What is the name of the book and when was it published?
The book is BLOOM: Or, the unwritten memoir of Tennyson Middlebrook. It was published in summer 2013.
What’s the book’s first line?
“It was the second dead body I’d ever seen in my life, but the first outside the formal surroundings of a funeral.”
What’s the book about? Give us the “pitch”.
BLOOM is two intertwined stories, one part plague-horror, one part fantasy. Think Grimm’s Fairy Tales meet The Andromeda Strain, written on a double helix.
What inspired you to write the book? A particular person? An event?
It grew out of this idea of information and how we control it, and how much of biology is all about information. Your DNA is written and rewritten in endless loops. So is the DNA of everything else. In a way that DNA has its own beginning, its own end, and we create narratives that etch themselves into that strand via mutation and adaptation. In a nutshell, we’re all made of stories. And there are people out there who make it their business to sell or even control what stories are told.
What’s the most distinctive thing about the main character? Who-real or fictional-would you say the character reminds you of?
Lil’it is a genetic mutation who looks human enough, but is able to taste these genetic stories that live in blood, skin, and tissue. She can then synthesize this information into poisons, prions, viruses and venoms. She can also tailor-make these diseases to suite specific targets. For this she is somewhat reviled by the people in her world, is not even considered to be a person in fact. She is a disease carrier and creator, but doesn’t realize that she could be a lot more. I guess you could say she’s a crotchety Tinkerbell who could kill a man with a kiss.
What’s the main reason someone should really read this book?
Even while writing this book, I had thought that it was unlike any book I had written or read. It exists as two different stories, with two different main characters, in two different worlds. It’s also a different way of looking at storytelling and information, about the physical and emotional importance of how we transfer information, and how that information can be used. But even more so, the book explores how far information itself might be willing to go in order to ensure its own survival. I have had people tell me that the book is everything they never knew they wanted to read.