Power writing couple Melissa de la Cruz and Michael Johnston bring us Frozen, an action-packed thrill-ride with mystery, adventure, romance and magic, not to mention an effective message on our environment and how we live today…
Frozen is set in 111 CD, one hundred and eleven years after the Big Freeze turned the Earth into a permanently frozen tundra. New Vegas, a city once covered in bling, is now blanketed in ice. But some things never change. The city is still a 24-hour hedonistic playground and nothing keeps the crowds away from the casino floors, never mind the rumors about sinister sorcery in its shadows. Natasha Kestal is a young blackjack dealer who is looking for a way out. Like many, she’s heard of a mythical land called “the Blue,” a paradise where the sun still shines and the waters are turquoise. More importantly, it’s a place where Nat won’t be persecuted, even if her darkest secret comes to light. But passage to the Blue is treacherous, if not impossible, and her only chance is to hire a ragtag crew of mercenaries led by a cocky runner named Ryan Wesson to take her there. Danger awaits them at every point of their journey, even as Nat and Wes find themselves inexorably drawn to each other. But can true love survive the lies they’ve told and the enemies that threaten them?
YOUNG ADULT: What three words come to mind when you think of writing?
Melissa de la Cruz and Michael Johnston: Pajamas. Caffeine. Joy and misery. Sorry that’s four.
YA: Tell us a little bit about your latest work. What is different about Frozen?
MdlCruz & MJ: Frozen is a post-apocalyptic epic fantasy, so it’s different from Blue Bloods and Witches of East End. It’s a rollicking adventure set in 111 years after the apocalypse, and something new is stirring in the ice… Whereas our other books are about hidden magical societies in OUR recognizable world, this is a whole new world. It’s destroyed, it’s broken, it’s filled with trash.
YA: What message, if any, does this piece hold for its readers? Ecological or otherwise?
MdlCruz & MJ: I think we would like our readers to think deeply about our world, and our habits. We generate a lot of waste, where does it go? Also how we live today – addicted to our smartphones, eating processed food – is this a good way to live? We struggle with it ourselves.
YA: Take us through a typical writing day for you.
MdlCruz & MJ: We work from 8:30am to lunch, take a break around noon or so, back to work at 2pm, then work till about 6pm when we have dinner with our daughter. Put her to bed at 8pm and then we’re back to work at 8:30pm until about 10:30pm. That’s pretty much every day, but we do take weekends off to be with her. Unless we’re on deadline, then weekends are workdays too. Mike and I work all the time, we love living in our books so it’s hard to come up for air.
YA: Besides the classic ‘never give up’, what advice would you give to aspiring young writers today?
MdlCruz & MJ: I would say concentrate on the writing, on the craft, instead of rushing to publish. I would also encourage kids to lead a life—go out there, fight with your friends, fall in love, have adventures—have something to write about. It’s great to write about fantasy, but what makes the book work is putting your own experiences in it, your own inspirations, your own soul.
YA: What’s next for you?
MdlCruz & MJ: We have a lot of new projects. The sequel to Frozen is in the works. Mel is working on two new series, The Ring and The Crown, which we’re calling a “Glam of Thrones”, and the Blue Bloods adult spinoff The Vampires of Manhattan. Mike is almost done with his adult epic fantasy, which we’re excited to share with the world.
YA: What other authors, YA or otherwise, do you idolize? Or, what YA books are on a pedestal for you?
MdlCruz & MJ: Mel was a big Diana Wynne Jones fan. Also JK Rowling and SE Hinton. Most of the books we read as teenagers would be classified as YA today: Dune by Frank Herbert, Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien. The Dragonlance series. It by Stephen King. We definitely put all those on pedestals.