Today we’ve got an extra special book feature, an interview with author Daphne Lamb as she celebrates the launch of one of this year’s must read titles, The Girl’s Guide to the Apocalypse.
Tell us a little about yourself and your book
I am originally from Colorado Springs, and now I call Los Angeles home. I’ve been a writer ever since my mom would let me rewrite the endings of picture books. I’m a movie buff and comic book collector. . In my spare time I do aeriels, perform in storytelling shows and blog about bad movies. Wednesdays are a great day because that’s when new issues of comics are released and I’m a hardcore collector of all things Wonder Woman. My book is a satire, a dark comedy about the end of the world as we know it. What happens when we’re not ready to leave the life we became so comfortable with? That’s the story told from our heroine’s perspective as she learns how to live a life where you need to do more than just “eek” by for survival.
What was the writing process like?
The writing process for this book was so much fun. I’d had the title rolling around in my brain for awhile but couldn’t figure out the right way to tell a story with it. It was after going on a Habitat for Humanity build a few years back that I realized I lacked actual real world skills and knew that in the event of an Apocalypse, I’d be toast. I sat down with a list of rules that I thought would be handy in the event of such an event and gave myself a goal of crafting a chapter a month for a year. I based the main character a lot on myself. There’s something therapeutic about magnifying your own worst tendencies on the page. From there I chose to surround my main character around the worst people you’d met in everyday life, that you’d never want to face the end of the world with.
How did you build the post apocalyptic world?
The interesting thing to me is when reading other people’s interpretations of what the future would look like there’s two different realities. Its either a militant structure with no room for free thought (I’m looking at you, The Hunger Games), or its dystopian world devoid of hope and simple niceties (i.e. Mad Max, Blade Runner). Maybe that’s what we have to look forwards to, but I thought about a period just shortly the Apocalypse where there’s nothing but fumbling for normalcy and the resistance to the kinds of changes a complete shakeup would bring. No one’s going to turn into a cut Warrior of the Lost World overnight, but you’ll have a lot of people demanding to be recognized for what kind of sales numbers they used to pull in.
I imagined a city that’s been trashed but not deserted. If you’re without the home you know, you’ll go from one place to the next until the resources are gone or until you’re asked to leave. I couldn’t leave our characters all in one place, I had to explore the little worlds being created by people with stories of their own failures of trying to plug in their first world solutions into this new situation.
What kind of books do you read in your down time?
Science fiction and really any high concept idea are my favorite things to read. Probably not alone when I say this, but I have a list of books to read that gets added to faster than I can read them! I just finished rereading Neil Gaiman’s American Gods and have just started Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow. I was on page one and thought, “Welp, I’m in for a ride…”
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What are you working on now?
Right now, I’m about finished with a rewrite of a follow up novel about the down home charms of cult livin’. I do a fun YouTube channel with some really fantastic writers called The Fictionistas where every week we bring answers to hard writing questions with lots of personal flare. I also have a blog where I find obscure or forgotten terribly made movies that can be found on places like Netflix and YouTube called I Found It on Netflix (www.instantqueuedrandomness.blogspot.com). And finally, my writing partner and I are developing a really exciting project for television that we’re wrapping up some finishing touches on, so stay tuned for that!
ABOUT THE BOOK: Welcome to the Apocalypse. Your forecast includes acid rain, roving gangs and misplaced priorities, in this comedic take on the end of the world as we know it, from debut author Daphne Lamb. As a self-entitled, self-involved, and ill equipped millennial, Verdell probably wouldn’t have ranked very high on the list of those most likely to survive the end of the world, but here she is anyway. Add in travelling with her work addicted boss, her boyfriend who she has “meh” feelings for, and a handful of others who had no businesses surviving as long as they have, and things aren’t exactly going as planned. But despite threats of cannibalism, infected water supplies, and possibly even mutants, Verdell is willing to put in as little effort as she can get away with to survive.
LINKS: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | iBooks | The Book Depository
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ABOUT DAPHNE LAMB:
Daphne Lamb was raised in the wilds of Colorado and now resides in a very different wilderness known as Los Angeles. She is a comedian and award winning writer who has worked in television, film and video games. In her spare time, she enjoys collecting comic books, discussing awesomely bad movies and thinks about what it would be like to own a cat.
LINKS: Website | Twitter | Facebook
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