Blog Tour: Jackie Morse Kessler

It’s The End of the World As We Know It
By Jackie Morse Kessler
 

The Apocalypse…what a show! Okay, so maybe that works better with “The Inquisition” and if you’re a Mel Brooks fan. But hey, let’s hear it for books all about the end of the world and other things to do on a Thursday afternoon!

My favorite Apocalyptic book, bar none, is Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Sir Terry Pratchett. Both authors have done wonders with the character of Death in their individual works (one has her as a chipper goth gal, the other has him as a traditionally hooded/robed skeletal figure with a tendency to speak IN ALL CAPS). And working together, the two of them created what has to be one of the funniest Apocalypse stories ever.

But what Good Omens isn’t is a post-Apocalyptic book—that is, the book is all about preventing the Apocalypse. There are many, many books that come from the starting point of everything having hit the fan and most of the people in the world are dead. The “End of everything” isn’t the ending of the story, but the beginning—the Apocalypse has come and gone, and the books focus on the survivors.

I just read Jonathan Maberry’s Rot & Ruin, and I enjoyed the heck out of it. There’s the brutal Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan. Of course, there’s The Walking Dead comic books (to say nothing of the AMC television show), which shows how easy it is for humans to become monsters—and that’s not even considering all the zombies. I also love Stephen King’s The Stand. Nothing like a massive book of Good versus Evil after a man-made plague has wiped out most of the world’s population. There’s also Robert McCammon’s Swan Song, which begins with the world leveled by nuclear blasts, and from there, survival hijinks ensue.

My Riders of the Apocalypse series takes a different tack from the above. The series, like Good Omens, isn’t about the upcoming End of Everything (which is always right around the corner) but more about how the protagonists, in learning to embrace themselves for who they are, stop hating themselves for who they’re not, and discover their inner strength, are able to prevent their own personal Armageddon. (Plus, there’s Death, who looks, sounds, and sings like Kurt Cobain.)

Hunger, the first book in the series, is about an anorexic teenage girl who becomes Famine, one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The second book, Rage, is about a teen girl who self-injures, who becomes the avatar of War. The third book, LOSS, which just hit the shelves, is about a bullied teenage boy who is tricked into becoming Pestilence. And then there’s the fourth book, Breath, which I’m currently writing.

Don’t worry—the Apocalypse is coming. It’s just a question of whether it really is the end of everything…or the start of something new.

What are some of your favorite Apocalyptic or post-Apocalyptic stories?

GIVEAWAY DETAILS (open internationally):

LOSS by Jackie Morse Kessler comes out March 20, 2012!

One lucky commenter below will win a small cover poster of LOSS—and will be entered in the grand prize drawing! The grand prize winner will receive signed copies of HUNGER, RAGE and LOSS—and will get to name a character in BREATH, the fourth book in the Riders of the Apocalypse series. The grand prize winner will be picked on Sunday, April 1, 2012. No foolin’.