Genre: Young Adult, Paranormal, Horror, Zombies, Fantasy, Thriller, Contemporary, Fiction, Mystery, Supernatural
Synopsis:
For fans of Holly Black and Nova Ren Suma, a gripping, hauntingly atmospheric novel about murder, revenge, and a world where monsters—human and otherwise—lurk at the fringes.
When seventeen-year-old Breezy Lin wakes up in a shallow grave one year after her death, she doesn’t remember who killed her or why. All she knows is that she’s somehow conscious—and not only that, she’s able to sense who around her is hiding a murderous past. In life, Breezy was always drawn to the elegance of the universe and the mystery of the stars. Now she must set out to find answers and discover what is to become of her in the gritty, dangerous world to which she now belongs—where killers hide in plain sight and a sinister cult is hunting for strange creatures like her. What she finds is at once empowering, redemptive, and dangerous.
Tense, complex, and wholly engaging, Shallow Graves is a stunning first novel from Kali Wallace.
Hello Kali! Welcome to the FFBC ! We are super excited to have you in our FFBC tours!
Could you tell our Book Addicts a little bit about Shallow Graves?
I would love to! Shallow Graves is a young adult horror novel about a teenage girl named Breezy who comes back to life a year after she's murdered--only she's not quite the same as she was before. She's a supernatural creature now, a revenant with the ability to sense when other people have killed, and she quickly discovers there's a whole world of monsters and magic lurking just beneath the mundane world she's used to.
She sets off on a trip across the country to learn about herself and this new world. Along the way she meets many new and interesting people, some human and some monsters, some good and some bad. She has to figure out where she fits and if there's any way for her to go back to the life she had before.
If you had to pick one adjective to describe your main characters what would you choose?
Angry. That's not the word she would choose to describe herself, but that's what she is.
How did you come up with the story? Did you find inspiration in any other story/movie/show and how has this affected your writing?
There isn't one particular thing I can point to, but I was definitely influenced by other stories. There are so many modern/contemporary fantasies out there where our sympathies are with the people who hunt and kill monsters, I just wanted to play around with the idea of telling the story from the monster's point-of-view.
Is there a specific scene that you had the most fun to write?
This seems a bit silly in retrospect, considering how much else there is going on in the book, but some of the most fun I had was when describing what Breezy senses when she's in the presence of a murderer. It's different for every person, and I probably got a little (okay, a lot) carried away thinking about how to convey those differences descriptively.
Was there anything you had to research or this book, that you would be worried if someone found in your browser history?
I spent so much time researching different ways to hide a dead body. I learned all about how long it takes to dig a grave, how deep it has to be to hide a body well, how long it takes bodies to decay, when the smell starts and when it stops, when the maggots show up, how one might cover up the odor… And none of those details even ended up in the book. But, hey, if any of my friends ever need help hiding a body, I've got them covered. (Dear NSA: JUST KIDDING. Thanks.)
What you would you say is harder to write: The first sentence of a story or the last?
Everything in-between! No, seriously, I tend to come up with first lines pretty easily, and the last line is set once I figure out the tone and feel I want the ending to have. Once I've decided on those, I rarely change them significantly--I tweak and rearrange a little, but they become fixed points fairly early in the writing process. What's harder for me is making sure everything growing out of the first words and leading up to the last earn those lines.
What do you find yourself fangirl-ing over?
Everything. All things. I fangirl easily and frequently and with great enthusiasm. Books I adore, movies I enjoy, TV shows I obsess over. If I love it, I am not shy about it. Currently: Star Wars, Hamilton, The 100, both Arrow & the Flash, The Expanse, any and all NASA missions to faraway planets plus all astronauts who post beautiful pictures for the world to see, about seven thousand writers whose work I adore, and I'm currently rewatching all of Star Trek: The Next Generation from the beginning… Do we have all day? I could go on all day. I don't believe in guilty pleasures or irony aloofness when it comes to things that make me happy.
What is your favorite snack/drink to eat when you read?
Coffee. Coffee. More coffee.
Favorite book of 2015?
My favorites tend to change by the hour, but for now I'll go with All the Birds, Singing by Evie Wyld, which is beautiful and brutal and menacing and strange, with an inside-out structure and one of the most unique main characters I've ever read in a novel. It's stunning.
What is next for you?
I am currently in the middle of revising my second novel, a YA ghost story/mystery called THE FUNERAL TREES, which will be published in 2017. After that, I think I will write something with spaceships. It's been too long since I've written something with spaceships.
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Kali Wallace studied geology and geophysics before she decided she enjoyed inventing imaginary worlds as much as she liked researching the real one. Her short fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, F&SF, Asimov's, Lightspeed Magazine, and Tor.com. Her first novel will be published by Katherine Tegen Books in 2016. She lives in southern California.
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