BLOG TOUR: Bryony Pearce Interview
Bryony Pearce
Bryony Pearce was born in 1976 and has two young children. She completed an English Literature degree at Corpus Christi College Cambridge in 1998 and was a winner of the SCBWI anthology ‘Undiscovered Voices’ in 2008.
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I've started to have dreams while I'm awake. I remember music I've never heard ... I've got all this extra stuff in my head, but I'm forgetting things from my own life. I feel like I'm being taken over.
Cassie Farrier has always suffered from terrifying nightmares. On a trip to Germany she recognises scenes from her dreams and finds evidence of a sixty year-old massacre. Fearing for her sanity, her family sends Cassie to a retreat where she meets others with symptoms like her own and finds out that she has lived a number of past lives.
However, the Doctor at the retreat is not what she seems. Cassie and the boy she comes to love must escape the Doctor’s influence but can they also escape the misery of their shared past?
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Describe Angel's Furyin a few sentences
A teenage girl named Cassie has suffered from nightmares her whole life; events lead her to discover that she has lived before and that all her past lives are being manipulated by a fallen angel bent on destroying mankind.
Angel’s fury is a chilling paranormal psychological thriller romance … it is not easy to classify, but it is unique, gripping and appears to be appealing to both genders and all ages, which is wonderful.
What inspired you to write Angel's Fury?
I’ve always suffered from nightmares, so I guess it makes sense that my first leading lady would suffer from nightmares too.
But Angel’s Fury was very much inspired by a visit to the rock of Gibraltar where I had a strange experience.
Many of my nightmares have the same scenery, a town square, white houses and a clock in the middle. I have no conscious memory of ever having seen such a place and thought I had just made it up somehow.
Then I went to Gibraltar.
I had lived there as a child (we left when I was seven or eight) and I thought it would be nice to revisit. While I was climbing the Rock I mentioned to the guide that I’d once lived on the RAF base and he pointed behind me and said something like ‘oh, you’ll have lived there then.’ I turned around and there it was – the scenery from my dreams. It was like being smacked between the eyes! I had no memory of that white square but I had retained that memory so clearly in my subconscious that it was being recycled nightly.
That experience really stayed with me and I knew I wanted to make a story out of it.
The scenes when Cassie goes to Germany and recognises scenes from her dreams, are very much inspired by that moment.
I love all the characters! Who's your favourite and why?
Cassie has to be my favourite character, she’s so complex and has lived with me for so long, it was amazing to write her story and bring her through her trials to see her grow and develop as a person and come out the other side.
But I do have to admit a fondness for Pandra – gorgeous, sociopathic, devil-may-care – she was a lot of fun to write.
In Angel's Fury, Cassie speaks German naturally. Why German?
When I realised that Cassie had been reincarnated I asked myself when in history her previous life must have been. For the purposes of the story it had to be the most horrifying historical period I could come up with. There were a number of contenders, but the holocaust of World War II was the obvious answer. Cassie speaks German because in her previous life she lived in Germany in the lead up to the war.
The fact that my in-laws both speak Germany and were able to translate sentences for me was a help too.
Summer is finally here, what books are in your reading pile?
I have a huge reading pile. I’m taking part in the Bookette’s debut author reading challenge, so I have Miriam Halahmy’s Hidden and Caragh O Brien’s Birthmarked to read. I’m also waiting with bated breath for Sara Grant’s Dark Parties, Paula Rawsthorne’s The Truth About Celia Frost, Lauren DeStefano’s Wither and Kate Harrison’s Soul Beach. I also want to read the new Iain M Banks, Gillian Philip’s The Opposite of Amber and I’m very excited about the sequel to Firebrand, Bloodstone also written by Gillian Philip, which should be out in time for my holiday.
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Thanks again Bryony!
Fantastic interview, I really enjoyed reading it!
ReplyDeleteGreat interview, and I do recommend this wonderful book to everyone! It was interesting to know what made you write it. Thank you!
ReplyDeleteGreat interview. Her experience that caused her to write her book is really neat. I'm a little dream obsessed, so I'm rreally relating to that.
ReplyDeleteSounds like an interesting book!