Interview with Amber Skye Forbes
Author of When Stars Die
Released October 22, 2013
Released October 22, 2013
Where are you from?
I am from modest Augusta, Georgia and live in Grovetown. I will also
give out the address and phone number, because I do want stalkers and
paparazzi. I generally prefer to be photographed while doing random
ballet in my house, for all you future stalkers and photographers out
there.
What inspired you to write your first book?
The Salem Witch Trials, really, though I wouldn't say a whole lot
inspired my the book. I had a witch obsession at the time of its
inception, so I knew I wanted to write about witches and put a new spin
on them that I'm sure no one has ever done before--and I don't think
anyone still has yet, even though the book is already out. My witches
are born of the Seven Deadly Sins, so they are despised in the universe
of The Stars Trilogy. And there is also a lot of other surprising things
about my witches that don't exist in your typical witch books or books
where witches are hated and burned.
As for the rest of my novel, it seriously all came from
my head. I can't even tell you how, but I was fifteen when I started
WSD, so my memory might just be muddled.
How did you come up with the title?
There is a point in the book where Amelia is mulling over stars and how
when they die, they leave a lasting impact. Through WSD, Amelia strives
to leave that lasting impact on her world. She doesn't want to quietly
disappear from her world, as many witches do. She wants to go out with a
bang, like a star, if she has to, and be remembered. So there is a lot
of stars theology in the book, and stars are and will be an enormous
motif throughout the entire trilogy.
How did you go about naming your characters?
The names aren't symbolic, although the name in the epilogue is. I just
choose names that I like at the time, and I looked up 19th century names
and saw Amelia was one and decided to name her thought. There is also
an Oliver Cromwell, which sort of alludes to the deceased Oliver
Cromwell. There is also her little brother, Nathaniel, and I just like
that name. Then there are the names of the antagonists, Sash, Asch, and
Gisbelle. I don't know where Sash and Gisbelle came from--probably my
head--but Asch came from the Asch in Tales of the Abyss since they are
similar in personality.
Is there a message in your novel that you want readers to grasp?
I want readers to question everything they currently know and
believe in their lives. My book has a very negative view of religion and
touches upon the hardcore beliefs of fundamentalist Christians and
other hardcore believers of other various faiths. I am going to admit
upfront that I am agnostic, that I do believe in something, but I don't
know what it is. However, I don't have a negative view of this almighty
being. If this almighty being exists, I believe it does love us, but it
wants us to have free well, that it doesn't want us to spend our days
worshipping and lauding it. I see it as a sort of parent. It cares for
us in its own way, but like any good parent, offers us free will so we
can live our lives as we want to. It doesn't want us to abuse this free
will, but, well, free will has its own nature, and so people are going
to abuse it. Therefore, I don't question why God lets bad things happen.
People make bad things happen--not an almighty being.
I sort of poke fun at the people who have a very scary
view of God, that God will send you straight to hell if you commit a
sin, and that God does not believe in redemption. If you're homosexual,
you're a sinner, and you'll go to hell. My book pokes fun at stuff like
that and brings it to the extreme because people don't realize that they
believe what they believe because they were told to believe it. We have
free will, but the only way we can use it is by realizing we are
essentially brainwashed from birth into believing what we believe. You
can call it social conditioning, but I believe that is a politically
correct term for brainwashing. So they only way you can free your mind
is by questioning everything you know. Now it's still okay to believe
what you believe, as long as you truly want to believe it--not because
you were told to. Some people need religion; I don't.
People in Amelia's world don't do that. They hate
witches because they have been told from birth to hate them, because
their religious text tells them to. And Amelia knows this because she is
a witch.
What are your current
projects?
I am working on the sequel to When Stars Die, The Stars Are Infinite,
which will have a new protagonist. I also hope to get back to work on
When Heaven Was Blue in December, so that I MIGHT have two books come
out next year, if AEC is able to juggle both. It's about a suicidal teen
rescued from a suicide attempt by a puppeteer and doll maker who then
decides to take him to a strange town called Stolentime. So it's
essentially a book about mental illness in a fantasy setting. I am also
outlining another book on mental illness currently titled, The Hours
That Winter Blooms, which will be a YA literary contemporary. Also, I
know I need to get outlining the third book in The Stars Trilogy, whose
titled I haven't determined yet, but will have the words stars and
collide in there somewhere.
How have your personal
experiences affected your writing?
The dark times in my life have affected my writing. I had an
anxiety disorder and mild depression in the eighth grade upon writing
the sequel to When Stars Die. So that affected the darkness of the book,
and that darkness leaked over into When Stars Die. I still have an
anxiety disorder, but it's co-morbid with my bipolar disorder. My mental
illness inspired When Heaven Was Blue, and will probably continue to
inspire stories to come because mental illness, especially bipolar
disorder, does something new to you every day, and so your thoughts
constantly shift to how you feel and see things. So that in itself can
inspire a lot of stories and characters.
How long did it take you to
publish your first book, after you started trying?
It didn't take long at all. AEC Stellar Publishing was my first choice,
and I got accepted by my first choice. Someone on Tumblr commented that
I cheated myself by going with a new house, but my experiences with
them prove otherwise.
What advice would you give to
someone who "runs out of creativity" when writing?
I'd probably say just take a break. You can't force creativity.
You really can't. It only brings on frustration, which then continues to
stem the flow of creativity, and you don't want that.
If you could work with any
author who would it be?
John Green hands down. Even though I write across genres and he
doesn't, I still love his books and still love YA contemporary literary,
so I think our combined minds would come up with something awesome.
Author Bio:
Amber Skye Forbes is a dancing writer who prefers pointe shoes over
street shoes, leotards over skirts, and ballet buns over hairstyles.
She loves striped tights and bows and will edit your face with a Sharpie
if she doesn’t like your attitude. She lives in Augusta, Georgia where
she writes dark fiction that will one day put her in a psychiatric
ward…again. But she doesn’t care because her cat is a super hero who
will break her out.
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