Book Tour: Feedback by D. L. Richardson Interview

Feedback by D L Richardson

Genre: YA Sci-fi/Fantasy

Publisher:     Etopia Press

ISBN: 978-1-937976-77-4

ASIN: B009LKHUQM

Number of pages:   208

Word Count: 69,263

Cover Artist: Eithne Ni Anluaine 

Book Trailer: http://youtu.be/vEluhYM8WNw      

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Book Description:

Listening to your inner voice can get you killed.

Ethan James, Florida Bowman, and Jake Inala are three teenagers who receive much-needed organ transplants. Two weeks later they are inadvertently recruited by the CIA when a spy dies halfway through his mission. Three bacteria bombs are set to detonate, spreading illness and death across the planet, and it’s up to Ethan, Florida, and Jake to deactivate them.

Except that they have no idea where the bombs are located.

Kidnapped for information they can’t possibly know, and fuelled by the spirit of a dead CIA agent, Ethan, Florida, and Jake must look deep inside themselves if they are to finish the mission and save millions of lives. But they’re being held captive in a strange place by a man who believes in Feedback, the theory that information is retained in the memory of organs–in this case those of a certain dead CIA agent donor. And their captor will stop at nothing to get the information retained in their newly transplanted organs.

Interview:

Thank you to Alisia of Books and Other Spells for letting me share a bit about myself with your readers. In summary…I write young adult paranormal fiction, I lie to get my characters in and out of trouble, like most two-legged mammals II can’t function without caffeine, and I’m also a lover of animals, music, and shoes. Happy reading!!! D L xoxo

1. Where did you get the idea for the novel?

I was watching a documentary where a man who had a heart transplant adopted some of the traits of the organ donor, such as he now liked classical music, nachos and riding bicycles. The theory is that our organs retain memories and when there are transplanted into another body, the organ retains memories. I thought to myself, what if the organ donor was a spy, and what if he died halfway through a mission. I can’t giveaway too much more without spoiling the plot.

2. Your title. Who came up with it? Did you ever change your title?

The documentary called this cellular memory Feedback. I liked that title. It also means a circuit that is unbroken, or a cause and effect that loops in on itself. I liked the title. There was one suggestion to maybe change it, but I’m glad it never got changed because I like it.

3. Which came first, the title or the novel? 

The title and novel came at the same time as Feedback is the storyline.

4. Why did you pick this genre? What do you like about it?

One of the main reasons I write paranormal is that throughout my work there is an undercurrent of second chances. This is because I’ve had friends commit suicide. I wish I could go back and fix these lost souls. I can’t. The only thing I can do is provide meaning, understanding and hope to teenagers through taking my characters to the edge and bringing them safely home again.

5. Since becoming a writer, what’s the most exciting thing to ever happen to you?

At a writers convention recently, an indie publisher asked me to join her for lunch and then she asked if I was looking for a publisher. Gosh darn it but didn’t I blush at the compliment that someone would even bother to ask little old me if I was looking for a publisher.

6. What book are you currently reading or what was the last book you read?

I’ve just finished reading Janet Evanovich’s first Stephanie Plum novel, One For The Money. What a hoot. Before that I tried to read 50 Shades Of Grey but I had to put it down half way through. It’s so boring and I hate both the characters. It’s really important to like at least one of the characters in a novel. So I don’t want to count that book. Before that I read Hades by Alexandra Adornetto. It was okay. Next book for me is My Name Is Memory by Ann Brashares. It looks intriguing.

7. What was your first book that you ever wrote (very first one you wrote, not published)?

It was a horror novel that I wrote on a typewriter in….I think I wrote it in 1996. It was called Nemclaudai and it was the story of a creature who took human form and drained the life out of lonely people so that he could live for centuries. He was lonely and though he was the last of his kind, and then one day he found another of his kind and she was a she. That was about it. I wrote the whole story but never edited and probably never will.

8. What is your writing process?

Firstly I select an idea. That’s the hardest part. I need to know I’m going to love this story for the next 6-8 months and want to take it through the writing and editing stage. I do research too. I send a few plotlines to a special friend of mine and she tells me which ones she likes. Then I write a rough chapter outline but I write the beginning and the end first, and then I wrork back and forth to fill in the middle. Then I do a few edits, send it to a reader (usually a good friend or my mother) to point out any major flaws, and then it’s off to the publisher.

9. Who are your favorite authors of all time?

Marian Keyes, Dean Koontz, Stephen King, J K Rowling are my main faves.

10. At a book signing, do you just sign your name or do you write a note? How do you come up with stuff to say?

It’s hard to know what to say. Sometimes I just sign my name. If I’m sending postcards to a blog reviewer to give away I’ll write “D L Richardson Likes ABC Blog” because everyone knows what Like means these days, thanks to Facebook. “Your support is amazing” or “Keep reading” are other sentiments. It’s hard because you want to come across sincere and personal. Maybe I’ll write “I love your hair” or “Fabulous shoes!” because if you know me, that’s sincere. I love fashion.

11. What is something people would be surprised to know about you?

I’m a time traveler on a mission to prevent myself from doing something stupid only I never know what that something is till I do it. Haha. Well, obviously I’m not a time traveler.  I think people are generally surprised to know that I used to play bass guitar in a hard rock band and wore very dark clothes and make up, you could say, almost goth-like. Ah, who am I kidding, I absolutely love Goth fashion and I wish I had to guts and events to wear it. Secretly I wish I had the guts to get loads of tattoos. Now that would surprise a lot of people.

12. How do you react to a bad review?

I’ve been lucky that I’ve only had one where the reviewer just didn’t like the book. You can’t please everybody, and a writer shouldn’t try to either. I have to write what I honestly feel and if that doesn’t connect with someone, that’s fine. If humans were all the same, well, we’d be so far de-evolved that we’d have been overtaken by an alien race and interbred long ago. When you get a bad review, you just ignore it. One thing you never ever ever do is engage in an email war over the review because I’ve heard of stories where writers criticized a reviewer and that email ended up in the newspaper. Not good publicity.

13. How did you celebrate the sale of your first book?

With a glass (or two) of champagne over dinner with my husband. We ate Chinese - honey chicken, beef with chili sauce, and fried rice. We celebrated both novels in the same way.

Excerpt: 

Chapter One

Wednesday, November 9th, Ethan James

AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck” blared through the speakers. Apt music considering the weather conditions. Rain pounded the windshield of the Lamborghini. Crushed beneath the noisy rain, the music took a beating, too. I flipped the volume control to the max, drowning out the steady slap of water on the roof.

The dark shroud of night cloaked the striped lines to my left and right. Street signs blasted yellow warnings to drivers to slow down on wet roads. I ignored them.

Instead, I pushed the car to 120 miles per hour. Coming around a curve in the road, I flew up on a van and sharply jerked the wheel to avoid ramming the Lamborghini up its rear end. I owed my life to my quick reflexes.

Pity.

I drove for another half mile at suicidal speeds, drumming my fingers on the steering wheel to the rhythm of the guitar riff. Another half mile. Then another. Just when the buzz of the ride plunged to a level of indifference, the car hit a pothole, veered me across three lanes, and like a punch from nowhere, it was game on.

A tsunami-sized wave of water fell from the sky. Momentarily blinded by the useless wipers, I sucked in my breath when two rows of lights cut through the haze. Two white lights on the bottom and six or more yellow ones on top—the bright circles headed straight at me.

Semitrailer. Not good.

Gritting my teeth, I tightened my grip on the steering wheel. The truck swerved at the last second, missing killing me by about half that length of time. The driver blasted four long bleats of the horn.

I laughed out loud as I spun around.

I accelerated till the car caught up to its former 120 miles per hour. The chorus kicked in, and I helped with the backing vocals. “Thunder. Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na. Thunder.”

Whether driving under a dome of blue, or a sky darkened by storms like tonight, I liked to push cars to their limit. It didn’t matter what sort of car, but slow cars tended to break apart sooner under extreme pressure. Fast cars handled the punishment of driving at stupid speeds much better.

Speeding made the rush last longer. It filled a void and carried me to a place where I let go of the angst over a waste of a life spent waiting to die of kidney failure. The rush reminded me that seventeen-year-old kids should wish for a professional ice hockey career instead of wishing to still be alive by Christmas.

The song ended, and in that second of silence, my thrill took a dismal nosedive. Images of the hospital I attended every week flickered across my vision. So, I increased the speed. Bad enough the bleak place filled my head and haunted my dreams, but to interrupt my fun—not going to happen.

The next song on the CD kicked in, and it did the trick of hauling me back to the driver’s seat, where I replaced the hospital corridor for a rain-slicked freeway. I figured if I had to die young, I’d do it on my terms. No doubt the doctors would have something to say about this philosophy. If I crashed the car and ended up in the hospital, I’d tell them I reached out to touch life. Better than dwelling on my postpubescent life spent hooked up to a dialysis machine.

I’d probably get pulled over by the cops first, and I couldn’t have that. Aside from speeding, I’d stolen the Lamborghini from a mall parking lot half an hour earlier, and I didn’t have a license.

A crack in my concentration appeared like the lightning bolts streaking the sky. The car drifted into the next lane, and I let it go. A set of lights rushed toward me, and I expertly got the car under control, but at this speed, and despite the car’s sporting capability, the Lamborghini was all over the shot.

Buzzed from pushing the car, I kept going.

At 120 miles per hour, streetlights floated like satiny, white ribbons. The rain-slicked road made it impossible to judge the lines marking the lanes. Curves were hard to anticipate.

Sometimes I oversteered; sometimes I didn’t steer enough and had to yank the wheel to the left or right at the last second. Other drivers blasted their horns. I didn’t care about the rules of the road. Rules were for pussies.

For each minute I survived this suicidal cruise, I’d get two points. So far, I’d accumulated over two hundred. Fifty were up for grabs, if I made it home alive. I had a lot to lose if I crashed the car. I had nothing to lose if I killed myself.

I jumped in surprise when a car came up on my left and honked its horn, whizzing by in a blur of chrome. “I don’t think so, buddy.”

I accelerated. If the cops wanted to stop me, they’d have to use air support. Getting myself on TV only added to the thrill of the chase.

Concern over my reckless driving should have registered, but it didn’t. The speedometer now read 140 miles per hour. AC/DC screeched about “Hells Bells,” and the rain didn’t lessen. If I lost control now, I’d smash into the concrete barriers lining the highway. It’d be game over. No way I’d survive the impact. What a shame this last train of thought wasn’t on whether I’d survive or not, but on whether I’d care.

Lightning bolts exploded across the sky and lit up the windshield. In that brief flicker of visibility, I spotted the plane on fire, blocking the highway—and the spaceship blowing up a bridge with luminous green laser beams. I let go of the wheel, idly watching the Lamborghini plow into the concrete barrier. Metal fragments and orange flames danced in front of me. The sound of something exploding boomed through the speakers. The words GAME OVER flashed across the television screen.

The plane had been okay, but the spaceship insulted me. For sure, the makers of the game reckoned it’d be a hoot to throw unrealistic obstacles in my path.

I tossed the Xbox controller aside and scratched my numb backside. My life couldn’t get any worse…might as well go to school.

* * *

About the Author:

D L Richardson was born in Ireland and came to Australia with her parents as a baby. She went to a public school in Sydney's western suburbs and the books she read were given to her or borrowed from the library. However it was music that first captured her creative interest.

​She joined the school choir at age eight and got her first acoustic guitar at age ten, although she really wanted a piano. In high school she took up lead vocals after the girl she was to sing a duet with failed to show up. After that she told her stage fright to get lost and took up singing with the school band where she performed in many concerts. When she left school she helped form her own rock band where she sang lead vocals, played bass guitar, and wrote all the lyrics. At age 26 she realized she wanted to write novels for the rest of her life or die trying so she sold her equipment, quit pursuing a music career and began writing instead.

​She has two young adult novels published, "The Bird With The Broken Wing" and "Feedback" and is currently writing her third novel "Little Red Gem".

​She lives in Australia on the NSW South Coast with her husband and dog. When she's not writing or reading she can be found playing her piano or guitars, renovating the house, or walking the dog.

Website:        www.dlrichardson.com

Blog:  www.interestteen.blogspot.com.au  

Facebook:     facebook.com/dlrichardsonbooks

Twitter:           twitter.com/#!/DLRichardson1

Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15910702-feedback