Co-writing The Apocalypse Tour by Suki Michelle

Suki Michelle talks about CO-WRITING THE APOCALYPSE GENE, the new YA Urban Fantasy coming out today!

Co-writing The Apocalypse Gene was an intense and ultimately fabulous experience. Carlyle and I have weirdly compatible skill sets. He has a great feel for unwinding a plot and choreographing fight scenes. I love to follow characters in real-time, establish voice, and create settings. We’re both relentless tweakers and our own toughest critics. Like in a courtroom, every concept, every phrase was sentenced (pun intended) to life or death. If undecided, we sent the text to hard labor to see if it would earn the right to live on our pages. During the writing process, we both came up with bizarre ideas and scared each other badly, but we never argued (cough).
When Carlyle wrote scenes with Olivya, a 15-year-old psychic girl with aura-sight and sweet dreads, he made her a bit too aggressive, and I had to remind him she’s not a dude. When I wrote scenes with Mikah, our male protagonist, I made him sweet and sensitive, and Carlyle would scoff and “man him up”.
My day job is in medical transcription. For hours on end, I type reports about disease, disaster, and death - not only depressing but monotonous, so I entertain myself with the what-if game. One day I got an idea for a story but had no clue where to start, so I approached Carlyle.

“Hey Carlyle,” I say, “can you help me write a story?”
“Maybe. What’s it about?”
“The world’s population is dying off from an incurable pandemic. Its origin is linked to vampires.”
“Vampires? Nah. The undead have done to death,” he says. “Think of something else.”
“You’re right. Okay. No vamps. A new kind of Immortal.”
“Cool,” he says and gives me the patented Carlyle-intense-look. “Go on.”
My noggin churns. My brow furrows. “Hmmmm. Let’s think about the Immortals later. First we need characters. How about a boy who feels everything that everyone else feels? His hair is all shiny, and he looks super-hot in a tight black T-shirt.”
Carlyle laughs. “Does he like girls?”
“Yes. No. Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Decisive as always, Suki. How about you think up a love interest while I get a snack.” He leaves for the kitchen and returns with a plate of potato chips and hot salsa.
I grimace at his choice of dipping sauce and say, “Okay, I got it. The boy meets this girl in virtual school. She’s amazing, psychic, sees auras.”
“Why virtual school?”
“Duh! They’re rockin’ the apocalypse, remember? The streets are overrun by gangs who worship chaos. Dangerous. Everyone goes to school online.”
Carlyle gets a pensive look as he munches. “It has potential,” he says, then his face breaks out in a huge grin. “Let’s do this!”

For the next three years, we discussed, bantered, and argued until The Apocalypse Gene was complete, a true collaboration that could not have been written by either of us alone. The experience was harrowing, hilarious, and unbelievably fun . . . and we still love each other.

The Apocalypse Gene is available on 10/17/2011. Learn more about the debut Giveaway at www.theapocalypsegene.com

Q&A with authors Suki Michelle and Carlyle Clark

Name one book that made you think 'wow'? Why did it have such an effect on you?
Suki: The Poisonwood Bible. Kingsolver’s rich, evocative prose inspired me to take the plunge from writing poetry to writing stories.
Carlyle: Deadwood by Pete Dexter he captured both the similarities and strangeness of the people in the American West as well as the American West itself, a new slant on something that has been done so much was really impressive.

Who is your favourite author and why?
Suki: It varies, but right now I’m loving Guy Gavriel Kay because, let’s face it, he’s a master storyteller.
Carlyle: Oh man, that’s a long list so I just list the few that I have read or will read everything they write, James Lee Burke, Steven Erikson, Brandon Sanderson.

Name one of your all-time favourite book covers?
Suki: Those big shiny Dr. Suess hardcover books. They were so magical when I was a kid.
Carlyle: The cover of Stephen King's The Gunslinger. It was evocative of so many things at once, with the feel of the west but also a folklore and fantasy feel as well as an epic feel.

If you could have a dinner party with any authors from any time in history, who would you choose and why?
Suki: Sylvia Plath because of her wit, intelligence and finely honed sense of irony. Over salad, I’d try hard to cheer her up and hope that by dessert, she’d no longer want to do away with herself.
Carlyle: Charles Dickens, because I love the way he mixed up the horrific living conditions of industrial age London, with humor, and irony.

Who, or what, inspires you?
Suki: Oddballs, those that see the world differently, whether it’s because of their genius, their insanity, their dysfunction, or all of the above.
Carlyle: The challenge of creating something that feels real and worthwhile

Where is your favourite place to write?
Suki: In a hermetically sealed chamber designed to eliminate all extraneous noise.
Carlyle: Anywhere I can be sealed away with only some music and the occasional distraction of a snuzzling dog nose, a cat trying to walk across the keyboard, or a quick peek at Suki's lovely face.
Suki: AWWWWW!!!!

What is your favourite film that was based on a book?
Suki: The Green Mile - probably one of the few movies I’ve found to be better than the book.
Carlyle: No Country for Old Men. The acting was superb and added so much to the starkness of the piece.

What is your book about? 

The Apocalypse Gene takes place in the near future during a time of global pandemic. Olivya, a highly sensitive psychic with aura-sight, lives in Hospice Row with her mother where they care for the dying. Olivya finds that being “sighted” in such dire circumstances is too much to take, and she tries hard to suppress her talent.
In V-school, she meets the gorgeous, charismatic Mikah. an elite Empath in a clan of demon hybrids, The Kindred. Mikah tells Olivya that the Kindred are linked to the pandemic, but without initiation, he is barred from learning their truths. When Olivya’s mother falls ill, Olivya and Mikah embark on a quest to uncover Kindred secrets, and the two kids discover that the pandemic is far more than a mere disease.

If your book was made into a film, who would you like to play the main characters?
If Zoe Saldana were 15 and had sweet dreads, she could play Olivya. Logan Lerman would make a great Mikah. Halley Berry (with make-up that makes her appear tired) could be Mama. Lawrence Reddick from Fringe IS Changarai, the Kindred eldest.

Tell us a random fact about yourself.
Suki: I love Sookie Stackhouse even though she both pronounces and spells our name wrong.
Carlyle: I talk to myself out loud, often in the voice of our cat who isn’t really a cat but a demon imp from the seventh ring of hell.

Tell us something interesting about the area where you live.
We live across the street from a brand new 24-hour Walmart. Not inherently interesting, but if we get a hankering for a Snicker’s bar at three a.m., we’re in luck, and that’s a win-win because there’s no better place for people-watching than Walmart at three a.m.

Winter or summer?
Suki: Winter. My ancestors are from Russia, a short trek to Siberia.
Carlyle: Summer. My ancestors are from Mars where it’s twenty-million degrees, even at night.

Ebook or paperback?
Once we swore we’d never abandon our lovely paperbacks and hardcovers. Then we got Kindles and everything changed.

Favourite food?
Suki: I love all foods, as long as they’re chocolate.
Carlyle: Mexican food and medium-rare hamburgers.

Sporty or couch potato?
We are both couch-potatoes, but we’re in denial about our utter couch-potato-ness so we exercise every day and act all sporty and stuff in an effort to perpetuate that self-delusion.

Cook or be cooked for?
Suki cooks, Carlyle is cooked for, but mostly we go out.

www.theapocalypsegene.com (Book Website)
www.theapocalypsegene.com/cy-chi (The Apocalypse Gene Blog)
www.facebook.com/TheApocalypseGene.