Big 4 with Cels: Lara Morgan

1. The Rosie Black Chronicles are set 500 years into the future. Why did you choose a science fictional landscape? Or did it choose you?

It was a definite choice to set it in a Sci Fi landscape because the idea for Rosie’s world came from me thinking about the kind of place Earth would become if the current problems associated with global warming aren’t dealt with, but I also have a great love for space opera and space westerns and I wanted to also write about a world that had space travel as well, so of course it had to be Sci Fi.

2. You describe your protagonist as a 16 year old Banker. Can you explain a little about your world and her place in it?

The world Rosie Black lives in has much harsher environmental and social conditions to what we have today. It is a hotter place and many of the world’s coastal cities have been swallowed by rising sea levels, climate refugees have infiltrated the major continents, water shortages are common place and an incurable disease known as the MalX is killing people off – especially if you’re poor.

In Rosie’s world, unless you are wealthy, you only drink recycled water, rarely eat real meat and exist on a diet of soy protein replacements and seaweed products. Politically the Earth is basically run by a global government called the United Earth Commission which has satellite representatives in the continents, known as The Senate in Rosie’s part of the world.  Rosie’s place in the world is almost as low as you can get.

Newperth is divided into social and economic classes with the top of the rung being Centrals – who live in the centre of the city and have various holiday estates – followed by the Rim dwellers, Bankers and at the very bottom, the Ferals who have no housing and live in camps in the ruins of the old city. Rosie is a Banker and lives in the housing complexes along the banks of the river, a prime MalX infection zone, and she has to struggle to help her dad make ends meet. As a Banker her prospects are few and it is only due to the help of her aunt she is able to go to school.

3. How are the Rosie Black Chronicles different from the plethora of paranormal fantasy in the marketplace? How does the SF setting add a point of difference?

Well I think it’s really different because Rosie is more in the dystopian camp than the paranormal. There are no supernatural elements in the book and it is more a futuristic adventure story with romantic elements than paranormal fantasy so the SF setting is definitely a point of difference. The greatest difference, I think, is that I have set it in Australia and reference strong post global warming themes. I’ve also mixed in space travel and planet colonisation in with the dystopian elements – what I call my Star Wars influence – and I don’t think other YA dystopian novels out there have done that.

4. Which of your character’s in your books Burn’s Brightest?

I would have to say Rosie because she has to be so independent and tough. She comes up against some very frightening people but never quite loses hope despite the loss she suffers. Hope is important and she carries it with her and never gives up, no matter how bad things get she manages to keep going despite her fears. She’s a hero in the true sense of the word.

Lara is currently on Blog Tour. You can find details of it here:

https://www.facebook.com/therosieblackchronicles

To win a giveaway of Equinox (Rosie Black 2) – head straight to:

https://www.facebook.com/BurnBright