

So I just read this book because tomorrow I'll be hosting the author on my stop of the Debut Authors Bash for this year.  I decided I'd just purchase the e-book myself to read before my stop.  And I'm not disappointed at all.  The Mark of the Hummingbird is a dystopian story.  And it is one that doesn't hold back any punches to what would be really horrible things to happen, but to me, probably pretty realistic.

Our main character is Leona.  All she has ever known is a life in a cave, which used to be a prison.  The reason she and all her family and friends live here is because the Earth has frozen over.  As we learn later in the story, one day, a July day, it started snowing.  And the temperature dropped, over 50 degrees below zero, even after it seemed the snow was stopping.  And things didn't change or get any better.  In fact, at almost 17 years old, they've only just begun having anything closely resembling a summer, when snow melts, and it gets halfway survivable outside.  Leona has lived with her father in this community, started by a leader everyone calls the Shepherd.  Her mother died when she was very young, and so she's only ever had her father.  One of the issues in the world before all this happened was that women had the choice, and often chose for their own children, to be come sterile.  In order to save themselves or their daughters from rape or kidnapping.  Leona's best friend Harlow is also turning 17, just a short time before Leona.  And at that age they all get the serum that makes them fertile.  And they are then married usually.  Harlow is lucky enough to get to marry the man she has loved since they were both young.  Leona has no one she loves like that, and so figures she will not have to get married.  But when Harlow gets her serum, soon after she changes.  She becomes kind of out of it.  Things that were normal for her, now don't happen.  Even her husband, Rowan, has noticed the change.  When it is time for Leona to get her serum, she finds out that there may be something else to the serum besides the fertility treatment.  And it is this that makes her decide to leave, to run away and find somewhere else to live.  She is sure there must be other survivors out there.

Unfortunately it is still winter, and Leona makes several mistakes, not only in what she packs to take with her, but in her trying to survive out in the wild.  At one point she sees a white wolf and even thinks that she might be followed.  Following a fire that she accidentally sets that burns up everything she brought with her, she decides to  try to make it back to the caves, that maybe things weren't as bad as she made them out to be.  She decides to take a shortcut across a frozen lake, and of course it cracks and she falls in.  She is saved, and taken to a community of survivors.  All women it seems.  Except for the man's tent that she is thrown into once she begins to heal.

I won't go on, but to say there are people in this camp that will connect back to the story of the people back in the Shepherd's community in the caves.  Families and friends will be reunited, even as some of them will not make it through other things.  I loved all the connections and how they all seemed to circle back around perfectly.  There were parts told from other characters' points of view, and they weren't confusing because it was labeled at the beginning of that chapter that it was that person we were following.  And the story does pretty much end satisfactorily.  While I see there is a second book, it seems to be a companion book, another character mentioned in this book that I want to know more about.

If this sounds good to you, I will be giving away a Kindle copy of both this and it's companion book, The Song of the Sisters as part of my Debut Authors post tomorrow.  So be sure to check back tomorrow to enter the giveaway, as well as to read my interview with the author.