Guest Post: Carlyle Clark + Suki Michelle

Today I have authors Carlyle Clark and Suki Michelle taking over the blog to talk a little bit about their newest young adult urban fantasy release The Apocalypse Gene. Welcome to Supernatural Snark both of you!

THOUGHTS ABOUT UNIQUENESS
by Carlyle Clark and Suki Michelle

I bet you’re a lot like us when it comes to reading.

You want to feel like you know the characters yet constantly be surprised by them? You want to be wowed by wild new powers and strange settings, yet still feel you really understand them. I mean, who wants a reading experience to be so complex it feels like a research project? At the same time, you don’t want to be treated like dum-de-dum-dummies who have to be spoon-fed and have everything repeated until your eyes cross cuz you just want to get on with it, already!

What's more fun than meeting someone you immediately like, someone with intriguing mysteries in their past and present, knowing that you will be following them into their future? With these notions in mind, our baby, The Apocalypse Gene, was conceived, born and raised - to fulfill the need to attach emotionally to characters you recognize and feel, instantly and easily, but also have them swirl with unique strangeness. Yes, our novel is unique, especially so during the current vampirification of YA. There are no vampires or werewolves. Our characters are different at first glimpse.

As the story's onion layers are peeled away, everything becomes stranger and stranger still. So how do we keep the most valuable person, you the reader, connected to the story? Make it more familiar, more mundane, right? Wrong. We build it on the foundation of the most wondrous phenomenon in the universe, something that everyone relates to, yearns for and needs - Love.

When is love at its freshest and most powerful? That very first time. That first kiss. There's nothing like it. We didn’t jam our protagonists, Olivya and Mikah, into a love triangle ala Edward-Bella-Jacob. There is no room in their hearts for anyone else - not with the world dying around them - not when each feels like a freak.

Olivya’s home has been converted to a hospice center. Alone and unhappy, her psychic Sight forces her to see the colors of agony in the auras of those suffering and dying all around her. Mikah's psychic empathy compounds his loneliness as the only uninitiated member of the Kindred clan, immortal beings who shield their emotions and deny him the truth of his own nature, forbidding human contact. When Olivya and Mikah find each other, their powers prevent them from masking the truth of their feelings for one another. The usual boy-girl games just don’t work.

We agreed with Kirkus Indie in their review of The Apocalypse Gene - "This action-packed, breakneck-paced novel featuring a duo of lovestruck teenaged protagonists is a wildly imaginative young-adult apocalyptic thriller that also utilizes elements of science fiction, fantasy, folklore, mythology and romance...the well-choreographed, thematically powerful conclusion, coupled with the deeply developed characters of Olivya and Mikah, make this a memorable read."

They could also have simply called The Apocalypse Gene . . . a love story.

Thanks so much for stopping by Carlyle and Suki! For more information on both of them as well as The Apocalypse Gene, you can find them here:

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