Violence is a big part of these characters’ lives. One of the scenes in the book is truly devastating. How do you go about exploring violence as a theme?
I had to research violence. I had to research killing and what it does to people. The biggest thing is our world is filled with it. Over here, we’re in a beautiful book store, there’s no one trying to kill us or bombing us, and that’s not the case in many, many parts of the world. We’re extremely lucky. Part of this book for me was trying to show what other places in the world throughout history—all the way back to Ancient Rome and before that—what they’ve experienced. That is life in a war zone. You make these devastating choices for reasons you maybe don’t understand. Maybe somebody else does, but maybe they don’t either. You can’t take them back, and that’s the worst thing about it. That is sort of what happens in the book. The point I’m trying to make is that war zones are really, really harsh places, and I think we have a very romanticized view of war, and I think that’s very dangerous, so I try to not romanticize the idea of war in the book.
It was really sad. I felt gutted when that happened.
I was gutted, and I wrote it! I was like Ahhhhh.
I hate when an author sort of cops out and something you think happens ends up not being real, but here it does happen; it is real.
And he can’t take it back. That’s one of the things I wanted to explore because I read this book called “On Killing’ by a guy named Lt. Dave Grossman, and he has talked about how soldiers are trained to kill and why and how they used to be trained.
There is a really fascinating story he was talking about. One of the wars, many years ago, I’m not sure if it was the Civil War or Revolutionary War, but I believe it was the Civil War. There was a battlefield where researchers and scientists inspected the weapons that were left on the battlefield, and they found that some insane percentage of these weapons were like double-loaded or triple or quadruple-loaded. Meaning that in the olden days when you shot a gun, it wasn’t just you put in the bullets and start shooting. Every time you wanted to shoot, you had to repack gun powder, close it, then re-shoot. Then open it, repack, and shoot again. What they found was that people were running at each other at two sides, which were how wars were fought in those days without drones and all of that kind of stuff. They didn’t want to shoot each other face-to-face. So they would pretend to shoot, and then they would repack, and again they would pretend to shoot and repack. Because they didn’t want their peers to think that they weren’t fighting.
It just goes to show that by nature humans don’t want to kill. So what it does to them is sort of warp them in a way. When I have the killing in the book, it’s to get us thinking about what it means to take another person’s life.
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I heard that a sequel hasn’t been greenlit yet, which I think is kind of ridiculous. Do you have plans for a sequel?
I have one in my head. I’ve been messing with it because I can’t get away from the world.
I feel like there’s still a lot more to it.
Yeah, there’s more. When I wrote the book, I felt that this could stand alone. If people want more, then I have the story to tell, which would be lovely. But it was just a matter of reader feedback, and Penguin feels it’s worth it to see readers want it or not. Not every book that could have a sequel, I guess, should have one. Maybe sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t. I can’t think of a book where I got a sequel, and it wasn’t a sequel that I didn’t like.
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Do you see this as a trilogy or do you not know yet?
Way back in the day, I thought that it would be more than one book, but as I think about the story, it changes. I don’t have a sort of specific thing in my head because I don’t know, I don’t want to talk about it because I don’t know what’s going to happen.
True. There might be a movie in development?
There is a movie in development. It’s with Paramount, and it’s with the former producer of The Chronicles of Narnia, and he also was the executive producer of Breaking Bad. My brother is also a producer, who is in film and has been for years, who has also worked for The Chronicles of Narnia with this producer, that’s why they’re doing it together.
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Are they with Walden Media?
They were with Walden Media. Yeah, and then later, they stayed friends. It was a pretty easy decision.
That’s very cool. Do you know where it is in development?
I do! I can’t really say where it is though.
I’m a big movie buff, so—
Then you know how long it takes. There’s a script, and it’s at the place where the script is going and in the process. Once the script is going, then I think they hire a director, after that, I guess the director decides what to do. I’m not sure, actually.
Scouting, casting, and all that stuff.
Yeah, so hopefully it all happens. But that hasn’t happened yet. It’s still in the writing and re-writing stage.
Many of the TYF staffers read your book and enjoyed it. They came up with a few questions as well… Which of the characters in An Ember in the Ashes would you like to have dinner with and why?
I would like to have dinner with… let me think. There’s an obvious response to this, but you don’t want to look like a creeper. My answer changes; the last time I was thinking about it, the answer was Laia. But I think I would actually really want to talk to Elias’ grandfather, Quin Veturius.
I was going to say the same thing.
Really?! Because I want to know more about the Commandant as a young girl, even though I already know her history, because you know. But I want to hear it from him. You don’t just come into the world that angry. Also, I would want to ask him about his wife, who’s clearly gone. Like who was she, did you really like her? Yeah, he would be very interesting to talk to.
He was always one character who I couldn’t really understand where his alliances fell. Okay, if you can live in any fictional world, which would it be and why?
Fictional world? Hogwarts.
Which house would you be in?
I would love to be in Gryffindor because I feel like it would be a cool house. I’m hoping the Sorting Hat would give me a choice and be like you can be in Ravenclaw or Gryffindor. I’d be like “Gryffindor!” But I think that Ravenclaw would also be a possibility because I studied really hard and I’m curious about things, like bookish.
Yeah, I always got Ravenclaw in those Buzzfeed quizzes.
Those Buzzfeed quizzes are funny because I would say about 80% of the time I got Gryffindor, but I also feel like that’s me now. I feel like if I answered those questions as an eleven-year-old, I would have been in Ravenclaw, not Gryffindor.
Do you think that the Sorting Hat is sort of like an Oracle?
In a way, yeah, absolutely. It seeks what is in your heart. It doesn’t just seek you, it seeks your potential. You see that in Ron and Hermione, right? Ron is kind of a little bit of a wimp at times, with the spiders. He’s scared a lot. He doesn’t want to do stuff. But then he finds it in him to do it. Also, because he’s like “I don’t want to be left behind!” So he goes with it.
Final question, I know you’re really into music, if you could pick one theme song for this book, what would it be?
It would be “Outro” by M83.
I love that song.
It’s a good song. The reason why is because the lyrics are really beautiful to me, and they’re about taking control of one’s life. It’s because the lyrics are:
I’m the king of my own land.
Facing tempests of dust, I’ll fight until the end.
Creatures of my dreams raise up and dance with me!
Now and forever, I’m your king!
It meant a lot to me personally because it felt like me talking to my characters, and being like, I will finish this book, and I will finish your stories, but you have to let me hear them. On the other hand, it represented the characters trying to take control of their own destinies, to get away from darkness and make something better of them.
That’s perfect.
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Listen to M83’s “Outro” below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDoEqBas4Y0
A huge thanks once again for Sabaa Tahir sitting down with me for this interview. I bet you now want to read or re-read An Ember in the Ashes. Lucky for you, the book is now available wherever books are sold.
If you love An Ember in the Ashes as much as we do, make your voices heard! Share this interview and let others know that you want a sequel.
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