AUTHOR INTERVIEW - MIKE MULLIN + WIN THE BOOK! (UK Only)

1. What is your name, where were you born and where do you live now?

Mike Mullin. I was born in Denver, Colorado and now live in Indianapolis, Indiana.

2. What is the name of your latest book, and if you had to summarise it in less than 20 words what would you say?

ASHFALL. It’s about a teen struggling to survive and find his family after the Yellowstone supervolcano erupts, plunging the United States into the worst natural disaster in history.

3. Do you have plans for a new book? Is this book part of a series?

Yes, the sequel, ASHEN WINTER, will be published by Tanglewood Press in October 2012. I hope to write a third and final book in the series, although that’s not under contract yet. If ASHFALL sells well, that will help.

4. How long have you been writing?, and who or what inspired you to write?

I changed schools at the start of sixth grade, moving from a regimented school where we walked, sat, and thought in rows and files to a chaotic, noisy, and dirty school where we were—gasp—expected to read and write every day. I wrote my first novel that year, Captain Poopy’s Sewer Adventures, and I’ve been writing off and on ever since.

5. Do you gift books to readers to do reviews?

Tanglewood Press generously gave me a limited supply of Advance Reader Copies, but those are all gone. ASHFALL is available to reviewers via NetGalley, however.

6. How do you come up with the Title and Cover Designs for your book/books? Who designed the cover of your books?

The idea for the cover originated with my editor, Peggy Tierney. The artwork was done by Ana Correal. I love her work! You can see more of it on Flickr or Facebook.

7. Is there a certain Author that influenced you in writing?

Richard Peck. He started writing when he was my age, and he’s still going strong. I’ve read his work since I was a teen myself. He’s also the classiest, most gracious guy you’ll ever meet.

8. Which format of book do you prefer, ebook, hardback, or paperback?

I like paperbacks. Particularly the increasingly rare mass-market size that fit in my pocket.

9. What is your favourite book and Why?  Have you read it more than once?

I keep a list of my all-time favorite books on Goodreads. I’ve read all of them more than once and some of them dozens of times.

10. What are you currently reading? Are you enjoying it? What format is it?(ebook, hardback or paperback)

The Ask and the Answer by Ness. I’m LOVING it. The first book in the series was brilliant, and this one is brilliant and very different from the first—not an easy thing to pull off. I’m reading it in a hardback I borrowed from my library, but I’ll probably buy the whole series in paperback at some point. It’s worth rereading.

11. Are there any New Authors you are interested in for us to watch out for? and Why should we watch out for them?

I really enjoyed Gae Polisner’s debut novel, The Pull of Gravity. It’s a heady mix of Steinbeck, Yoda, love, death, teenage romance, grief, bizarre diseases and pitch-perfect teenage romance. I plan to read everything Gae publishes.

12. What do you think about book trailers?

I love the book trailer a fan, Karin Perry, created. It’s very cool:

{you can embed the trailer in the blog post here. Get the embed code here: http://karinlibrarian.tumblr.com/post/10056869617/book-trailer-for-ashfall-by-mike-mullin

13. What piece of advice would you give to a new writer?

Read. Read a lot. No, read more than that. You need to read deeply in your own genre and broadly in others. Reading is how you learn to craft a novel and how you discover whether your story ideas are fresh or clichéd.

14. Do you or would you ever use a pen name?

I don’t use a pen name and I’d prefer not to. Some days I can’t remember my own name, let alone an extra one.

15.   Where can readers follow you?

Website

Blog

Google+

Twitter

Facebook

Goodreads

Bio

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.

About ASHFALL

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

The first two chapters are available on my website: www.mikemullinauthor.com. You may reprint the first two chapters in whole or in part on your website so long as you do not charge anyone anything to access them.

Social Media Links

Website

Blog

Google+

Twitter

Facebook

Goodreads

Purchase Links

Autographed Copies

Indiebound

Amazon

Barnes & Noble


Don't forget to checkout my review of Ashfall http://jeanzbookreadnreview.blogspot.com/2011/09/ashfall-by-mike-mullins.html


Thank you to Mike for taking the time away from his writing schedule to take part in this interview and provides all the extra information too!




SO TO FURTHER PROMOTE THIS BOOK HERE IN THE UK YOU CAN WIN THE GORGEOUS HARDBACK COPY OF ASHFALL BY MIKE MULLIN THAT JUST ARRIVED THROUGH MY LETTERBOX JUST LEAVE YOUR COMMENT + NAME + EMAIL ADDRESS BELOW(so that I can contact you for your address) A Winner will be drawn (using random.org) on the 21st of October!