The Lives of Tao and the subsequent books in Chu’s fantastic series were some of my favorite books from the past few years, so you can image how excited I was to find out he was starting another series set in the same world. The Rise of Io takes place some years after the Tao books (and I say “some years” because I’m not exactly sure how many) and contains many of the elements we’re familiar with, if you’ve read that series. But this time the setting is Surat, India, and the main character is a tiny but fierce and plucky girl named Ella Patel. Like Roen before her, Ella is thrust into the life of the quasing against her will when she unwittingly becomes host to a Prophus named Io. But Ella and Roen couldn’t be more different. Ella might be one of my favorite fictional characters ever, I simply loved everything about her. But perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself. If you haven’t read the first series, here’s a little background about this world. The quasing are an ancient alien race who crash-landed on Earth millions of years ago, and since then have evolved and managed to survive…

Today we’re pleased to welcome Matthew De Abaitua. His upcoming novel, The Destructives will be released March 1st and he stopped by to answer the question What Was Your Perspiration For Writing This Novel? Yep, you read that right. Perspiration! Curious? He explains it all below with a great look into what it really takes to write a novel.   What Was Your Perspiration For Writing This Novel?   Authors are often asked about the inspiration behind their novels. But, as the saying goes, writing is only ten per cent inspiration. The other ninety per cent is perspiration. So let’s talk about that. To write The Destructives, I needed a laptop running Scrivener, headphones playing ambient electronic music, a tea pot serving proper tea, and a cat offering distraction. The novel was written in the hallway of my home and the headphones were necessary to screen out the sound of my children. Cyril Connolly wrote that an enemy of a writer’s promise is the pram in the hall. What would Cyril have made of the author in the hall? Working – perspiring – in such a position, I had two choices: either I wrote a fast-paced, angry science fiction adventure, or an experimental literary novel…