Title: MAYFLY
Author: Jeff Sweat
Pub. Date: May 8, 2018
Publisher: Feiwel and Friends
Formats: Hardcover,
eBook
Pages: 320
Jemma has spent her life scavenging
tools and supplies for her tribe in the their small enclave outside what used
to be a big city. Now she’s a teen, and old enough to become a Mama. Making
babies is how her people survive—in Jemma’s world, life ends at age seventeen.
Survival has eclipsed love ever since
the Parents died of a mysterious plague. But Jemma’s connection to a boy named
Apple is stronger than her duty as a Mama. Forced to leave, Jemma and Apple are
joined in exile by a mysterious boy who claims to know what is causing them to
die. The world is crumbling around them, and their time is running out. Is this
truly the End?
Welcome Jeff!
1. Did you always know you wanted
to be a writer or did you want to be something else?
The first job
I ever wanted was to be a street sweeper, the guy who drives the machine that
cleans up after the horses in the 4th of July parades. Thank
goodness that didn’t last. But I’ve wanted to be a writer even before I knew it
could be a career.
I couldn’t
read or write well as a kid—I had three kindergarten teachers, and I think I
fell through the cracks. Something clicked in the first grade, and I started to
love to put words on paper. I wrote my first story in the shape of a cake
mixer…and that was it.
2. How long does it take you to
write a book from start to finish?
Like any other deadline, I find it
takes almost exactly as much time to write a book as I think I have to finish
it. The first draft of Mayfly took exactly a year, on a self-imposed deadline.
The sequel to Mayfly has been in the works for a couple of years—but that’s
mostly because I’ve taken a break to work on rewrites of the first book!
3. How do you come up with themes
for your stories?
It always
starts curiosity and a “what if.” For Mayfly, I realized I’ve always been
obsessed with the end of the world. I grew up in the 80s in the Cold War, and
it wasn’t a question if the world
would end, but when. As a reader and an author, I started looking for
fascinating whys—why the world would
end.
Then I read a
study that said that humanity had two major population booms: when we developed
agriculture, and when we became old enough to have grandparents, at about age
30. Having “old” people around meant a memory to find food and water and avoid
danger. It meant calmer heads to avoid war. So I asked myself: what would
happen to the world if no one ever got old? We might survive, but civilization
as we know it would cease to exist. And I knew that was the story I had to
write.
I try to write every day, but other
than that I haven’t been able to set a specific time. My favorite time to write
is after dinner, right before I walk the dog.
5. How are you able to balance
other aspects of your life with your writing?
With a really up-to-date calendar
and a near-constant dose of adrenaline. I wrote the first draft of Mayfly with
a more-than-full-time job and a young family. The only time I could write was
late at night after I put the kids to bed, so I started to write standing up so
I didn’t fall asleep.
It starts with the thing your
protagonist wants, and the things that will keep her from getting it. Then you
add in things that surprise your readers and keep them on their toes.
7. What was the hardest thing about
writing a book?
Starting it. I hear so many writers
who tell me they have an idea for a book, but it never leaves their heads. I
had the idea for Mayfly at least five years before I began writing it, and it
kept on building in my head until finally I thought, “What else are you waiting
for?” I signed up for a fiction writing class at UCLA so I’d have a deadline,
and haven’t looked back.
8. Do you have a favorite
character?
My characters
tend to be kids that, however flawed, I would have liked to have known when I
was a teen, that I’d be proud to have as a kid of my own. But I think I like
Pico the best—he doesn’t fit into this world of his, he knows it, and he simply
doesn’t care. My favorite character in all books is Elizabeth Bennet in Pride
and Prejudice.
9. Where do you write?
In
my home office mostly, but I spend a lot of time writing on my back deck, in
libraries and bars. The key is that I can’t know the Wifi password. Once, in
England, I wrote sitting at the foot of a lighthouse!
My
office looks like my wife’s and my worlds thrown together, in a shade of pink
that neither of us like. My half has an unplayed guitar, several yo-yos, and a
rack of my black-framed glasses, which I buy in bulk from China. My wife’s half
is full of knitting projects and
design books, and her half always overtakes the other.
10. When deciding on how to
publish, what directed you to the route you took?
I wanted a publisher who would be
enthusiastic about my book, which I found! As I looked for agents, I found that
personal relations really matter—I queried a number of them, but the only ones
who gave it a serious look were the ones referred to me by friends. My agent,
Cheryl Pientka, was the agent of one of my best friends, Vanessa McGrady.
Cheryl was busy, but Vanessa almost insisted that she read it!
11. What kinds of things do you
like to do outside of writing?
(Trying to remember a world outside
of writing) I love basketball, skiing, and carpentry. I thought carpentry might be my day job at one point—until
someone shot me in my head with a
12. What kinds of advice would you
give to someone who wants to start writing?
Write every
day—not just because of creating good habits, but because when you write every
day, the story never leaves you. Then new characters and plots emerge when you
walk the dog, when you take a shower, when you’re thinking of nothing.
Creativity tends to live along the margins, and you have to give it an
opportunity to emerge.
13. What is your favorite book?
favorite author? Do you have an author that inspired/inspires you to
write?
I read
anything I could get my hands on, from comic books to junk novels to slightly
less junky novels. The ones that had an impact on me were the Prydain
Chronicles by Lloyd Alexander, S is for Space by Ray Bradbury, and The Daybreakers
by Louis L’Amour. My current favorite book is probably Their Eyes Were Watching
God, by Zora Neale Hurston. My writing’s been heavily influenced by the three
Rays: Raymond Carver, Raymond Chandler, and Ray Bradbury.
14. Do you have any go to people
when writing a book that help you with your story lines as well as editing,
beta reading and such?
I have a pretty large network of
beta readers, and I’m always looking for more. But the people I rely on the
most are my wife, Sunny—who’s not a writer but really gets plot and story—and
my incredibly talented writer’s group. They workshopped the entire first draft
of Mayfly, which was such a gift!
15. Are you working on anything
now?
There’s a whole world left in Mayfly,
so I’ll be going there first. After that, I have a contemporary YA book based
on my experience moving to New York for college, a couple of screenplays, and a
sci-fi series that asks, “What if Europeans never came to America?”
16. Tell us 5 things that make you
smile
·
Views of the LA skyline
·
Travel to other countries
·
Indian food
·
My family
·
My one-eyed cat, Cleo
17. Tell us 5 things that make you
sad
·
My kids, arguing
·
Lines for brunch
·
The current political climate
·
Thinking about the things that make
me sad
18. If you could travel anywhere in
the world to visit a place so you could use it as a background for a book,
where would it be?
Ireland. Last summer, my family and
I moved to the United Kingdom for a month. We lived in a lighthouse in Northern
Ireland, and rode bikes to a Stone Age fort on a cliff. It’s somehow green,
historic and wild, all at the same time.
Thanks for stopping by, Jeff! Great to have you here!
About Jeff:
Jeff Sweat has made a living from words
his entire career, starting out as an award-winning tech journalist for
InformationWeek magazine and moving into marketing.
He led the content marketing team for
Yahoo and pioneered its use of social media. He directed PR for two of the top
advertising agencies in the country, Deutsch LA and 72andSunny. He now runs his
own Los Angeles–based PR and marketing agency, Mister Sweat.
He grew up in Idaho as the middle of
eight children—seven boys and one girl—and attended Columbia University in New
York. Jeff lives in a big blue house in Los Angeles with his wife Sunny and
their three kids, two cats, and a racing greyhound.
He loves to travel and writes everywhere
he goes, even when there's not a desk. He likes karaoke, motorcycles and
carpentry. He was once shot in the head with a nail gun, which was not a big of
a deal as it sounds. But it still hurt like crazy.
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Tour Schedule:
Week One:
5/1/2018- What A Nerd Girl Says- Review
5/2/2018- RhythmicBooktrovert - Review
5/3/2018- The Cover Contessa- Interview
5/4/2018- To Be Read- Review
Week Two:
5/7/2018- Twirling Book Princess- Excerpt
5/8/2018- Bri's Book Nook- Review
5/9/2018- K.L. Knovitzke – Author- Excerpt
5/10/2018- A Dream Within A Dream- Review
5/11/2018- Confessions of a YA Reader- Excerpt
Week Three:
5/14/2018- Daily Waffle - Excerpt
5/15/2018- F A N N A- Review
5/16/2018-Book-Keeping- Review
5/17/2018-Two Points of Interest- Review
5/18/2018- The Underground- Interview
Week Four:
5/21/2018- Buried Under Books- Review
5/22/2018- YA Books Central- Interview
5/23/2018- Sincerely Karen Jo- Review
5/24/2018- Wishful Endings- Interview
5/25/2018- Jena Brown Writes- Review
Week Five:
5/28/2018- Eli to the nth- Review
5/29/2018- Sweet Southern Home- Guest Post
5/30/2018- Simply Daniel Radcliffe- Review
5/31/2018- Books A-Brewin'- Excerpt
I love dystopian books and shows. I prefer the trying to survive off the land part rather than the fighting other people part (last season of TWD, cough, cough).
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