Author Interview: Pam Bachorz, author of Drought

photo credit: Louis Torres

Please welcome author Pam Bachorz to GreenBeanTeenQueen. Pam has a new book out, Drought, and is also the author of Candor.

What's the best part about writing for YA? What's the hardest?

The best part of writing YA is the readers. YA readers get so excited when they find a story that they like. They write the coolest e-mails and post the most enthusiastic reviews. Just tonight I was feeling draggy about sitting down to write, and then I got the sweetest e-mail from a reader who had just finished DROUGHT. It made me feel excited about my story again.

The hardest part of writing YA is tuning out the hype when you need to—both about your own stories and about what’s hot in YA right now. The best writing happens, for me, when I can sit at my desk and write like it’s seven or eight years ago, when I was just learning about YA and writing whatever I thought was cool—not even know what other people thought was cool.

Why do you think dystopian fiction has taken off in the YA market in the last couple of years? What's the appeal for teens?

Dystopian is a way to explore our worries—and curiosities—about the world we live in, and how fast technology is moving. That’s appealing to teens and adults, I think. We want to see how other people survive the extremes that we might see in twenty years—or tomorrow. We want to think of what we’d do in their shoes, from the comfort of our own reading chairs!

I know Candor was inspired by you living in a planned community in Florida. Where there any real life expriences that inspired you to write Drought?

DROUGHT is set in the upstate New York woods where I spent my summers a child, and where I still return to every summer. The cisterns that hold the Congregation’s healing Water are sited where I took archery lessons, and the cabins in the story are set around the same small lake that our family cabin overlooks. These woods are my heart-home and now they’re even more special to me, as the home of DROUGHT.

What dystopian novel do you think has the most chance of ever becoming real?

I think THE ADORATION OF JENNA FOX could definitely happen. I don’t want to give away the twist of the book, so I’ll just say I’m sure people are working on the book’s technology element as we read.

Thanks for visiting Pam!

About Drought: (from author website) Ruby dreams of escaping the Congregation. Escape from slaver Darwin West and his cruel Overseers. Escape from the backbreaking work of gathering Water. Escape from living as if it is still 1812, the year they were all enslaved.

When Ruby meets Ford--an irresistible, kind, forbidden new Overseer--she longs to run away with him to the modern world, where she could live a normal teenage live. Escape with Ford would be so simple.

But if Ruby leaves, her community is condemned to certain death. She, alone, possess the secret ingredient that makes the Water so special--her blood--and it's the one thing that the Congregation cannot live without.

Drought is the haunting story of one community’s thirst for life, and the dangerous struggle of the only girl who can grant it.

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