Blog Tour: Hover by Melissa West Interview + Giveaway

Hover by Melissa West
(The Taking, #2)
Release Date: August 13, 2013
Publisher: Entangled Teen; 250 pages

On Earth, seventeen-year-old Ari Alexander was taught to never peek, but if she hopes to survive life on her new planet, Loge, her eyes must never shut.

Because in this world, pleasure is everything, held up by a ruling body that keeps their people in check by giving them what they want and closing their eyes to what's really happening around them. The only hope Loge has is to move its people to Earth, and they have a plan.

Thousands of humans crossed over to Loge after a poisonous neurotoxin released into Earth’s atmosphere, nearly killing them. They sought refuge in hopes of finding a new life, but what they became were slaves, built to wage war against their home planet. That is, unless Ari and Jackson can stop them.

But on Loge, nothing is as it seems…and no one can be trusted.

Find it: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, The Book Depository, Goodreads

Melissa lives in a tiny suburb of Atlanta, GA with her husband and daughters. She pretends to like yoga, actually likes shoes, and could not live without coffee. Her writing heroes include greats like Jane Austen and Madeleine L'Engle.

She holds a B.A. in Communication Studies and an M.S. in Graphic Communication, both from Clemson University. Yeah, her blood runs orange.

GRAVITY is her first novel.

Website/Blog/Twitter/Facebook/Goodreads/
The Taking Series on Facebook

Having not yet gotten the chance to read Hover but having read Gravity and thoroughly enjoying it, how did you come up with a concept of these aliens and how different they are from what perceive aliens to be?

I wanted to play on the alien theory of ancient astronauts. It suggests that aliens terraformed Earth and are responsible for much of our advancements. From there, I developed the idea of them travelling through the trees, and the rest is the foundation for The Taking series. Many assume that I’m a fan of Stargate, because that show evidently used the term Ancients as well, but I have actually never seen it.

What types of challenges did you face writing a sequel opposed to writing the first novel? Were the expectations from the fans intimidating?

Many authors consider Book 2 to be the hardest book. There’s a wealth of expectation. Readers assume they are going to get resolution to the story, but that resolution won’t come until book 3. It’s hard to balance it all. For me, HOVER was about building the tension in my story until it feels as though it could explode. Then the explosion, appropriately, will be COLLIDE.

If you could choose one song as the theme song for Gravity, what would it be? How about Hover (if it’s not the same song)?

Fix You by Coldplay for GRAVITY

Blown Away by Carrie Underwood for HOVER

How long did the process of writing and editing take for Hover compared to Gravity? Did you find it a bit easier to swallow since it’s your second time through the routine or just as difficult the second time around?

Both were difficult in different ways. My edit schedule for HOVER was a bit insane. I basically rewrote 90% of the book in 10 days, then went through the final rounds of editing in just a few days from when I turned in that draft. Crazy. 

If your books weren’t about aliens, say Entangled requested you made them about something else, what other type of supernatural element would you have chosen it to be?

Tricky question! When I originally wrote GRAVITY and entered it into the writing contest that it placed in and that helped get me published, there were really no alien books in YA. I tried to come up with something different. Now there are lots! So, if I had to choose another element, I would research to find something that wasn’t already popular. Not sure what that would be!

What’s one YA book that you would recommend to your readers? Something you couldn’t put down but once you finished it, the story & characters stayed with you for awhile?

I really liked THE DIVINERS by Libba Bray.

 
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Thank you so much to Melissa West for taking the time to answer my questions. Thank you to Rockstar Blog Tours for allowing me to be a part of this tour - I really am grateful! And last, but not least, thank you to Entangled for supplying me with an ARC to read & review in exchange for an honest review. (You can check out my review of Hover here) If you'd like to check out the rest of the tour, the schedule is below!

Tour Schedule:
8/12/2013- K-Books- Interview
8/13/2013- Bookish Things & more- Review
8/14/2013- Chocolate Coated Reviews- Guest Post
8/15/2013- Library of a Book Witch- Guest Post
8/16/2013- Step Into Fiction- Interview
8/19/2013- Book Sniffers Anonymous- Review
8/20/2013- Chapter by Chapter- Review
8/21/2013- The Book Hookup- Character Interview
8/22/2013- Jenuine Cupcakes- Guest Post
8/23/2013- The Book Goddess- Review