The Event: Nemesis Book Launch
Where: Barnes and Noble at the Arboretum, Charlotte NC
When: Tuesday, March 21
Who: Brendan Reichs and RenƩe Ahdieh
This was by far one of the most original panel discussions Iāve ever attended for a book launch, and it might be one of my favorites! Ā Brendan came prepared with a list of random questions for him and RenĆ©e to start off the event. Ā Those in attendance were treated to a lively conversation where we learned that Brendanās least favorite word is Pamphlet and RenĆ©eās is one that rhymes with āoist,ā although I think everyone dislikes that word (not just you, Brad!). Ā Both authors told about their Hogwarts houses, Brendan apparently tried to rig the quiz to get Gryffindor, but still ended up a Ravenclaw (Yaaaaas!) with an Eagle Owl patronus (#Same). Ā RenĆ©e is a proud Slytherin, who used to lie about being a Gryffindor, apparently a very Slytherin thing to do and the patronus of a rat, which she is fine with becauseĀ Ratatouille.
My favorite part of this part was that after asking the audience to choose a number between 1 and 50, they took turns reading a small snippet from each otherās newest releases to the crowd. Someone hollered out 23, so I got this part on video for everyone! They then followed up with a brief summary of their inspiration for these books and what they are about. You can definitely tell these two are good friends and are hilarious together.
After asking each other a few rounds of questions about their books, Brendan was equipped with a Polar Express Conductors hat full of random rapid fire questions for himself and RenĆ©e, and coincidentally, those of us in the front row. Some of these conductor questions included Magic Wand or Light Saber, Hogwarts Headmaster or Starfleet Captian, Ghost or Ghostbuster, Prehistoric Times or the year 3010, and on and on. Ā It was pretty fun and I think it allowed the audience to feel more engaged, although Iām a bit partial since I was able to do the participating.
Brendan and Renée then signed books for the crowd (and there was an impressive one!).  Check out more photos below sprinkled between my interview with the star of the evening, Brendan Reichs!
Midsummer Reads (MSNR): Thanks so much for sitting down with me, are you excited?
Brendan Reichs (BR): Iāve very excited, tonight is the first night Iāve ever done a book event for Nemesis, so itās a big deal.
MSNR: Yes! And itās in your hometown.
BR: It is, itās fun to do it at home. Itās actually a little nerve wracking to do it at home just because you know a lot of people in the audience, so itās not like having that distance you have with a normal crowd, but itāll be great.
MSNR: Are a lot of people you know coming?
MSNR: Thatās how I would be; Uh, Iād better see you or someoneās going to get hurt.
MSNR: So this book is super complex.
MSNR: I was reading it and I was like, SO MANY THINGS HAPPENING. Could you describe it in one sentence to a reader?
BR: I actually try. Thatās why it was so hard to actually sell the idea because trying to describe it was too crazy to get it into one sentence. Basicallyā¦
MSNR (interrupting because Iām rude): You can describe it in a run-on sentence
BR: I would describe Nemesis as Min is a girl at 16 years old and every two years on her birthday she is murdered by the same person except she doesnt die like a normal person, instead she wakes up about a half a mile away without a scratch on her every single time. So on her 16th birthday after sheās been murdered for the 5th time sheās finally had enough and decides she needs to figure this out. Ā No one is really paying attention to her because thereās this world wide calamity going on where thereās an asteroid heading towards the planet and no one knows when itās going to hit. And thereās this bit national/international human existence story going on. So thereās very little attention being paid to the trials of a teenager in Idaho.
MSNR (Interrupting, again, because Iām the worst): Right, because no one pays attention to teenagers.
BR: Right, exactly. And thereās another character, and this book has been fun because itās the first time Iāve written a male point of view in my career, so Noah is having the same things happen to him except that heās a little bit less stable than Min. Ā Heās a ā kind of one of those guys that on the outside he ā heās a rich kid and sheās a poor kid ā heās trying to keep everything together but really he is a mess. Because heās been having the same thing happen to him but he doesnāt trust himself to know that itās even real. So these two things are happening and they eventually decide and they start to investigate that everyone around them starts to be suddenly implicated and you canāt trust anyone. And they find out that they might be at the center of a vast government conspiracy that may implicate all life on Earth.
MSNR: That is a big run on sentence. Iām okay with it.
MSNR: So when I was reading it, I found it to be kind of a commentary on human emotion and the way that human nature really plays into the certain aspects of the two characters, specifically, and how they react to this outside force thatās coming onto them. Ā Very much like Lord of the Flies, like, they are put in this situation, how are they going to react?
BR: That is an essential influence, and I think the publisher likes to use the tagline of āOrphan Black meets Lord of the Flies,ā which is an interesting combination, but thereās no good parallel anyway. But thatās what you want and I appreciate that you say that, because you want the story to be about the characters. Ultimately thereās a lot of plot going on in this book and if you stick with it it will all unwind itself, but it winds up pretty heavily at the beginning where youāre not really supposed to know what the hell is going on for a large portion of the book, and then itās really good that itās supposed to be centered on the characters because ultimately thatās where every story either fails or survives is on how good the characters are, because the best plot in the world doesnāt survive if you donāt care what happens. So I spent a lot of time trying to put the characters together, I hate the term strong female protagonist because that implies that your female antagonist has to be masculine or different in a way, you know, I just like to think of her as a strong person, and it shouldnāt be noteworthy that she is female, and it was interesting to get to write a male characterās perspective, although Iāve not read the entire breadth of YA, but Iād never read a YA where the male lead was basically kind of a mess.
(Literally this whole time Iām nodding my head and agreeing, because Brendan has taken over the interview **in a good way**)Ā
BR (continued): So i thought that would be fun because thatās normally assigned to a female character, so you get to overcome their internal difficulties, which can be boring, but what if this is a 15 to 16 year old boy who is putting the good face out there but doesnāt really have an idea of what he is doing with his life. I mean what is happening to him and stuff. So that was the motivation for that. If you like the characters then thatās exactly what Iām about.
MSNR: I actually assigned them songs: Um, I put Min as being very much like Titanium by David Guetta and Sia.
MSNR: And then I put Noah as more of the Bleachers, I donāt know if youāve heard of them, um, Jack Antonoff, and itās called I Wanna Get Better. Itās about mental health and screaming at himself āI wanna get better,ā I want to be better than this, and thatās kind of exactly how I see Noah.
BR: Somewhere in the blogosphere (*waves* hey everyone!) thereās a, and I believe itās for YA Highway, Iād have to look it up, but I did make two playlists. On the Min Playlist, the first song is a Halsey song, because when I listened to her album that just clicked to me, I was like, this is that kind of angry but not a pushover type vibe that I was getting. Like she was pissed off and isolated, but sheās also not asking for favors.
MSNR: Which I really like. Because sometimes girls are perceived as being, you know, weak and asking for help a lot. At least in the South, which is what I grew up with.
BR: And thereās some great YA being written right now with female lead characters, so this is in no way sort of any genre defining effort, just that in the beginning the came fully formed to me, and that she would be isolated and damaged by what had happened to her, but NEVER broken by it. Just that sheās a fighter and she stays that way even though it does have itās affects. YOu know she acts like she has no friends..
MSNR: Awe, but I like Tack though. Even though he never knows when to shut up.
BR: No, he doesnāt And Tack is sort of my character, and every one of my books that I write, thereās basically one character thatās sort of me talking through the book, you know what I would say in each situation, because Iām kind of a smart ass that doesnāt know when to be quiet either, and thatās sort of Tack in this book. Ā Heās basically saying the things that I would be saying when I shouldnāt be, you know, running my mouth.
MSNR: Honestly thereās a little bit of all of us in Tack, probably, especially when we were teenagers and never knowing quite when to be quiet.
THIS IS THE SPOT WHERE WE TALK ABOUT SPOILERY THINGS.Ā
PROMISED BRENDAN IT WOULD BE OFF THE RECORD *SINGS* LALALALALALA
BR: This was the last piece that fell into place for the book. Iām a big planner and when you write books like this that are so plot oriented they have to make sense and you have to keep track of whatās happening.
MSNR: So letās just refer to it as āThe Twist,ā so where you plotting the book and then āthe twist,ā fell in or you were influenced by outside research?
BR: Most of the time the best ideas that come to me when Iām writing come to me about 2/3rds of the way through the first draft. This is when Iāve been living with the idea for about two months, and Iāll wake up one day, and typically in the shower, it will come to me and will have connected overnight. And this was one of the last pieces to come in and it was really three book ideas that all really came together in this crazy boo, which is why itās so overbaked in terms of that thereās so much in it and because I had all this stuff and I managed to slot it all in together.
MSNR: I know, but I like that it has so much in it because it keeps you on your toes. I literally had to put it down to go to sleep, and I was so concerned about trying to figure out what was happening!
BR: And this is the stuff that I like to readā¦
Renée Ahdieh (RA)  shows up being adorable: Totally crashing!
RA (to BR): Whatās up, how are you feeling?
MSNR: This is weird, but you smell really good. (I still think this is weird but I had to keep this in haha)
BR: She always smells good, itās a signature.
RA (wanders away, being fabulous): *laughing at us* I do like that.
MSNR: So, Iām not going to lie. The guy in the black suit? I totally pictured him as Agent Smith from the Matrix the whole time, and maybe thatās because I grew up with the Matrix, but yeah.
BR: No, thatās fair. And for our generation it would be an Agent Smith type- I mean- for me he looks a little different. Although for me, and this is probably not something I should admit to an audience, but I find the way the character looks, and in the book Iām consistent in the way the character looks but in my head thatās never how the character looks. Ā itās just a weird dissonance that no oneās ever called out before because no one knows what things look like in my head.
MSNR: In my head he looked like Agent Smith.
BR: Right, for me heās more of a Guy Pierce, but yeah you know itās like a flat hair, flat face individual. And I just finished drafting the second draft of the sequelā¦
MSNR: So we are going to learn more about the project?
BR: It gets darker and deeper and a lot of the Lord of the Flies aspects are really going to come to the fore, because one of the questions I was dealing with was, the main premise, which was that I wanted to fight the finality of death, and what if death was not final; but not in like a zombie way or a ghost way or a resurrection way, but legitimately if it just didnāt work. Like, you died but you didnāt.
MSNR: As long as Tack isnāt Piggy the whole time.
BR: Right. Well, thereās a lot of, and you know I read Lord of the Flies, and you realize only two people die in that.
MSNR: Yes, but you get it.
BR: But they played it and itās so beautifully written and you get their dissent. And with my book, Iām hoping to get that same thing, but also that a lot of people die. Because you know with Minās experience in this book, death has not been permanent and that is such a central question. How would you deal with that? How do you deal with the idea that something that you know should be the end of something isnt? And you canāt really control it?
MSNR: I think the last question I have for you, because I donāt want to keep you too long, is that why you decided to do it on their birthdays, and you know not onā¦
BR: That is a question that will be revealed, and thereās a lot of little detail strings that are still out there and thatās because you donāt really know at the end of Nemesis, what is next. This book leads you to a point, but it doesnāt take you past that. Ā And a careful reader would ask themselves, āwait, why was this happening,ā but I havenāt gotten to that yet. Ā Thatās a great answer. You know if I didnāt answer it, āOh, itās in book 2!ā And then Iām like, will you write that down and send it to me? Just in case I made a mistake.
MSNR: When can we expect book two?
BR: Uh, it should be a year. I mean Iām putting in the drafts now so I expect roughly the same time next year. Ā You know, we donāt have much say. I really like Spring releases, which you never know, but I assume it would be next spring.
MSNR: Well, thank you so much for talking with me!
BR: No, thank you so much.
MSNR: It was so good to meet you in person!
BR: Good to meet you too, and Iāll see you..
MSNR: Yep, youāll see me in a few minutes!
 A huge and special thanks to Brendan Reichs, Penguin Teen, and Renée Ahdieh for the event on March 21.
Nemesis is available NOW! Go pick up a copy.
Ā Ā Author & Event Spotlight was originally published on A Midsummer Night's Read