Author Interview: Sara Grant & Giveaway

Sara Grant

Books:

Dark Parties

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In a world shrouded in fear and lies, how can you shed light on the truth?

Sixteen-year-old Neva lives in Homeland, an isolated country separated from the rest of the world by the Protectosphere. The government insists there’s nothing beyond its borders, but as Homeland’s resources dwindle, people, girls mainly, have started to go missing. If there’s no way out of the Protectosphere, where are they going? Suspecting the government is lying about everything, Neva and her friends stage a Dark Party in the hope of uncovering the truth and finding the freedom they dream about.

I was thrilled to be able to participate in another webinar! This one featuring debut author, Sara Grant! (You might remember last month I participated in a webinar with Cat Patrick.) There were also some fantastic bloggers that participated too; Michelle at Galleysmith, Stacey at Pageturners, Sarah at Green Bean Teen Queen & Sara at Novel Novice. How lucky are we!?! We had the oportunity to talk to Sara on the phone and ask her some questions. Below I have the transcription of my questions with Sara, be sure to stop by the other blogs to check their questions!

Sara Grant: I'm Sara Grant, and I'm calling you from London, England. I was telling Chelsy that I'm glad this isn't video because I'm in my pajamas.
This is my first webinar, and I am very excited to be joining you all. It's also my debut novel, Dark Parties, which is a dystopian YA novel. And it comes out on August 3rd. And it's a very exciting process, and I'm really looking forward to your questions.

Kristi: Hi, Sara. I'm Kristi from The Story. My question is all of the characters--well, most of them--in Dark Parties have an identity mark. What would your identity mark be?

Sara Grant: Oh, gosh. I would say, if I had to choose one, it would probably be the snowflake, because I quite like what that means. It's about diversity, it's about being unique.
But, also, I think the interesting thing is that they all believe it's something external. But, I'm more interested in what identity mark you'd have for yourself and what my friends would say about me.

Kristi: Brilliant. Thank you.

Sara Grant: Kristi, can I ask you a question?

Kristi: Sure.

Sara Grant: Are you from Indiana?

Kristi: Yes, I am. I saw that you are, too.

Sara Grant: A small town? Yes. So, I wanted to know what small town you're from.

Kristi: I grew up in Hagerstown, which is right outside of Muncie. And now, I live in Avilla, which is right outside of Fort Wayne. I saw you were from…

Sara Grant: Washington, Indiana, a small town--.

Kristi: That's very cool.

Kristi: Did you write Dark Parties--did you have an intended message that you wanted the readers to take away after reading the novel?

Sara Grant: I think probably if you look at anything that I've written, my fundamental belief is that one person can make a difference.

I think that idea underlies what I write, and if you read the next thing and the next, it probably will be there at least on a very subtle level.

What I hope the book does is ask a lot of questions about identity, be it national or personal. And the other interesting question that I wanted to explore personally was how far would you go for freedom.

I would like to believe that in a similar situation I would be the one that stands up and gives the rallying cry. But I also know that's naïve because it's really easy to be settled.
I wanted to look at Neva and kind of push her and see what it would take for a character to do extraordinary things to make a difference in the world.

So, I think it's more about the questions I hope people ask a result of reading Dark Parties.

Kristi: Excellent. Thank you.

Sara Grant: I just want to thank you very much for hosting me. It's a great experience for me to get to talk to people who've read the book and get feedback from them.

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