Author and yogi Amy Tintera makes her debut with the very cinematic REBOOT, about teens who reboot after death and are subsequently forced into slavery. Film rights have already been optioned by Fox!
Five years ago, Wren Connolly was shot three times in the chest. After 178 minutes she came back as a Reboot: stronger, faster, able to heal, and less emotional. The longer Reboots are dead, the less human they are when they return. Wren 178 is the deadliest Reboot in the Republic of Texas. Now seventeen years old, she serves as a soldier for HARC (Human Advancement and Repopulation Corporation).
Wren’s favorite part of the job is training new Reboots, but her latest newbie is the worst she’s ever seen. As a 22, Callum Reyes is practically human. His reflexes are too slow, he’s always asking questions, and his ever-present smile is freaking her out. Yet there’s something about him she can’t ignore. When Callum refuses to follow an order, Wren is given one last chance to get him in line—or she’ll have to eliminate him. Wren has never disobeyed before and knows if she does, she’ll be eliminated, too. But she has also never felt as alive as she does around Callum.
The perfect soldier is done taking orders.
YOUNG ADULT: What made you decide to start writing?
Amy Tintera: I started writing when I was pretty young, like 10 or 11 years old, because I loved to read and wanted to create my own worlds and characters. At first, I wanted to write a novel where no one died, because I’d read a bunch of depressing books where the author killed characters I loved. So I wrote a lot of happy books with no stakes as a kid.
YA: Tell us a little bit about your first work. What is different about REBOOT?
AT: REBOOT is largely about what it means to be human. My main character, Wren, was dead for 178 minutes, and she believes she doesn’t have any humanity or emotion left in her. Wren has made some tough, terrible choices in her Reboot-ed life, and I wanted to explore what it means to be human through a character who wasn’t necessarily the “good guy.”
YA: How did the idea for this book/series arise? What are your major inspirations (TV, film, other literature/stories)?
AT: I got the idea for Wren first. I heard her talking in my head, saying she was dead for 178 minutes, and I built the idea for REBOOT around her. I was inspired by books like THE HUNGER GAMES and SHIVER – the characters were in intense life or death situations and I wanted to write something like that.
I was also inspired by THE WALKING DEAD, partly because I was frustrated they weren’t exploring what exactly happened to people to make them zombies, and how much of the person was actually left in there. And shows like BATTLESTAR GALACTICA and BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER are big inspirations to me. They were constantly exploring what good vs. evil means, and asking us to think about what makes us human.
YA: Are zombies the new vampires in the world of YA? Would it be safe to say that REBOOT is a reinvention of the zombie trope?
AT: Zombies might be the new vampires! For me as a reader (and TV and film viewer), I’ve seen a lot of the “people running from brain-eating zombies” stories, so I usually need a new twist on it to be interested. The YA zombie novels I’ve seen coming out recently are doing exactly that – thinking about new ways to tell the traditional zombie story and making it fresh.
As for REBOOT being a reinvention of the zombie trope: Reboots are dead and have come back to life, so they have that in common. But Reboots aren’t rotting corpses lusting after brains. It would be impossible to tell an interesting story from the point of view of a traditional mindless zombie, and I was really set on the reader being inside the head of a Reboot.
YA: Take us through a typical writing day for you.
AT: I don’t really have a typical writing day! I used to write every morning, after work and all day on weekends, but now that I’m a full-time writer my schedule varies. Sometimes I work out and run errands in the morning and write in the afternoon, other times I get up and start writing first thing. I do most of my writing at home. I rarely go to a coffee shop to work.
YA: What’s next for you?
AT: The sequel to REBOOT! It should be out in 2014, so I’m working on edits now. REBOOT is a duology, which I’m really excited about, because I got to pack a lot of action into the second book.