Who designed the covers for the Riders of the Apocalypse?
JMK: The incredible Sammy Yuen designed all four covers in the Riders of the Apocalypse series. I wish I could say I had something to do with it, but all I did was say “THANK YOU!!!”
What inspired you to write about the four horsemen and tie them in with serious conditions that we deal with today?
JMK: I had the idea for HUNGER (the first book in the Riders of the Apocalypse series) for 10 years before I finally sat down to write it. I used to be bulimic, and I still have body image issues. It was my agent who finally convinced me to write the book, after I told her I had an idea about an anorexic teenage girl who becomes the new Famine, one of the Four Horsemen, and the book itself would take a hard-hitting look at eating disorders. I’m not sure I ever would have written it if not for her! (Thanks, Miriam!!!) If HUNGER gets people talking about what eating disorders are, and what they’re not, then I’m very happy. I’m not the first person to have an anorexic character become Famine—that was in the comic book X-Factor back in the 1980s—but I do feel I’ve put my own unique spin on it.
Once HUNGER sold, my agent asked me “Which Horseman will you write about next?” And I was like, “NEXT???” So that’s when I came up with the concept for RAGE (a teenage girl who self-injures by cutting herself is given the Sword of War).
LOSS takes a different tack—though it deals with coping when a loved one suffers from Alzheimer’s, at its core the book is about bullying. The story looks at a bullied teenage boy who is tricked into becoming Pestilence. If there’s a message there, it’s bullying is a disease, and it can be cured.
And then there’s BREATH. That one had to do three things: Tell the origin story of Death; tell the story of the teen protagonist, Xander; and answer all the big questions in the series. The book looks at depression and suicidal thoughts. But there’s also a talking horse, so it’s not all doom and gloom.
About the Tour
Each day of The Crossroads Blog Tour, a new research question will be revealed on The Crossroad Blog Tour main page and each day the answer to that question will be found within one of the different blog posts by Crossroads Tour authors. Your job is to get the question, read the blog posts, and collect all answers by the end of the tour.
A Grand Prize of a FREE Kindle, pre-loaded with ebook titles from as many of this years participating authors as possible (some are debut authors and their title may not yet be released) will be drawn using the Rafflecopter entry system and is open TO EVERYONE.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
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