Partials: Dark Days of Summer – Dan Wells

So a few weeks ago, I answered the question where in the world would I want to read Partials (you can view my creative answer here). Today I’m hosting Dan Wells on my blog with an interview! To refresh yourself on how much I loved Partials, you can click here.

Amazon | Goodreads | Author Website
Author Twitter | My Review Humanity is all but extinguished after a war with partials–engineered organic beings identical to humans–has decimated the world’s population. Reduced to only tens of thousands by a weaponized virus to which only a fraction of humanity is immune, the survivors in North America have huddled together on Long Island. The threat of the partials is still imminent, but, worse, no baby has been born immune to the disease in over a decade. Humanity’s time is running out.

When sixteen-year-old Kira learns of her best friend’s pregnancy, she’s determined to find a solution. Then one rash decision forces Kira to flee her community with the unlikeliest of allies. As she tries desperately to save what is left of her race, she discovers that the survival of both humans and partials rests in her attempts to answer questions of the war’s origin that she never knew to ask.

Combining the fast-paced action of The Hunger Games with the provocative themes of Battlestar Galactica, Partials is a pulse-pounding journey into a world where the very concept of what it means to be human is in question–one where our sense of humanity is both our greatest liability, and our only hope for survival. – Goodreads

Dan Wells, author of Partials

Try to describe Partials in 10 words or less.

A girl must save the world after it’s already ended.

Do you see yourself writing more dystopian/sci-fi type works in the future, or do you think you want to explore other genres?

Exploring new genres is my favorite part of writing. I’ve written fantasy, SF, horror, thrillers, dystopian, farce, and historical, and I’m always looking for new things to try. That said, I’ve loved working in the dystopian genre and I have some cool ideas on new directions to take it, so that might be what I go to next. We’ll see.

Quick – what’s the first thing you see when you look at your desk? Try to link the object to Partials.

I don’t have a desk, which I suppose is a link to Partials in and of itself because of the repurposed nature of everything Kira and her society use–they don’t have the resources we do, so they have to make do with whatever they can scrounge together. I can’t sit, because of a tailbone injury, so I built a standing desk out of boxes and a piece of wood, kind of like a podium, and I work on that.

If you could be the author of any already published work, which would it be and why?

I would LOVE to have been a writer for Arrested Development. Some of the smartest, most finely-orchestrated plotting and dialogue in any medium.

Note from Tara: If you haven’t seen Arrested Development, you need to do so. Right now.

What’s a typical day like for you? Give us a rundown!

I wake in the morning, ideally around 8 or 9 but more recently, thanks to my 8-month-old baby, around 6 or 7. During the school year I get my older kids ready and send them off around 9, and sit down with my computer around 9:30 or 10; during summer vacation my schedule is pretty much the same, for some reason. I’ll spend an hour or two answering emails and doing interviews and occasionally writing a blog post, and then head over to my friends’ house around the corner to write in their basement–I have an office at home, but I also have five kids, and that home office gets pretty noisy and distracting even with the door locked. I’ll stay at write until usually 6, come home, eat dinner, hang out with my family, get them all in bed by 9 or 10, and then spend the evening on one of my three main hobbies: reading books, watching movies, or playing board games. I have a pretty extensive collection of all three–220 boardgames at last count. I usually go to bed around 1 or 2, but I’m trying to force myself to go to bed by midnight now that my baby wakes me up so early. And that’s pretty much my day. When I’m under a tight deadline (like right now) I usually throw out a lot of the other stuff and write for several extra hours.

Check out the rest of the blog tour

5/21 Aprilynne Pike at AwesomeSauce Books
5/23 Bethany Griffin at Fiktshun
5/25 Elizabeth Norris at Literary Exploration
5/29 Veronica Roth at My Overstuffed Bookshelf
5/30 Aprilynne Pike at AwesomeSauce Books
6/1 Bethany Griffin at Fiktshun
6/4 Elizabeth Norris at Literary Exploration
6/6 Veronica Roth at My Overstuffed Bookshelf
6/12 Aprilynne Pike at Books with Bite
6/14 Dan Wells at Hobbitsies
6/19 Veronica Roth at The Mod Pod Bookshelf
6/21 SJ Kincaid at SciFi Chick
6/26 Aprilynne Pike at Books with Bite
6/28 Dan Wells at Hobbitsies
7/3 Veronica Roth at The Mod Pod Bookshelf
7/5 SJ Kincaid at SciFi Chick

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