Blog Tour: Interview with Lucia DiStefano

Montag, 10. September 2018

Borrowed by Lucia DiStefano
Expected Publication: November 1st 2018 by Elephant Rock Productions, Inc.
Number of Pages: 264 Pages (Paperback)
Series: No

  Love, mystery, and danger collide in this new literary thriller with the dark heart of a Gillian Flynn novel and the lyrical prose of Jandy Nelson's I'll Give You the Sun.
   An triumph of authenticity, grace, and nail-biting suspense, Lucia DiStefano's ingenious debut is an unflinching, genre-bending page-turner.
   As seventeen-year-old Linnea celebrates the first anniversary of her heart transplant, she can't escape the feeling that the wires have been crossed. After a series of unsettling dreams, inked messages mysteriously appear on her body, and she starts to wonder if this new heart belongs to her at all.
   In another Austin neighborhood, Maxine braces for a heartbreaking anniversary: her sister Harper's death. Between raising her brothers and parenting her grief-stricken mother, Max is unable to ignore her guilty crush on Harper's old flame or shake her lingering suspicion that her sister's drowning wasn't really an accident. With Harper as the sole connection, Linnea and Maxine are soon brought together in fantastic and terrifying ways as the shocking truth behind Harper's death comes to light. (goodreads.com)

   Today I'm really excited to bring you an interview I did with Lucia about Borrowed. Honestly, I loved this book (find my review here) and was really excited when I got to exchange a few emails with her and also do this interview. I'm always curious to find out more about the authors behind the books I enjoy, so I hope you'll enjoy this one as much as I did. Thank you also to Elephant Book for this opportunity and to Lucia for taking the time to answer my questions!

Interview with Lucia DiStefano

   1 – Describe Borrowed with a haiku (or twitter pitch).
   The heart she carries
   --not the heart she was born with--
   will carry her home

   2 – What sparked the idea for Borrowed?
   I've always been fascinated by the topic of personal identity and how malleable it may or may not be. When I heard about the phenomenon of cellular memory in heart transplant patients (how aspects of the donor's personality might make it into the recipient's psyche), I knew I wanted to work it into a story somehow.

   3 – What was the most challenging about writing this story and which scene was the most fun to write?
   The most fun was definitely the scene between Linnea and Daniel in the bakery. I loved how Linnea was both nervous and bold, and I loved how sweet Daniel was toward her (pun intended...there were cupcakes involved, after all). The most challenging was the cabin scene in the third act. I realize there are technically several scenes that take place in a cabin, but the one that was the hardest to write will always be "the" cabin scene to me.

   4 – What do you like most and least about your main characters, Linnea and Maxine?
   Linnea: I like her perseverance most, and how she doesn't let her medical history define her future. I think at times she can be self-absorbed, though (I can say the same about myself!), so I think that's what I like least.
   Maxine: What jumps out at me most about Max, and what I like best, is how fiercely she loves her family, and how responsibly she cares for her little brothers. What I like least is that she has a tendency to be less than forthcoming, and one of the secrets she kept before her sister's death comes back to haunt her afterwards.

   5 – In retrospective, is there anything that you’d change about the story or are you happy with the way it turned out in the end?
   As happy as I was to type "the end," I tend to be one of those perpetual revisers. I would love nothing more than an opportunity to revise annually (ha...I know publishing doesn't work that way). With that said, though, I am happy with the final product. I worked hard, and Jotham, my amazing editor, worked hard, and he prepared me for the time when we'd have to stop massaging the manuscript. So if I did have the chance to keep reworking, I think it would be small stuff. Sometimes a phrase or a detail will pop into my head and I'll think, "Dang, I wish I had included that in the novel!"

   6 – How much research did you have to do to write the story both in terms of all the wonderful sweet pastries mentioned throughout the story, but also about heart transplantation and cellular memory? Was it important to you to stay true to reality, or did you focus more on using it in a creative manner to tell this certain type of story?
   Because I wanted the look at cellular memory to be more "what if?" than hard science, I tried not to get bogged down in too much research. There is much anecdotal evidence of cellular memory, especially with heart transplant patients, but because it's difficult or impossible to confirm it or explain it within the current bounds of science, it's still hanging out in that nebulous gray area. So I started with the germ of cellular memory, but I used creative license (and suspension of disbelief) to think of a scenario even more dramatic than any I'd read about.
   Oh, and the sweets: I love to bake. And eat. So that part was pure, self-indulgent fun!

   7 - What are some of your favorite books?
   Ah, my favorite question, and yet one of the hardest to answer (unless I can stay here all week!). Because it feels impossible to narrow the list of my fave novels enough to respond succinctly, I'll instead limit my choices to books on the creative life. My favorites in that category: The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, and Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert.

   8 – Do you have a writing routine or do you write whenever creativity strikes?
   My day job is ghostwriter, so I'm always writing in some fashion (and I certainly can't wait for the muse to arrive before working on projects for my clients). I try to work on my own personal projects first thing in the morning, before I turn my attention to the work-for-hire assignments.

   9 – What advice could you give aspiring authors?
   Approach writing with the mindset of 'play,' and you just may surprise yourself (and you'll likely have much more fun, too).

   10 – If you could have any superpower, what would it be and why?
   Ah... bionic hearing. Think of all the quirky snippets of dialogue I'd pick up that way!

Pre-order

Check out the rest of the blog tour for Borrowed:
August 1: Cover reveal at YA Interrobang
September 4: Review at Alice Reeds
September 10: Author interview at Alice Reeds
September 24: Cover reveal at BubblersRead
October 15: Review at BubblersRead
October 21: Author interview at YA Outside the Lines
November 5: Author interview at BubblersRead
November 12: Author guest post at BubblersRead
And more to come!

Review: Borrowed by Lucia DiStefano

Dienstag, 4. September 2018

Borrowed by Lucia DiStefano
Expected Publication: November 1st 2018 by Elephant Rock Productions, Inc.
Number of Pages: 264 Pages (Paperback)
Series: No

  Love, mystery, and danger collide in this new literary thriller with the dark heart of a Gillian Flynn novel and the lyrical prose of Jandy Nelson's I'll Give You the Sun.
   An triumph of authenticity, grace, and nail-biting suspense, Lucia DiStefano's ingenious debut is an unflinching, genre-bending page-turner.
   As seventeen-year-old Linnea celebrates the first anniversary of her heart transplant, she can't escape the feeling that the wires have been crossed. After a series of unsettling dreams, inked messages mysteriously appear on her body, and she starts to wonder if this new heart belongs to her at all.
   In another Austin neighborhood, Maxine braces for a heartbreaking anniversary: her sister Harper's death. Between raising her brothers and parenting her grief-stricken mother, Max is unable to ignore her guilty crush on Harper's old flame or shake her lingering suspicion that her sister's drowning wasn't really an accident. With Harper as the sole connection, Linnea and Maxine are soon brought together in fantastic and terrifying ways as the shocking truth behind Harper's death comes to light. (goodreads.com)

* Thank you to Elephant Rock Books for providing me with an 
eARC in exchange for my honest review *

   Borrowed was nothing like what I expected it to be, and I mean that in the best way possible. This is a tale of grief, life, bodily autonomy, toxic masculinity, and survival told through the eyes of fascinating protagonists in a story filled with thrill and plot twists.

   The story starts out innocent enough with a feeling of coming-of-age and a look into the lives of two girls one year after one lost her sister and the other got a second chance thanks to a heart transplant. But, soon the story begins to twist and turn, accompanied by a writing style that will capture you and won't let you go until you're done. I had a couple of guesses along the way for what would happen next or who did it, but I never got it quite right and there were many things I didn't see coming, which I always appreciate.

   Linnea and Max were great protagonists and I loved getting to know them better, see Max trying her best to keep her family alive, take care of her younger brothers and her mother, and Linnea wishing to become a proper pastry chef and go to school for it. Both had distinct voices, making it easy to differentiate between their chapters even if you forgot which name was at beginning, and sounded their age.
   Ezra, Daniel, and Chris were also very different and played varyingly big roles in the story leaving me wishing we could've gotten to know some more than others. Some were the types of guys you'd want to date, or see your sister date, and others the very type you'd never want to come across even in your worst nightmares. But, that's the reality of things, men like the monster in this story exist and they are even more horrifying in reality than a story can make them seem.

   I've read Borrowed in less than two days and I've absolutely loved it. Lucia's writing style and way with words was captivating and enchanting, simple at times yet more than enough overall without giving you multi-paragraph descriptions or on the nose explanations, instead making you see what's between the lines and putting the pieces together right along with the characters. The story also taught me something I didn't know before about heart transplantation and cellular memory, which was both incredibly interesting and creepy. 
   I'm really happy I got to read this book early and spread the word about it because it's amazing and I recommend it to everyone, though there are a few trigger warnings that probably should get mentioned for violence, and especially violence against women (psychological as well as physical), so if you're sensitive to that, please be careful or come back to it at a different time.
I give Borrowed by Lucia DiStefano 5 out of 5 stars.

Pre-order

Check out the rest of the blog tour for Borrowed:
August 1: Cover reveal at YA Interrobang
September 4: Review at Alice Reeds
September 10: Author interview at Alice Reeds
September 24: Cover reveal at BubblersRead
October 15: Review at BubblersRead
October 21: Author interview at YA Outside the Lines
November 5: Author interview at BubblersRead
November 12: Author guest post at BubblersRead
And more to come!