Plague Town Pandemic tour: Stop 2

A zombie virus of guest articles, Q&As and excerpts from new urban fantasy

novel, Plague Town, will be infecting websites, blogs and social media

accounts across the globe to offer readers the chance to win a signed copy

of Plague Town and have a character named after them in the next novel in

the series!

Good Girls Gone Geek is the 2nd stop on the ‘Plague Town Pandemic Tour’.

Collect the 2nd word hidden in CAPS at the end of this article along with a

sequence of eight others on blogs and websites outlined in the link below;

tweet the sentence you’ve discovered to @TitanBooks and @zhadi1 with

#PlagueTown before April 23rd.

Happy Hunting.

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DANA FREDSTI INTERVIEW

From looking over your biography and website, it appears you are drawn toward the horror genre, as are we.  When did you first discover you had a penchant for horror? Is the horror world a good place for women to make their mark, in spite of the fact that many would still associate it primarily with men?

I’ve loved horror since I was a little kid.  I grew up with Creature Features on Saturdays, all those wonderfully cheesy movies like The Tingler, The Mole People, and The Brain that Wouldn’t Die (all of which scared me at the time.  I remember seeing Last Man on Earth with Vincent Price at a very early age and that one scared the bejeezus out of me.  I was also addicted to Hammer horror films, especially the Dracula ones with Christopher Lee in the title role.  I had the biggest crush on him… yes, I was thirteen and he was fifty-three, but I figured it could still work.  Oh, and Dark Shadows, the original soap opera.  I’ve watched episodes recently and can’t believe how that show used to terrify me. But it did.  And I loved every minute of it.

I’m not sure how to answer the second half to that question only because my experience so far in the world of horror writing has been really positive. Well, except for the fact that some of the male readers don’t like the fact there’s even a little bit of romance in Plague Town.  Which cracks me up because you’ll see rape as a fairly consistent element in post-apocalyptic novels and stories, but heaven forbid there might be romance.  There very well may still be chauvinism involved (“Don’t you worry your purty little head about trying to write scary stuff, ma’am.  Leave that up to us brave menfolk!”), but I haven’t run into it.  That being said, there have been so many awesome female horror authors who’ve paved the way before me who could probably tell you some horrific tales of their own experiences trying to break into horror (and mystery, for that matter) and not being taken seriously.

What do you find most admirable about your heroine, Ashley Parker?

She doesn’t give up.  Ashley is a fighter and isn’t afraid to stand up for what’s right, and she definitely can think outside the box.  She’s sarcastic, but not a bitch, and has a definite ethical and empathetic streak that I think (hope!) makes her a likable and relatable heroine.

The inside page of Plague Town lists two more titles due for release in the future.  Are you working on those from a solid outline, knowing how everything is going to wrap up, or are you winging it?  Could there be more Ashley Parker novels after this trilogy?

Definite “solid.” Okay, yes, I have an outline for Plague Nation, as well as a general story arc for Plague World, but there is still definitely some “winging it” going on because I am, by nature, a pantser as opposed to a plotter.  The outline has definitely given me a sense of structure that I’ve lacked in the past, but I reserve the right to deviate from it if I find certain things just don’t work or something better springs to mind.  And I am certainly up for more Ashley Parker novels if the world clamors for more after Plague World.

As animal lovers, we would be more than happy to promote your work with Rogue Rescue.  I can take information from your site for the article, but feel free to include anything else you’d like us to include.

Rogue Rescue is made up of a few close friends who do animal rescue and are affiliated with All Creatures Healing Network (you’ll see pictures of our adoptees on their website here http://www.allcreatureshealingnetwork.com/fosters/).  We are not a non-profit so don’t get any financial assistance aside from what we all put into it.  One of our members has spent literally thousands of dollars on vet bills for cats and kittens she’s fostered so we set up Rogue Rescue to try and ease some of the financial burden.  The most important thing anyone can do, however, is have their pets spayed/neutered.  Kitten season is coming up and oh man, it’s rough.

Finally, Good Girls Gone Geek is all about sharing the love of all things geek/nerd in nature.  Any geeky guilty pleasures you want to recommend to our readers?

Well,  I have many geeky pleasures, but very little guilt about enjoying them.  I love bad movies.  The worse the better, the kind of bad that’s so awful it’s wonderful.  We have a group of friends we get together with and the goal is to find the worst movies possible (it’s pretty much a contest).  Much wine is consumed during these events. Abraxus, Guardian of the Universe and Kill Squad are two heavy-weight contenders for the title of Ultimate Bad Movie.  But there are so many more still waiting to be discovered…  Life is good.

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CODE WORD 2: ARE

For full details of the tour and terms and conditions visit:

http://titanbooks.com/plaguetown

Plague Town by Dana Fredsti is published by Titan Books.

Thanks so much to Ms. Fredsti for the interview and for including us on the tour!