1. What prompted the two of you to want to write this book? What inspired you?

Alexander: I’ve been a Trekkie and a fan of Science-Fiction, in general, all of my life. The Amaranth Chronicles, for me, was less about the world-building and more about the characters. I had a series of both profound and shocking events happen in and around my life in my teens and twenties. Those events necessitated a certain type of processing that ended up being part of our characters’ backstories and development.

Christopher: Well, the inspiration to write the book mostly came from Alex coming to me, way too many years ago, and asking me to help him with this project that, at the time, was called Intergalactic Space Crusaders. He wanted help bringing the villain to life, and when I saw what he was doing I was hooked. I simply could not resist the opportunity to work with an old friend on a project that would let us tell an entertaining story that could also be a love letter to so many other science fiction and adventure stories that formed my childhood and, yes, my adult life. I like to keep a running list of things people think were inspirations for one thing or another in the story. Lots of those things are right, but even the ones that aren’t are interesting and a little gratifying because it means we tapped into a little of that person’s childhood magic just as we tried to tap into our own.

2. What came first, the plot or the characters?

Alexander: Believe it or not, the ending. I remember sitting on Chris’ couch when I was 21 years old pitching the ending to a story I needed help writing. I had what became the last 10 chapters already worked out in my head but had no idea how the characters got there.

Christopher: The characters. A lot of the characters actually predate the final or even semi final version of the plot, and many of those characters turned the final story in some interesting directions that even we didn’t anticipate. We did have the ending early on though, long before many characters were in their final forms, and way way way before we had the beginning of the book.

3. Are any of your characters based on real people?

Alexander: Yes and no. There’s no one for one, but like Aurelius I had someone who was like a brother to me pass away abruptly. Also, people who knew me in my 20’s said I just stuck a younger version of myself into the story with the Aurelius character but that wasn’t as intentional as it might seem. Lithia was a more conscious effort to put my unedited thoughts and feelings into the story. I can, also, take some credit for much of Cade’s most sarcastic moments. All the other characters were really born out of necessity and years of reading and watching science fiction.

Christopher: Yes, whoever your favorite character is, they were based on you. Okay, seriously, yes and no. There are lots of people who found their way into the characters, although there are no one-to-one comparisons. It’s more suitable to say that each is a sort of composite of several important people in my life. Some who are still in my life and many who, for one reason or another, are not. I like to look at a line here, a character action there, and think of it as a little tribute to someone who means a great deal to me.

4. Are there parts of the story that were edited out? Will you revisit those?

Alexander: Oh sure. But nothing story-changing. We’re certainly looking at concepts and character moments that we could expand on in future stories.

Christopher: Absolutely, there are lots of ideas that got cut out or altered so dramatically that it really is a completely different thing. There are old scenes that were dropped when some other element was changed, characters that just didn’t fit, and a lot more that is really hard to explain. Some of it is still actively part of our thought process and a lot just isn’t, though that does not mean it is gone forever. You never know when the time for an old idea has finally come, and a cut scene may find a new home in a completely different story.

5. Is there another book on the horizon?

Alexander: Haha, ask Chris. I’m not willing to do this without him.

Christopher: Yes and no. I do like to think of Deviant Rising as a fairly self-contained story, but that doesn’t mean that there are no plans for future stories. Alex and I have talked about and even sat down to write bits of a sequel. For my part, while writing the story was an experience I’d not trade for anything, writing a story with someone else is a difficult experience compared to just writing on your own. I’d need to know that there was real demand for another Amaranth Chronicles book before I commit to the process of actually writing it.

6. What was the hardest part about writing this story?

Alexander: The hardest part of writing is the balance of two people’s schedules, who lead radically different lives, and trying to capture both of our inspirations. It’s kind of like trying to catch lightning in a bottle.

Christopher: Semicolons, they baffle me.

 7. What is your favorite book of all time?

Alexander: Ender’s Game or the Martian. I’m also a big fan of a lot of H.P. Lovecraft’s short stories.

Christopher: Whatever I just finished. Seriously, I have no way of picking a favorite book, it is like trying to pick your favorite tooth. Arguably some are more important than others, but at the end of the day, you’re really just glad they are all still there. Although I do often add new books to my library and I don’t ever add new teeth, actually this metaphor  is getting away from me a little bit. Okay, books, yes, I love them all, I can’t pick, though I have a goodreads page that is rather full of things I have enjoyed and things I am enjoying now, feel free to go check it out.

8. What’s next for Lithia? Can you give us any spoilers?

Alexander: We have adventures for our characters planned. Lithia will be pilot and captain of the Amaranth, the vessel that will take them to all sorts of strange new worlds.

Christopher: What’s next for Lithia? Well, I can’t give any spoilers because nothing is printed yet, and until that moment anything is subject to change. That being said, Lithia has a hard road ahead of her. She’s in a new place, she barely knows anyone, except her brother, she has a new relationship that formed under very extreme circumstances that she’ll have to figure out, oh yeah, and the U.P.E. is probably not going to just give up after she helped destroy one of their capital ships, so she’s got that to look forward to.

9. What’s one thing you want readers to take away from The Amaranth Chronicles: Deviant Rising?

Christopher: Honestly, I don’t really want to answer that, I don’t want to tell people what they should be taking away from the story. I know what I put into it, I know what I got out of it, but I want that to be something for each individual. If Deviant Rising made a few hours of a person’s life more enjoyable, if it captured their imagination at all, then I am happy with that.

10. Besides Lithia, does any other character hold a special place in your heart? If so, why?

Alexander: Definitely Captain Xander Pacius. Like I said earlier, real people inspired aspects of our characters. I had a mentor in my 20’s that was named William Pacius. I wrote an entire blog article on how he inspired me and the impact he had on my life.

Christopher: Cade. Cade captured my imagination during the writing of the book in a way that no other character really did. Of all the characters, he’s probably the most fun to write, but he’s also probably the hardest to write too.

11. What's with all of the art on the media page, wallpapers and blog posts?

Alexander: We’ve always seen The Amaranth Chronicles as multimedia. My vision, in particular, has always been to CG animate a series for something like Netflix or Hulu. Art is one of the ways to inspire people to interact with our universe and one of the ways I keep myself inspired in life in general.

Christopher: Alex has way too much time on his hands.

12. I see you two are listed as the authors of a book with similar cover art on amazon listed as “The Amaranth”. How does this book fit in the series?

Alexander: Frankly, it doesn't. “The Amaranth” was an early early version of what became Deviant Rising when we were too young to know what we were doing and hired a very dodgy company to help us with editing and distribution. We’d like to distance ourselves from “The Amaranth” as much as possible. Thanks for bringing it up… :P

Christopher: It fell out of a wormhole from an alternate universe. One where we were even worse writers and made a terrible publishing choice. Thank the gods we don’t live in that universe.