Blog Tour- THE BROKENHEARTED by Amelia Kahaney

Today I have an awesome interview for you today! Amelia Kahaney, author of THE BROKENHEARTED is here to answer some burning questions about her book! Thanks to Mundie Girls Tours for hosting the event!

About the Book:

Goodreads

GET THE BOOK -

Amazon — Barnes & Noble – Harper Teen

A teenage girl is transformed into a reluctant superhero and must balance her old life with the dark secret of who she has become.

Prima ballerina Anthem Fleet is closely guarded by her parents in their penthouse apartment. But when she meets the handsome Gavin at a party on the wrong side of town, she is immediately drawn into his dangerous world. Then, in a tragic accident, Anthem falls to her death. She awakes in an underground lab, with a bionic heart ticking in her chest. As she navigates her new life, she uncovers the sinister truth behind those she trusted the most, and the chilling secret of her family lineage…and her duty to uphold it.

The Dark Knight meets Cinder in this gripping and cinematic story of heartbreak and revenge. From Alloy Entertainment, this inventive new superhero story is sure to captivate any reader.

INTERVIEW 

·        How would you describe The Brokenhearted in five words or less?

Anthem’s five-word memoir might look something like this:

Lost boyfriend, heart. Gained superpowers.

·        What inspired you to write Anthem's story?

I started out knowing I wanted to write about a girl with a bionic heart who was going to do some serious ass-kicking. I was thinking a lot about vigilante justice when I first began to work on the book. The most important thing, it seemed to me, was to create a world where the rule of law no longer works, either because anarchy has taken over or because people have lost faith in those in power, or both. So in thinking about creating that kind of world, I looked to police states and to the general sense of social imbalance that creates police states.

The Occupy movement was raging when I first started the book, with people camped out in lower Manhattan protesting the banks. Things just seemed so bleak in New York after the economy collapsed. I spent hours looking at the “We are the 99 percent” tumblr, just reading with horror about how the system has been failing people. And so Bedlam was born as this place that is similar to what New York is becoming—a city of very rich and very poor people, with very few people in the middle.

And I wanted someone striking and unexpected to try to save that city, or to at least make the realization about how messed up everything is. Which is where Anthem comes in. Her motivations start out romantic, yes – but she eventually realizes that fighting with the criminal underclass to get her boyfriend back is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what she needs to do.

·        I'm always curious about the names authors pick for their characters. How do you choose your characters’ names?

Names are so tricky. A lot of mine changed multiple times during the writing process. Some of them were more comic bookish and became less so as time went on and characters grew more flesh on their bones. The easy answer is that I liked the sound and simplicity and vaguely verb-like sound of the many of the names I used. Only Anthem’s name has a specific reason for being what it is – and unfortunately I can’t reveal the reason, because it would be a spoiler for the second book in the series!

·        Which of your characters did you have the most fun writing?

I loved writing Will, Anthem’s arrogant ex-boyfriend, and his equally arrogant and dysfunctional father and stepmother. Those three came very easily to me. And like Anthem, I have a huge soft spot for Ford and Jax. Something about the way they’ve both failed at what they were trying to do—Ford at being a professional boxer and Jax at being a law-abiding scientist—made them very real for me, with distinct vulnerabilities and motivations.

·        Do you have a favorite line or scene from your book you can share with us?

My favorite line is probably the one where form follows content. I’ll give it to you here with a few lines before it for context:

He’s too late. His hands clutch at the air, his mouth a black circle of shock.

I turn midair to meet the greasy gray-green of the Midland churning beneath me, its surface dotted with small chunks of ice.

My scream is one long, shrill cry of horror.

And then I’m

falling,

falling,

falling

through

the

      empty

    moonlit

     sky.

·        What projects are you working on now?

I just turned in the first draft of the second book in the Brokenhearted series, so at the moment I’m just luxuriating in not working on anything. But my goal over the next month is to finish a short story to submit to One Teen Story, an incredible literary magazine that publishes one YA story at a time and that takes such good care of its writers and their work. I’ve been working on a story about two sisters in second-ice-age New Jersey for the longest time. It involves space travel, lots of ice, depressed fathers, and reality TV. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Amelia Kahaney grew up an easily sunburnt child in San Diego, CA and Hilo, HI. At age 12, self-exiled from surf camp due to lack of coordination, Amelia sought refuge in her local library and spent the rest of her summer filling up yellow legal pads with her first attempts at fiction. After graduating from UC Santa Cruz with a degree in English, she lived in Portland, Oregon and Quetzaltenango, Guatemala before landing in New York City with a giant suitcase and high hopes. Nine apartments and a dozen jobs later, she began to study fiction writing at Brooklyn College. Her short stories have appeared in Best American Nonrequired Reading,One Story, Crazyhorse, and other literary magazines. She wrote most of The Brokenhearted in a coffee shop that has since gone out of business, and is currently testing out new locations in which to dream up superpowers for book two. She is still a fan of libraries, and is also partial to bicycles, art cars, fire, hermit crabs, voices harmonizing, flash mobs, hot springs, and voracious readers of all ages. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband and son.

AUTHOR LINKS -

Website - Tumblr – Goodreads – Facebook — Twitter 

TOUR SCHEDULE

10/7- Fitkshun, Guest Post and a Giveaway

10/8- Page Turners Excerpt

10/9- Two Chicks on Books, Author Interview

10/10- Mundie Moms, Excerpt

10/11- Fangirlish, Review

Check out the trailer!!