Replete with “car chases, explosions, shoot-outs–you name it”, Megan Crewe’s exciting followup to The Way We Fall, titled The Lives We Lost, is a frightening zombie-virus tale in the tradition of Carrie Ryan’s The Forest Of Hands And Teeth in which the zombies are…friendly? Chilling.

YOUNG ADULT: What is your earliest memory involving writing?
Megan Crewe: Dictating stories about my My Little Ponies to my mom so she could write them down on pages and staple them together into books, which I then “illustrated” in crayon.  I’d have been about three–I got started early!

YA: Tell us a little bit about your latest work. What is different about The Lives We Lost and what does it bring to the Fallen World series?
MC: The Lives We Lost is a direct continuation of the story that began in The Way We Fall.  An unfamiliar and deadly virus has almost completely destroyed life in Kaelyn’s small island town, and, she now discovers, the rest of the world.  But Kaelyn’s not ready to give up hope, especially after she finds a vaccine prototype her father was working on, which in the right hands could put an end to the pandemic.
The Lives We Lost is written in regular first person, not the journal format of The Way We Fall, so the action could be ramped up.  Car chases, explosions, shoot-outs–you name it.  And in between the action, the personal relationships in Kaelyn’s group are getting a lot more complicated, with the return of her best friend (and former crush) Leo, and the necessity of leaving their homes behind on a long and dangerous journey.

YA: Take us through a typical writing day for you. MC: Get up, putter around a little as I become more conscious, eat breakfast.  Write for 2-3 hours on my current project.  Take an internet break, answer emails, catch up on social media, have lunch.  Another 2-3 writing session.  In the evenings I try to relax at home, or go out to meet-ups or my kung fu classes.  And somewhere in there, hopefully get some reading in! YA: Can you describe the path to getting this work published? What were the challenges? What was easy about it? MC: The Lives We Lost sold as part of a three book deal for The Way We Fall, which had several publishers interested in both it and a sequel.  So The Lives We Lost was scheduled to be published before I’d written more than a brief synopsis for it.  I’ve never written a book that was already sold before, which definitely brought unique challenges.  Particularly, I had the pressure of knowing that I had to get drafts done by a certain time, rather than the freedom to work at my own pace.  But I’m typically a pretty fast writer, so I didn’t mind that much!  And knowing that the book was already sold took off some pressure too, because I didn’t have to worry about whether it would actually get out there to readers.

YA: What were your specific influences for this book? Films, literature, other stories?
MC: I’ve always found epidemic stories to be particularly frightening.  The only two books that have ever given me nightmares are Stephen King’s The Stand and Carrie Ryan’s The Forest Of Hands And Teeth.  It occurred to me that if the idea of infectious viruses scares me that much, I could probably write a pretty powerful story involving one.
The biggest influence over how my specific epidemic story came about was zombie stories.  It bothered me that zombies always seemed to have such an easy time taking over the world, even though they were so shambling and horrific-looking it should have been obvious to anyone living that they should get away from those things, and not that hard to outrun them.  Wouldn’t a real virus spread faster if it made infected people act friendly toward others instead of attacking them? I thought.  And suddenly I had my virus.

YA: If you hadn’t become an author, what path would your career have perhaps taken?
MC: I love working with kids and animals, so if I wasn’t a writer, I’d probably have a job involving one or both of those.  Actually, I do currently work with kids in addition to my writing–I’m a tutor for kids with special needs.

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