Jennifer Macaire is a brave author who has agreed to be interviewed
in a style that many authors shy away from—derogatory. The sassier the answers to
WWBB’s rude questioning method the better!
So welcome, Jennifer, and let’s get the ball
rolling, shall we? In your book, the protagonist, Ashley Riveraine (what kind
of name is that, Jeeze!), gets pitched back in time some 300 years BC (before
chocolate) and meets Alexander the Great—her hero.
Hero? Oh, come on! Okay, I’ll go with it
for now. So, is Ashley Riveraine happy now their story has been told or is there more to come (God help us!)?
I set about writing a short story about
Alexander the Great not dying and going on to conquer the world (you see how
things can get out of hand – one mosquito gets squashed, and we're speaking
Greek instead of English and the Romans never got to build their straight roads
anywhere. Much less paperwork too, and we'd still
be offering sacrifices to Zeus.
We could always offer this book!
We could, but as my neighbour’s rooster
wakes me up every morning at the ass-crack of dawn… anyhow, I was going to send
The Road to Alexander to a Sci-fi
magazine as a time travel tale and things got out of hand.
I didn't realize Alexander would kidnap Ashley – I forgot how omnipresent
gods and goddesses were at that time. And I didn't realize how crazy Alexander's mother was, and, to make a long story
short, there are 7 books in the series.
Seven!
Jeeze… you get less for murder! Okay, so
give me the best one-liner from your poor excuse of a book.
I realized
I was now over three-thousand years older than my own mother.
Do I have to elaborate?
Please don’t.
The instructions say a 'one-liner', so
to go on and explain would be a clear indication of my inability to follow the simplest instructions, which is why I did so badly at school, and why my husband has given
up trying to tell me what to do…)
Yawn,
so basically, you're the same as all the rest of the authors on Amazon, and you’re the Next Best Thing. I don’t think
so. Come on, tell me why I should spend
time reading YOUR book over more well-received authors?
Oh, come on – who likes best sellers, I
mean, besides the teeming masses. But you know the teeming masses yearning to be free – it says so on the Statue
of Liberty (written in Gothic Script somewhere around her big toe, I think).
So, feel free to try something different – the hero and heroine don't hate each
other on sight! The hero is Alexander the Great, and how much more heroic can
you get? There is action and adventure!
It's based on real history (at least part of it is – it's time-travel, so there
is a slight wobble in reality. Be prepared!).
It’s a mad, tongue-in-cheek romp across
mixed genres of Sci-fi, romance, adventure, and history. It’ll make you laugh
and cry. Oh, and there's lots of hot, bouncy sex. (If you like that sort of
thing. Otherwise, just skip those parts!) But most of all, just relax, sit
back, and enjoy your trip back in time. You can always close the book and come
back to the present – but Ashley is stuck in the past!
Hang on, there, lady. Bouncy sex? Sex
that’s bouncy? I may just have to read this malarkey of a book! So, spill, as
an author have you ever regretted
anything, i.e. written your own review
(or written a bad review on a competitor's novel), argued online, copied someone else's idea? Any juicy naughtiness at all?
In a way, he was correct. We, the
people of the present, are standing on the shoulders of those who went before
us. Our stories, our art, our science – it’s all based on work that our ancestors
did. We simply keep it growing, expanding
on it – but we invent nothing brand new. (And stop screaming, ‘The Internet!’ that's just another way of communicating, and
there are more ways of doing that than stars in the sky… I exaggerate, but you
get my gist).
I wrote The Road to Alexander after falling in love with ‘Outlander’, so
the time travel element was copied from the fantastic Ms Gabaldon. She may have
gotten it from H.G. Wells – who in turn, got it from somewhere else.
Time is an interesting subject. I'd like to say I was the only one who ever
wrote about Alexander the Great, but Mary Renault did a fabulous job with her
series of historical fiction novels – if you haven't read them, you've missed a
rare treat.
As for arguing or regretting, or writing
bad reviews, I've only written two bad reviews, and both were for novels that
featured super-alpha-male-control-freaks, and I'm a staunch feminist.
I have argued online, but that was
then. Nowadays I just refer people to PubMed (peer-reviewed scientific
publications) or Snopes and let
them learn for themselves. I never wrote my own review, but I encouraged my
daughter to read one of my children's books and write her own review. It was awful, but this proud mama
didn't mind – I fixed up the spelling, changed a few words (terrible to great, boring to amazing,) and had it published…. well,
not really, but it's an idea. Probably not an original idea – those are all
taken!
Describe
your writing style in ten words or less. I’ll begin with the first two: Crap,
dull…
Pedantic springs to mind. That's what
my editor kept saying. ‘Jennifer, you're
being pedantic again. No one needs to know where the army's food came
from, just tell them what they ate and be quick about it.’ Or, ‘Jennifer,
three pages on oral hygiene in ancient times is going to put readers to sleep.
I barely got through it without dozing off. Scratch that. I dozed off twice.’
Otherwise, my style has been variously
described as fluid, engaging, easy-to-read (not my fault – my editor keeps
correcting my spelling and grammar!), and one reviewer—who said the book had way to too much sex in it—admitted it was 'well-crafted
and proficient'. Hmm. Was he talking about my writing or about the sex
scenes?
Fuck knows! He certainly wasn’t my husband! All right, just for a laugh, share with us one of the WORSE reviews you’ve had.
I’ve had so many – where to begin?
Let's see – one said (1 star): ‘Why, oh why must the 'heroine' of these sort
of time travel books be so smug, so captivating to their target and so
unreal. No-one in their right mind is like this. Go away Ms Macaire, and think
real. I suppose I have been spoiled by Diana Gabaldon whose heroine at least
shows some reticence towards the hero or
Jodie Taylor who is constantly amusing and deep by turns.’
I like this review on so many levels – it perfectly describes
Ashley, who arrives from the future feeling smug and superior to the ancients (Pride
goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall, Ashley!). It
compares the book to Outlander and the St Mary's series, both of which I adore
– (thank you, terrible review, for at least hitching my book to their star
for a brief instant before you demolished it).
It is confusing in that it acknowledges
the book as being time travel, then beseeches me to 'get real'. That's where
I'm not sure if she doesn't like the
alacrity Ashley and Alexander (trying to think of another word starting with
'A' and failing here…) fell in love, or was it the improbability of Ashley
being a real person?
At any rate, I enjoyed having my book
in the same paragraph as my two favourite writers! (There are other, more
brutal reviews, but they actually had more stars, so the readers must have
liked the cover art or something.)
What
qualifications do you have for writing in your genre? (Apart from waking up in
the morning, that is).
I was afraid someone would ask me this
one day. Can I take the fifth? No? Well, #1: The book is science fiction (I
love science and work with scientists as an information researcher – I know, it
doesn't count, sorry!) with a #2: time travel element (I have the worst
case of left/right, before/after, letters, and numbers, dyslexia. So time has no meaning for me. It's a miracle
every time I show up at work or to an appointment. #3: It's in English (I
was born in the USA and grew up in the Caribbean, which accounts for that part,
anyway). #4: It's set in Ancient Greece, and my mother is a history
teacher. She gave me lots of hints about where to look for information on
Alexander the Great. No, she didn't help me – how many of your teachers wrote your
assignments?
Many
authors use their qualifications to show off their so-called talents, i.e. crime writers are often coppers (or
police, for the non-Brits present) and the book becomes boringly technical. How
have you managed to keep your knowledge low key? Or haven’t you bothered?
I was the last to be chosen in gym for the teams, and, on one sad Valentine's
day, at a party, the boy I had a gigantic crush on threw chocolate
kisses at me, telling me I could only keep the ones I caught. I caught none.
Sobbing, I went into the house,
collided with his father, and made him drop his finest
bottle of wine that he'd been keeping for a special occasion. I stared at the
mess, listening to the howls of rage, wishing I could become invisible or at
least grow some sort of backbone and stop snivelling (I was nine years old at
this time, so excuse the melodrama).
At dinner, the grown-ups drank their
not-so-nice wine and glared at me. The other kids snickered. And I decided I'd
show them – I'd become so knowledgeable about dinosaurs I'd write and
illustrate a fabulous book, and they
would come begging for an autograph. This has nothing to do with the question –
or everything, depending on how you look at it. I'm actually quite
knowledgeable about dinosaurs but have
managed to keep all that info out of my books.
Sorry, I
asked! Jeeze… whinge, whinge, whinge, me, me, me… If your book disappeared forever, do you think it’ll be missed?
Honestly? No, I don't think it will be
missed at all unless you've somehow
time-travelled to read all the series and missed
the first one and decided you had to read
from the beginning. Then it might be missed.
Maybe. I'm not sure anything on this earth is irreplaceable except maybe chocolate. I would definitely miss that.
And coffee.
Don’t forget the wine. Not expensive
wine, obviously, as you drop that! Describe
your perfect death (in case I must kill you. Touch my wine and I will!)
Need you ask? Death by chocolate – of course!
and now...
The
Road to Alexander
by
Jennifer
Macaire
What
do you do when the past becomes your future?
The
year is 2089, and time-travelling journalist Ashley Riveraine gets a once in a
lifetime opportunity to interview her childhood hero, Alexander the Great. She
expects to come out with an award-winning article, but doesn’t count on Fate
intervening.
 |
| Purchase Link |
Alexander
mistakes Ashley for Persephone, goddess of the dead, and kidnaps her, stranding
her in his own time. Being stuck 3000 years in the past with the man of her
dreams wouldn’t be so bad if the scientists of the Time Institute hadn’t
threatened to erase Ashley from existence if she changes history.
Ashley
must now walk a tightrope, caught up in the cataclysmic events of the time,
knowing what the future holds for the people she comes to love but powerless to
do anything to influence it.
Join
Ashley on her hilarious, bumpy journey into the past as she discovers where her
place in history truly is…
Jennifer Macaire is an American living in Paris. She likes to read, eat chocolate, and plays a mean game of golf. She grew up in upstate New York, Samoa, and the Virgin Islands.
She graduated from St Peter and Paul High School in St Thomas and moved to NYC where she modelled for five years for Elite.
She went to France and met her husband at the polo club. All that is true. But she mostly likes to make up stories
Giveaway to Win a $10
Amazon gift certificate (Open INT)
*Terms and
Conditions –Worldwide
entries welcome. Please enter using the Rafflecopter box below. The
winner will be selected at random via Rafflecopter from all valid entries and
will be notified by Twitter and/or email. If no response is received within 7
days then I reserve the right to select an alternative winner. Open to all
entrants aged 18 or over. Any personal data given as part of the
competition entry is used for this purpose only and will not be shared with
third parties, with the exception of the winners’ information. This will passed
to the giveaway organiser and used only for fulfilment of the prize, after
which time I will delete the data. I am not responsible for despatch
or delivery of the prize.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
OR if you don’t like html or are on WordPress
No comments:
Post a Comment