The Resistance
T.H. Hernandez
(The Union Series, #5)
Publication date: February 25th 2020
Genres: Dystopian, Young Adult
After the Union is invaded by the Uprising, life for Evan and her friends becomes even more dire. If they have any hopes of saving the world they know, they’re going to need help. And it looks like there may be someone already out there trying to accomplish the same thing.
Now living in an encampment in the Ruins, life is hard for most Unis in the Resistance. For Cyrus and the other Ruins survivors, it’s just more of the same.
While they train for their ultimate mission, tragedy strikes, upending everything once again. Complicating their plans, someone in their midst is working against them. Evan, Cyrus, and the rest of the Resistance need to locate reinforcements to help them bring down the Uprising while rooting out the traitor. With trust at an all-time low, no one is above suspicion as danger walks among them.
Interview with T.H. Hernandez
For those interested in exploring the subject or theme of your book,
where should they start?
The themes are that family transcends just those who share your genetic makeup and that people are more than where they were born. I think those themes are pretty broad and a number of books also explore them in different ways, including CRAZY RICH ASIANS by Kevin Kwan and the HARRY POTTER series by J.K. Rowling.
I also wanted to explore ordinary people thrust into extraordinary situations and actually was inspired after reading TOMORROW WHEN THE WAR BEGAN by John Marsden.
And finally, everything in the series starts in a post-global warming world. There are a number of great novels as well as non-fiction titles that explore this, including THE ROAD by Cormac McCarthy, THE YEAR OF THE FLOOD by Margaret Atwood, and THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING by Naomi Klein.
The themes are that family transcends just those who share your genetic makeup and that people are more than where they were born. I think those themes are pretty broad and a number of books also explore them in different ways, including CRAZY RICH ASIANS by Kevin Kwan and the HARRY POTTER series by J.K. Rowling.
I also wanted to explore ordinary people thrust into extraordinary situations and actually was inspired after reading TOMORROW WHEN THE WAR BEGAN by John Marsden.
And finally, everything in the series starts in a post-global warming world. There are a number of great novels as well as non-fiction titles that explore this, including THE ROAD by Cormac McCarthy, THE YEAR OF THE FLOOD by Margaret Atwood, and THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING by Naomi Klein.
How did you become involved with the subject or theme of your book?
I think like most people I could only ignore the real changes in our climate for so long before I had to sit up and pay attention. It was in 2010 when the Mississippi River began stranding barges during the hottest summer on record at the time that I let my imagination run wild and came up with a “what if” scenario. But rather than plunge my characters into the throes of climate upheaval, I set the story 150 years after a second civil war in the United States decimated the interior of the continent and drove the survivors to the coasts to rebuild.
I think like most people I could only ignore the real changes in our climate for so long before I had to sit up and pay attention. It was in 2010 when the Mississippi River began stranding barges during the hottest summer on record at the time that I let my imagination run wild and came up with a “what if” scenario. But rather than plunge my characters into the throes of climate upheaval, I set the story 150 years after a second civil war in the United States decimated the interior of the continent and drove the survivors to the coasts to rebuild.
What were your goals and intentions in this book, and how well do you
feel you achieved them?
This is the fifth book in the series, and without giving anything away, my characters are fighting back against an invading force. When the series first started, my protagonist was a spoiled teen, but she’s been forced to change the way she looks at everything, including a lot of introspection. In this book, I really made a point of showing how MUCH she’s grown, and I think I achieved that. She’s still young but has gained maturity and wisdom through her ordeals.
This is the fifth book in the series, and without giving anything away, my characters are fighting back against an invading force. When the series first started, my protagonist was a spoiled teen, but she’s been forced to change the way she looks at everything, including a lot of introspection. In this book, I really made a point of showing how MUCH she’s grown, and I think I achieved that. She’s still young but has gained maturity and wisdom through her ordeals.
Anything
you would like to say to your readers and fans?
Yes. Thank you so much for
supporting my books and for loving my characters. If you’ve stuck with The
Union series this long, you’ve been with my characters nearly as long as I
have.
What
did you enjoy most about writing this book?
Watching my characters grow up; I
mean, it’s about time. It was hard to put them through the events that shaped
them, but in this book, I was able to enjoy writing about them as more evolved
beings. They’re both better and worse for what they’ve had to endure, but their
growth feels like a natural evolution of those events.
Can
you tell us a little bit about your next books or what you have planned for the
future?
There are two more books planned in
this series and I’m hard at work drafting the second book in the Heroes &
Zeros series, about the teenage offspring of the nation’s superheroes. I’m also
working on a follow up novel with my co-author, Jennifer DiGiovanni about a
group of teens on a reality show scavenger hunt that has been really fun to work
on.
How
long have you been writing?
Like most authors, I’ve been
writing all my life. Sure, most of what I wrote during my teen years was pretty
cringe-worthy, but the ideas I came up with have been the basis for some of
what I’ve written as an adult. Even if it’s just a character name or a
personality. I got serious about writing fiction in 2010, though, while
suffering through the economic downturn. Between submitting applications online
and combing Glassdoor and LinkedIn for opportunities, I decided to see if I could
actually finish a novel. It took two years, but it was well worth the effort.
Can you tell us a little bit about the characters in The Resistance?
My main characters are teens and
young adults. The book takes place in both the ruined midsection of the
continent as well as the redeveloped coastline, known as the Union. The people
from the Ruins have lived without modern conveniences while those in the Union
have had a pretty easy life. A lot of conflict comes from their different
values and upbringings. My protagonist, Evan, was a spoiled rich girl who fell
in love with Cyrus, a boy from the Ruins. She’s fighting hard to save both
worlds and it’s forced her to grow up quite a bit. Cyrus has some
self-confidence issues related to his lack of a formal education in the Ruins.
But what he lacks in book smarts he makes up in street smarts. He is one of my
most complex characters and I just love him.
If
you could spend the day with one of the characters from The Resistance who
would it be? Please tell us why you chose this particular character, where you
would go and what you would do.
Tony, Evan’s former boss and a
traditional investigative journalist, has always been an enigma, even to me and
I created him. He’s important to the story, but I would love to sit down and
just pick his brain and figure out what makes him tick. I know he’s got a
fascinating backstory that makes him who he is, and I even have much of that
fleshed out, even if readers don’t know what it is. But if I could spend a day
with Tony and delve even deeper, I know he’d tell me things about himself I
never even dreamed of.
Thanks
so much for hosting me on your blog today! I enjoyed it, and you asked some
really great questions!
Your welcome! Stop by anytime. And thank you!
Author Bio:
With flawed strong characters, characters you can relate to, New York Times & USA Today Bestselling Author Lorhainne Eckhart writes the kind of books she wants to read. She is frequently a Top 100 bestselling author in multiple genres, and her second book ever published, The Forgotten Child, is no exception. With close to 900 reviews on Amazon, translated into German and French, this book was such a hit that the long running Friessen Family series was born. Now with over sixty titles and multiple series under her belt her big family romance series are loved by fans worldwide. A recipient of the 2013, 2015 and 2016 Readers' Favorite Award for Suspense and Romance, Lorhainne lives on the sunny west-coast Gulf Island of Salt Spring Island, is the mother of three, her oldest has autism and she is an advocate for never giving up on your dreams.
1 comments:
Really great post, sound like a wonderful book. Thanks for sharing :)
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