A Message from Hilary
Hilary’s Story
PFD Story Title: Lucky
PFD Chapter: Eleven
Main Character: Arie, a girl with no family, a missing leg, and no one to trust – except maybe a guy she kind of knows
Teaser
Taking a deep breath, she knelt next to Bas one last time, driving the tailspin of emotion in the other direction. Bas would tell her to keep moving: the chemicals would run out soon. She’d lost people before. She’d make it through this. Find new people.
Humanity was just one big lost and found now.
Mini-Interview
How does Prep for Doom compare to other things you’ve written?
My Starbright series is dystopian – it’s kind of like what happens 100 years after Prep for Doom! I’ve had a lot of fun restructuring society after a major population cleansing, but going backward in time to visualize what was happening in the moment of destruction was very enlightening! It actually caused me to add a new scene into one of my novellas, where they find evidence of the violence to which people will resort in order to survive.
What is your favorite thing about this project?
The collaboration! The sense of community we have in the PFD group is so refreshing, and it’s made each of our stories better, I think, to see what everyone else is doing. I haven’t just written a story, I’ve made so many friends!
What was it like working with the other authors to create such an integrated anthology?
Like I said above, it was flat-out fun. The enthusiasm our group has for writing (and for Facebook stickers) is just amazing inspiration. It gave me a sense of validation as a writer, to be included in a group like this! This book is full of absolutely amazing stories.
Have you ever experienced a major disaster that made you think about the end of the world scenarios?
A few years ago, our local area had an ice storm – not much happens in small towns, so people still just call it “the ice storm,” and we all know. It knocked out power for nearly everyone in a two-hour radius, for a couple of weeks. People had to bunk with friends, family, and sometimes neighbors. We had to work together – a lot of people didn’t have heat in negative degree temperatures, so it was a fairly dangerous situation. The first thing my husband did when it was all over was buy a generator!
What do you think would be the scariest kind of apocalypse?
Does alien invasion count? I hate “creatures.” Not knowing what something might be able to do to you and your planet creeps me out. The book/movie War of the Worlds was one that got to me for a very long time.
Tell us one thing people don’t know about you or might be surprised to find out?
I don’t keep a lot of secrets, but a lot of my students and friends would be surprised that I’ve recently been a little obsessed with coloring. I’m always so productive! But I bought myself a mandala coloring book and some nice markers and pencils. It’s very soothing – in my crazy life, the concentration involved in coloring is therapeutic. Plus I like pretty things.
Tell us a little about your Prep for Doom characters and story.
My main character Arie is a girl who has been through a lot – the death of her father at a young age, the loss of her leg, and now she takes care of her uncle and runs her dad’s pawn shop. She’s used to giving orders, in other words! But when her tiny sanctuary is threatened, she has to leave everything she’s built and put her trust in someone she really doesn’t know that well. Her personal struggle in trusting someone is almost as hard as her physical struggle to survive – a scenario a lot of us could relate to, I think.
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