I signed up for taekwondo classes at Indianapolis ATA Black
Belt Academy. There I met Ben Alexander, a third-degree black belt. He was
extraordinarily patient and kind to the bumbling white-belt author who’d
stumbled into his dojang. But during
Friday Night Fights—when we strap on pads and spar—he could pretty much kick
the crud out of me despite the fact that I have at least 6” in height and 80
lbs. on him. So I thought, aha! Here’s the perfect model for my main character
in
ASHFALL, and Alex was born.
How difficult is it to write from the perspective of a 16
year old boy?
I can tell from the question that you probably haven’t met
me. I’m incredibly immature. Yeah, not nearly as hard as it should be.
Alex's martial arts training saves his butt on many
occasions. I know you are also proficient. Have you ever had to use it to
defend yourself in real life situations?
No, thank God. And even though I’ve now earned my black
belt, my first choice in any real-life situation will be to run away. In a real
fight, even the “winner” gets hurt.
So, I love Darla. She's such a strong and smart
character, plus she is almost 2 years older than Alex. (hubba hubba) How did
you come up with her character? Why did you make her older?
Darla is partly based on my wife, Margaret. She’s just as
tough, loyal, and smart as Darla. (Although she can’t fix our cars, darn it!) I
made Darla older in part because Margaret is a year and a half older than I,
and in part because I knew from the beginning that Alex and Darla would become
romantically linked. The whole guy-wants-to-get-into-girl’s-pants trope is kind
of clichéd and boring, so I figured I’d flip it around. Darla being older than
Alex makes that more plausible, I think.Darla’s mechanical abilities are based on my brother, Paul.
In fact, I emailed him every time I needed Darla to do something MacGyverish. “Um,
so Paul, all the power is out and you need to recharge some batteries. How
would you do it?” So Darla is sort of a weird amalgam of my wife and brother. I
really hope Paul doesn’t read this.
What are some of your favorite books told from a male P.O.V. or written by a
male author?
Unwind by Schusterman, Holes by Sachar, Ender’s Game by Card, Charlotte’s
Web by White, Where the Wild Things
Are by Sendak, The Chronicles of
Narnia by Lewis, The Lord of the
Rings by Tolkien, The River Between
Us by Peck, BZRK by Grant, You by Benoit, Epitaph Road by Patneaude, The
Uplift War and Startide Rising by
Brin, and Dune by Herbert. I’m sure
there are more I love—those are just a few favorites off the top of my head.
It's the Apocalypse! What three items do you want to have
with you? What three items can you NOT live without?
I don’t have a go-bag or any kind of well-thought out plan
for an apocalypse. Actually, that’s not
true—my plan for a supervolcano eruption like the one I depict in
ASHFALL is
really simple: die. My only priority is to find Margaret, my wife, and we do
have a plan about where to meet if we’re separated in a disaster. In starvation
situations, men tend to die off much faster than women (we have more muscle and
less fat than women on average, so we need more fuel and start with less) and
people over 35 die off much faster than younger people (we’re superfluous from
an evolutionary standpoint). So I’m doubly doomed.
If I thought the disaster were something short term—i.e.
survivable—my first priority would be water, second warmth, and third medical
care. Lack of those things will kill you a lot faster than lack of food. If I
had a go-bag, I’d probably put a hatchet, a pan, and a plumber’s spark lighter
in it. Then I have fire and the means to boil water. The fourth thing would be
all the spare medicine in my cabinet.
If post-volcanic-eruption Alex could tell his
pre-volcanic eruption self only one thing, what would it be?
If you see a guy with a big target tattoo on the back of his
head, run the other way. Fast!
What is Alex most afraid of in this new world he's been forced to acclimate
to?
Alex’s biggest fear is himself. He’s not self-aware enough to
verbalize it quite that way, just as I wasn’t at his age. But both of us
struggled with an inner rage and propensity to violence. Both of us were forced
to cope with the self-loathing and fear that is the aftermath of violence. What if I hadn’t stopped fighting? One
of the defining moments of Alex’s childhood was when he walked away after
kicking his sister’s bully in the face, rather than continuing to fight. One of
the defining moments of mine was when I held another boy’s head in my hands and
somehow found enough self-control not
to smash it against the sidewalk. Even after a supervolcano, there are no
monsters beyond us as terrifying as the monsters within.
In
Ashfall, Alex
confronts a world in which he must use violence to survive. One of the pivotal moments in the story comes
when Alex has an opportunity to kill a man who has severely wounded him. Alex
chooses to flee instead, searching for a place where he can die in peace. When given a stark choice between survival
and retaining his humanity, Alex chooses his humanity. But instead of dying, Alex meets Darla and
discovers a new reason to value survival.
I love seeing similarities between authors and their
characters. What do you and Alex have in common? What about you and Darla?
Alex is Ben Alexander on the outside and my teenage self on
the inside. I’m not much like Darla—she’s based on my wife and brother.
Quickie Q&A
Favorite ice cream?
Häagen-Dazs Pineapple-Coconut.
Place you'd most like to see/visit
I’d love to go back to northeast Brazil—Recife, Fortaleza,
and Natal.
Weirdest thing you've done?
I taught my niece some taekwondo once. Not weird, you say?
The impromptu class was conducted on the roof of my 2-story Victorian house.
Favorite words?
The End (I finally finished a draft!)
Thanks again Mike, for doing this!! I appreciate it very much. :)
Thanks again for hosting me, it was a pleasure!
Hope you enjoy
ASHEN WINTER—it’s available to bloggers on
NetGalley now, and it’ll be out October 8
th. There’s a big party in
Indianapolis on October 7
th and
you’re all invited!
Mike Mullin’s first job was scraping the gum off the
undersides of desks at his high school. From there, things went steadily
downhill. He almost got fired by the owner of a bookstore due to his poor taste
in earrings. He worked at a place that showed slides of poopy diapers during
lunch (it did cut down on the cafeteria budget). The hazing process at the next
company included eating live termites raised by the resident entomologist, so
that didn’t last long either. For a while Mike juggled bottles at a wine shop,
sometimes to disastrous effect. Oh, and then there was the job where swarms of
wasps occasionally tried to chase him off ladders. So he’s really hoping this
writing thing works out.
Mike holds a black belt in Songahm Taekwondo. He
lives in Indianapolis, Indiana with his wife and her three cats. ASHFALL is his
first novel.
Many visitors to Yellowstone National Park don’t realize
that the boiling hot springs and spraying geysers are caused by an underlying
supervolcano. It has erupted three times in the last 2.1 million years, and it
will erupt again, changing the Earth forever.
Fifteen-year-old Alex is home alone when the supervolcano
erupts. His town collapses into a nightmare of darkness, ash, and violence,
forcing him to flee. He begins a harrowing trek in search of his parents and
sister, who were visiting relatives 140 miles away.
Along the way, Alex struggles through a landscape
transformed by more than a foot of ash. The disaster brings out the best and
worst in people desperate for food, clean water, and shelter. When an escaped convict injures Alex, he
searches for a sheltered place where he can wait—to heal or to die. Instead, he
finds Darla. Together, they fight to achieve a nearly impossible goal:
surviving the supervolcano.
Excerpt
I have ONE hardback copy of Ashfall to giveaway!
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