Until I Die Blog Tour: Interview + Giveaway

I'm super excited today to be a part of the blog tour for Amy Plum's Until I Die, the second in her Revenants series. Amy is joining me on the blog to answer a few questions, and she is generously offering up a signed paperback copy of Die For Me as well! Woo hoo! 

This tour started on April 21st and will run through May 12th, so be sure and check out all the participating blogs for reviews, interviews, guests posts, excerpts and lots of giveaways. You can find the full list of blogs on Mundie Moms, and all the details for both this stop's giveaway and the grand prize giveaway are located at the bottom of the post. 

Welcome to Supernatural Snark Amy!

Let’s say you’re in Vincent’s shoes, struggling between the need to be with the person you love most and the need to save innocent lives. Are you the type to constantly agonize over a decision while analyzing every possible outcome, or are you the type to make a choice and stick with it?

I am very impetuous, and make instinctive, split-second decisions and then hold on for dear life. This gets me in trouble sometimes, but my brain just doesn’t work on an analytical level.

Is there another city other than the amazingly atmospheric Paris you think would have suited Vincent, Kate and company equally well should Paris not have worked out as you were writing?

I never actually thought I’m going to set DIE FOR ME in Paris. From the beginning Paris was one of the main characters, almost as important as Kate and Vincent. In fact, I’ll give Paris third ranking in order of importance behind those two. I would love to write a book set in New York or Rome, but this particular story could only be set in the City of Lights.

If the teenage version of you was sitting in a café in Paris and noticed a good looking boy a few tables over, would you have the nerve to approach and start a conversation or would you simply admire from afar?

Approach a cute straight boy? Absolutely not. Even the adult version of me wouldn’t have the guts to do that! I would admire from afar, but wouldn’t even have the courage to be blatant about it. I would totally be hiding behind my book.

In most paranormal stories, immortality comes with a hefty physical and emotional price. If you were offered immortality tomorrow not knowing the specific price (i.e. feeding from others as a vampire or self-sacrificing as a revenant) you would pay for it but were told you would meet the absolute love of your life in one hundred years, would you take it?

That’s an interesting question because it is very rare that you hear of immortals who had some sort of choice in their fate. I would bet you that 95% of them would say that they wouldn’t choose the destiny they were given. However, knowing that you would meet the love of your life...that’s one hell of a carrot. I admit that I would decline the offer. But if it were forced upon me, I would resist destroying myself if I knew that my future held love.

Can you tell us which of the characters was the first to pop into your head when the idea for Die for Me came to you?

Kate. I knew I wanted to write a paranormal romance, and was sitting in my usual thinking spot (the bathtub – lots of bubbles) when this sentence popped into my mind: “Ten days after I got my driver’s license, my parents died in a car wreck.” And all of a sudden Kate existed as an practically fully-formed character in my mind. After that, I set myself the task of figuring out what kind of supernatural creature she would fall in love with.

Just for fun, let’s say both Kate and Vincent make lists (a la Ross’s laminated list from Friends) of characters from other books they’d be allowed to kiss should they ever meet that person. Which young adult characters would be in the top spot for each of them?

Neither Kate nor Vincent wanted to participate in this exercise. (They’re still a new couple – they only have eyes for each other.) But when forced to give me a name, Kate chose Jace Wayland from Mortal Instruments. He’s the opposite of Vincent looks-wise, but there’s just something about those tattoos and sauciness. Vincent said he would settle for Katniss Everdeen from Hunger Games for her kick-assness, but only because she’s fictional so there’s no real chance of it happening.

What was your favorite part about returning to the world of revenants when you sat down to begin Until I Die?

In DIE FOR ME I had a whole world to set up, so I wasn’t able to delve very far into the revenant mythology without overwhelming the reader with too many details. In UNTIL I DIE, I’m able to add more Revenant Rules, so the reader will understand a bit more about these beings and how they work.

I also couldn’t wait to delve deeper into the characters’ personalities. When I finished DIE FOR ME, I actually felt lonely. I had been hanging out with the characters every day, and they felt like friends to me. So UNTIL I DIE was like a reunion. I got to see everyone again and get to know them better.

If you were to harness all the emotions and events of this second installment and reduce them to a single color, what color do you think would communicate the totality of Until I Die to us best?

Slate gray. It’s pretty dark. I’d say black, except it is shot through with a little bit of hope, a lot of passion, and some funny bits from our usual suspects.

Thank you so much for taking the time to answer my questions Amy! More information on Amy and her books can be found here:

Website

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Goodreads

GIVEAWAY

For this stop of the tour, I have one signed paperback copy of Die For Me to give away on the blog! To enter, please just leave a comment on this post with a valid email address so I can contact you if you win. This giveaway is open internationally and will run through midnight EST on Friday, May 11th after which time a winner will be chosen and announced on the blog.

WAIT, THERE'S MORE!

In addition to individual giveaways on each blog, there will also be a grand prize giveaway for the entire tour. How do you enter you ask? I'll let Amy tell you:

Each day of the blog tour you will find one or more words in bold. Collect all of them and put them together in the right order to form a riddle about UNTIL I DIE’s plot. The blog tour ends here on my blog on May 12. At that point, send me the riddle and your name will go into the hat to win this gorgeous Longchamps bag:

But that’s not all. After the complete riddle has been posted here on my blog, you will have two months to email me with the ANSWER to the riddle (after reading UNTIL I DIE). If you answer it correctly, I will send you a signed book plate to stick inside your copy of the book!

WORDS FOR THIS TOUR STOP: Two ways