Hi guys this is my first interview with an author I am super excited to welcome Amy Balog the author of Black, White And Red to my humble blog. Anyways here is a mini bio to get us started.
Mini Bio
Amy Balog was born in Hungary in 1991 and has been living in London, England since 2011. She has always been drawn to the dark and incomprehensible. Her main inspiration for writing comes from surrealist and expressionist art, eastern and western philosophy, and experimental music and cinema. She also has a strong interest in psychology, mental illnesses and dreams. She has a bachelor's degree in Biological Sciences and a master's in Science, Technology and Society. After working as a science journalist and later a medical editor, she realized that all she really wanted to do was write fiction.
Interview
What
was the hardest part of writing this book?
The
hardest part was writing the gory parts. I'm a lot more into the
psychological aspects of horror than the graphic presentation of
violence, when it comes to both reading and writing. Having said
that, one of my objectives when writing this book was to get out of
my comfort zone, and conceiving the bloody scenes had turned out to
be an exciting mental experiment.
What
character in your book are you least likely to get along with?
Vincent and George – the former because he doesn’t believe dreams are important, and the latter because he doesn’t think René Magritte was a great painter.
Are
any of the characters you create based on you? Or your personal
experiences?
Both
Jessica and Milla express some of my views and opinions during their
conversations, especially when they discuss the nature of dreams and
reality. However, I wouldn’t say that either of their personalities
is a good reflection of mine. On the other hand, most of the male
characters are based on people I have encountered in my life. I hope
they don’t recognize themselves, because they probably wouldn’t
be happy about being murdered!
Did
you have any alternative endings to this book?
I
did consider making the ending a little less obscure, but gave up on
the idea pretty quickly. After all, one of the things I love the most
about writing is the potential to make people think!
How
many unpublished and half-finished books do you have?
When
I start something I like to finish it, so I don’t have any
half-finished pieces of work. I’m currently looking for a publisher
for my first full-length novel, Sleeping Village, which I’ve
written over the past two years. It’s a story about hope, despair,
captivity, injustice and liberation. The protagonist, Klara, refuses
to be confined by her environment, so she has learned to seek refuge
in her dreams. She lives in a world where most people accept their
fate, but she has a fire that burns inside her: a desire to be free
and to know what is on the other side of the wall. The village,
called Nurvote (from the German "nur volk", meaning "the
only people"), was founded by some of the Nazi leaders who had
escaped to South America before the end of the Second World War.
However, the oppressed and impoverished community has been taught an
alternative version of history, and they do not even know that there
are people living on the other side. Klara is the first person to
venture out, in her dreams (or reality – she cannot tell the
difference after a while), into what she hopes is a beautiful free
world. But she is greatly disappointed with what she finds outside.
What
drew you to mental illnesses?
I’ve
always been fascinated by altered states of consciousness and
alternative perceptions of reality. Exploring mental illnesses is
only one of the many ways to show how fragile any society’s
collective sense of truth is.
What
kind of research do you do, and how long do you spend researching
before beginning a book?
For
Black, White and Red, I did a lot of research on serial killers – a
subject that really fascinated me in my late teens, when I wrote this
book (but didn’t publish it until recently). I watched a lot of
interviews to get an idea of the way they think, behave, and what
they perceive as their motivation for their crimes. I’ve also been
reading a lot about dreams and mental illnesses since an early age,
but I wouldn’t call that research, since that’s something I’ve
always been doing out of interest. On the other hand, for my recently
finished novel, Sleeping Village, I’d done a couple of months’
research on Germany during the Second World War, as well as the old
Norse/Germanic religion.
What
do you like to read in your free time?
I
read a lot of philosophy, poetry and non-fiction for inspiration. My
favorite authors are Comte du Lautréamont, Friedrich Nietzsche,
Edgar Allan Poe and Charles Baudelaire.
What
do you think about the ebook revolution?
From
the reader’s perspective, it’s probably the greatest invention in
publishing since Gutenberg’s press! It just makes all forms of
written work so incredibly easy to access. But I personally still
prefer to turn actual pages, and I love the smell of books. For
authors, it has made it much easier to get our work out to potential
readers, but it hasn’t made making a living out of writing any
easier. But then again, being a writer has never exactly been the
safest career choice!
What
is your writing style?
I
would describe my writing style as poetic and symbolic – or, at
least, that’s what I’m aiming at! Although I write prose almost
exclusively, my style has been most influenced by symbolist and
surrealist poetry. I like using poetic devices that are less commonly
seen in short stories and novels.
What
is your favorite part of the book?
The
ending, because that’s the part that will make the reader think the
most about their own perception of reality.
Jessica Walker can't remember anything prior to the last two years of her life. She's spent these two years driving aimlessly from city to city and country to country. Since she has no money for hotels, she spends most nights with different men she meets in bars on the road. Not only do these men satisfy her accommodation and sexual needs,
but also her intense hunger, which is not for ordinary food...
She's tormented by gruesome nightmares and visions about murdering everyone
she sleeps with and then consuming some of their flesh. And when she wakes up,
the men are always gone - they either give her a reason for their absence or
she makes it up herself.
Jessica's life takes an unexpected turn when she has an accident and her car is completely wrecked. She continues her journey with the girl in the other car: Milla. They fall in a passionate love, and Milla, who's an artist, creates a world where only the two of them exist. They travel to this other dimension through Milla's drawings and the art they create together. Jessica is happier with Milla than she's ever hoped to be, but she has a problem that keeps her frustrated... She's unable to experience the height of sexual pleasure without having someone else's blood all over herself.
Are her nightmares reality? Is reality just a dream? She hopes that the answer is in
a mysterious envelope, which she refuses to open until the moment of final
desperation arrives...
My Thoughts:
This story was definitely original, It's very detailed, it actually felt like it was much longer than it actually was. The characters were well built, the world building was pretty good. I think that the most trouble that I had with this book was trying to figure out what was really going on. The ending was a major twist in my opinion. I loved the reality-hallucination. Overall it was a great read, confusing and yet still very charming, I will most likely read this book again just for the hell of it in the near future.
