Interview with Amber Smith for Something Like Gravity

Something Like Gravity

by Amber Smith
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books
Release Date: June 18th 2019

Genre: Contemporary, LGBT, Young Adult, Romance

Synopsis:

For fans of Love, Simon and Eleanor and Park, a romantic and sweet novel about a transgender boy who falls in love for the first time—and how first love changes us all—from New York Times bestselling author Amber Smith.

Chris and Maia aren’t off to a great start.

A near-fatal car accident first brings them together, and their next encounters don’t fare much better. Chris’s good intentions backfire. Maia’s temper gets the best of her.

But they’re neighbors, at least for the summer, and despite their best efforts, they just can’t seem to stay away from each other.

The path forward isn’t easy. Chris has come out as transgender, but he’s still processing a frightening assault he survived the year before. Maia is grieving the loss of her older sister and trying to find her place in the world without her. Falling in love was the last thing on either of their minds.

But would it be so bad if it happened anyway?

Can you briefly describe SOMETHING LIKE GRAVITY and their main characters?

Something Like Gravity is a story about falling in love for the first time and finding yourself in the process. It’s told across one summer, through the alternating points of view of Chris and Maia. Chris has recently come out as transgender and is grappling with his changing relationships with family and friends, while processing a trauma from his past. When Chris decides to leave home to visit an aunt for the summer, to get out from under the scrutiny of his parents, he meets Maia. Maia is still reeling from the recent death of her older sister and is trying to find her place in the world without her. Chris and Maia’s worlds look very different, but they are drawn to one another, as each are trying to figure out who they are going to become in the face of equally life-changing events. 

Who would you say is your favourite character from the story and why?

This is such a hard question – I don’t think I can choose a favorite between Chris and Maia! So instead of “favorite” I think I’ll say the character I most aspire to be more like is Chris. Don’t get me wrong, Chris definitely has flaws, like sometimes he has unrealistic expectations of other people, can be quick to judge, and tends to push himself too hard. But he has also been through some real tough sh*t, and no matter what happens he never loses himself or gives up hope. That is something that I relate to…in that I’m always striving to stay positive even when things are hard.

How did the story occur to you? Did you find inspiration anywhere?

There were a lot of different pieces of inspiration behind Something Like Gravity. Writing is always very therapeutic for me, and I found over the course of the last several years I’ve increasingly needed a place to address and process the recent backlash against the LGBTQ community (in the wake of tremendous progress, with marriage equality in the U.S.) As a queer person myself, it’s been so heart-wrenching to see the transphobia ramping up over the last several years. I also wanted to continue exploring grief and trauma in ways that are different from my previous books. But the thing that inspired me to turn Something Like Gravity into a love story is that my soul really needed to write about something that was equally as powerful as all of the difficult, painful topics I feel drawn to write about, and in this case, that something became a story about falling in love and finding hope, against all odds.

If you could choose one song to describe your book, which one would it be?

Just one? Okay, the pressure is on… Here goes: “At the Stars” by Better Than Ezra

If your book was going to be made into a movie, who would play your characters?

I have been pondering this question WAY too often for my own good over these past several months as Something Like Gravity has been becoming more of a reality every day, so I can say with total certainty that my ultimate dream team would be Elliot Fletcher as Chris and Katherine Langford as Maia.

Summer is here and we love to go out and enjoy the sun. What drink and place do you think will go with your book to have a perfect book date? 

Strawberry milkshakes at an old-fashioned ice cream shop (I didn’t even have to pause to think about that answer!)

Can you recommend your readers any other books in case they are left hungry for more once they finish SOMETHING LIKE GRAVITY?

Absolutely! All of these books share some common threads with Something Like Gravity in one way or another, and are excellent reads:

I Wish You All the Best by Mason Deaver

The Meaning of Birds by Jaye Robin Brown

If I Was Your Girl by Meredith Russo

We Are Okay by Nina LaCour

Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

The Sun Is Also A Star by Nicola Yoon

What’s next for you?

I don’t think I’m allowed to reveal too much about what’s next, but I think it’s okay to say that I’m experimenting with some different formats like epistolary and verse. Challenging, but also really fun too!

Amber Smith is the New York Times bestselling author of the young adult novels The Way I Used to Be, The Last to Let Go, and Something Like Gravity. An advocate for increased awareness of gendered violence, as well as LGBTQ equality, she writes in the hope that her books can help to foster change and spark dialogue surrounding these issues. She grew up in Buffalo, New York, and now lives in Charlotte, North Carolina with her partner and their ever-growing family of rescued dogs and cats. You can find her online at AmberSmithAuthor.com.

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FFBC: Welcome to the club, Chantress Fury (Chantress Trilogy #3) by Amy Butler Greenfield

Chantress Fury (Chantress Trilogy #3)
by Amy Butler Greenfield
288 pages
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books
Release Date: May 19th, 2015
Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy

Synopsis:

The sea is coming. We are coming. And we will drown you all.

With a song, Lucy can control the wind and the water; she can bring castles and kingdoms to their feet. Since Lucy mastered her powers, King Henry has kept her close as he’s rebuilt England. She’s his best ally—and his workhorse. And now he’s called her to investigate attempted murder: His men claim they were almost killed on the Thames…by a mermaid. All Lucy can glean from the creature they’ve captured is a warning: The sea is coming. We are coming. And we will drown you all. 

And then the floods begin. Swaths of London are submerged as the people scramble to defend themselves against the water—and the monsters—that are flooding their streets. As mistrust of Lucy's magic grows, the king relies on Nat, Lucy's great love, to guide them through the storm. But Nat is cold and distant to Lucy. He swore his love only a year before, and now he calls her “stranger.”

Lucy is determined to defeat this powerful new magic alone if she must. But then she hears an eerie song within the water…can it mean that she’s not the last Chantress after all? 

Sweepingly romantic and crackling with magic, Chantress Fury triumphantly concludes the powerful Chantress trilogy.

Hello Amy! We are super excited to have you once again in our FFBC tours.

Thanks so much for having me! It’s great to be back.

At the start of Chantress Fury, Lucy is at the height of her powers, the most revered—and feared—woman in the kingdom. Water and winds do her bidding; she is the king-maker, the great power in her country. But the magic that gives her this power has also set her apart from everyone she loves. It’s been over a year since she has even seen her beloved Nat, and when a summons from the king finally brings her face-to-face with him again, Lucy hopes her loneliness will finally end. Instead, she is confronted with a terrifying onslaught of sea magic. Faced the monsters of the deep, Lucy must find a way to save the kingdom, but she’s in for the struggle of her life.

My stories can come from almost anywhere, but I’m especially inspired by myths and fairy tales, or by odd stories from real history – the kookier, the better. A big inspiration for the Chantress Trilogy was a 300-year old journal, The Transactions of the Royal Society, first printed in London in the 1660s. In it, great scientists of the day shared their latest findings, reporting on everything from observations of the moon to descriptions of local witchcraft. When you read it, you see that they didn’t have the clear dividing line between science and magic that we have today. To them, magic was absolutely real (though its exact workings were hotly debated). With Chantress I set out to imagine a world like the one they believed in – where science and magic were both real and co-existing. But instead of giving magic to the powerful scientists of the 1660s, I gave it to someone who otherwise would have been very powerless in that society: an ordinary teenaged girl. 

Lucy is a Chantress, a spell-singer, able to hear the music that is everywhere, deep inside everything that exists. She uses that music to create songs of her own that allow her to work magic. She lives in an alternate seventeenth-century England, similar on the surface to the real one, but deeply affected by the subtle workings of magic. In her world, for instance, most of the English nobility were killed off in an explosion called the Great Devastation (think Guy Fawkes, but with a magical twist); young King Henry IX sits on the throne; and Chantress-hunters are waiting to be let off the leash.

Spell-singing Chantress battles sea monsters & discovers what’s monstrous about her own magic.

When I started Chantress Fury, I was dying to know, too! The ending to Chantress Alchemy took me by surprise, but since it was true to character, I went with it – which meant I had to completely re-think the next book. By the time Chantress Fury begins, Lucy and Nat are both very powerful figures in their own right. In some ways that just makes things harder for them – but it made it very exciting for me as a writer, because I could put them right at the center of the kingdom’s life-and-death struggle to survive, and then push them to their limits. 

So hard to do this! I’m still too close to the book to see it clearly, for one thing -- and for another, almost everything I first thought of was a spoiler. But here’s a quote that doesn’t give away too much. It’s something Lucy says to Nat early on in the book: “I was more alone than I’ve ever been. And maybe you’re right; maybe that’s changed me. But in the name of all that’s holy, Nat, how could you walk away from me for a year and a half, and then come back and expect me to be the same?”

I loved writing the scene where Lucy and Nat first lay eyes on each other again – but a mermaid gets in the way.

The very first Chantress cover was stunning, but as a set I love the new covers the best. It’s so hard for me to pick a favorite – I love the opulence of the first one, the mystery of the second, and the wildness and loneliness of the last one.

I guess I’d recommend chocolate and a cup of tea, because I think just about everything goes better with those! But some of the best emails I get are from readers who picked up Chantress when they weren’t in the “perfect mood” for it – they were in the hospital, or ill, or grieving for someone they love. When they write that the book was a wonderful escape for them, and that it took them away from their troubles for a while, I feel very grateful to have given them the kind of refuge that books have always given me. 

Blogging is a wonderful way to find kindred spirits, and bloggers can be incredibly supportive of each other. When I was writing the first draft of Chantress, the LiveJournal community really helped me have faith in the work and in myself. So for me that’s the best part! Personally, the biggest downside is that it takes a huge amount of time, and it’s hard to respond to everyone or to do justice to everything you read, though I wish I could.

A couple of super-secret projects! They’re a mix of fantasy and history, and one of them keeps making me laugh out loud.

Thank you so much for everything, Amy!

Thank you! It’s truly a pleasure.

Follow the Chantress Fury by Amy Butler Greenfield Blog Tour and don't miss anything! Click on the banner to see the tour schedule.

Amy Butler Greenfield was a grad student in history when she gave into temptation and became a writer. Since then, she has become an award-winning author. 

Amy grew up in the Adirondack Mountains and later studied history at Williams College, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Oxford. She now lives with her family in England, where she writes, bakes double-dark-chocolate cake, and plots mischief.

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