Eugenia Q&A (caution: spoilers)

When I finished writing Eugenia, I wrote a Q&A about some things I knew would come up. Also, I wrote one here too. I’d like to expand on them, now that everyone is (hypothetically) finished reading it.

How do you pronounce Eugenia?

“You-Jen-EE-Uh.” It’s the combination of “Utopia” and “Eugenics”, so you basically pronounce it like that.

Why did so many people die?

Because people have to die in order for a point to be made, especially in speculative fiction. Also, I’m a sadist.

From Emily: Although I liked it all, I did notice a giganto change in voice(idk if that’s the right term or not, but I hope you get what I mean) from the beginning to the end.  Was that a purposeful thing?

On some level, it might have been. There’s a definite shift in the feel of the story from beginning to end, especially when we get to the darker parts of the FF system, so that may have been reflected in my voice/tone. But overall, I didn’t necessarily mean for it to be that big of a change in voice, just in story. If you could point out a couple of places where you saw that happened, or specific examples, that would be a lot of help. Thanks, Emily, and your hair looks great!!

From Tiara: In three separate occasions, you wrote how old Emma was, starting by saying she was 6, then 5, and then saying that she was celebrating her 5th birthday. How old is she?

Ah. Emma is supposed to be five, turning six. I should probably fix that… haha. Thanks for pointing that out!

From my dad: How long did it take you to write it from idea formation to completion?

I can honestly say… I didn’t set out to actually finish Eugenia. It was born from Bri 2.0 as just something to play with on Thursdays, my “write fiction” days. I started writing the story about the same time that I posted it; January 28th, 2010. I finished writing it on October 2nd. So… it took me longer to write than Dawned (my NaNoWriMo book), but it was still under a year.

Also from my dad: Is Meg based on anyone real or I know? How about any of the other characters?

There are bits of real people in all my characters, and generally my protagonists have a lot of me in them. However, Meg is a bit different. She’s a lot less sarcastic than I am, and not nearly as closed off, like most of my characters reflect. Specifically, though, I can’t give you who people are supposed to be. They’re all kind of unique, with bits of everyone I’ve ever known fit in randomly.

Again from Dad: How many times have YOU read it?

Ugh. Not nearly enough, clearly. I try not to read my books all the way through over and over until I’ve finished them, because it tends to discourage or distract me. But I’ve probably read it in its entirety five or six times. And I’ll be reading it even more this summer.

Dad:  Toward the beginning, you hooked me with Meg sitting in the tree listening to class, then eventually approaching a student in a grocery store (Decklan??). Some very suspenseful writing. Did those suspense and some of the action scenes come naturally to your story development, or did they require more “work” to write?

Yes, it was Decklan that Meg approached first after class and then at his job at the grocery store. I guess I didn’t realize that was suspenseful. Weird. But action and suspense come pretty natural to me. I’ve been writing spy novels for the past three years, so even though I switched genre, I’m pretty set in my ways. If there’s not at least one fight scene (in something I write), then I get bored. Sometimes I’d have to consult Google or my many male friends for specifics in the action scenes, but on the whole I just sort of go with it.

But why did ANDY have to die?

Because Andy was too nice. There’s not a lot of impact in his death for the readers (my fault, it’s only the first draft, so I’ll fix that later) but the point I was trying to make was that if you fight fire with fire and elitism with elitism and violence with violence, good people are going to die. And that’s not ok.

Why did you decide to write in this genre, since it was your first deviation from spy novels?

I decided to write a speculative fiction (“social science fiction”, “dystopian”, whatever) novel for a couple of reasons. First, I wanted to, as you pointed out, deviate from spy novels because they were getting a bit old and I needed a change. Second, although I wanted to change genres, I wanted to still include fight scenes and spy elements. Third, I wanted to write something with a tinge of social commentary. So this seemed like the genre for all of that. Now I’m addicted to it. It’s practically all I read anymore.

WHY DID YOU END IT THAT WAY ASIFUADFKJHASKJLFHWEIAF ANGER?!?!?

Ah, the ambiguous ending. My mom has already expressed her distaste with it. However, I stood by it when I wrote it, and after a Studies in Fiction discussion on “speculative fiction,” I stand by it just as much. Here’s why:

Eugenia is “speculative fiction.” That means that the events that occur in the book are centered around what the world could be like, if we don’t change some behavior in the present time. The modern behavior I’m condemning in Eugenia is that of intellectual elitism. But that’s not important right now.

The Studies in Fiction discussion I mentioned was in relation to the books Woman on the Edge of Time and The Handmaid’s Tale, both speculative fiction, and both with ambiguous endings. We realized in class that the ambiguous endings of the books actually made them stronger, because in the end, it doesn’t matter what happens to the characters, not really. The ambiguity means that, if we as a society changes whatever caused the story to begin in the first place (our penchant for intellectual elitism and the failure to elect people to office that will actually do something), then it doesn’t matter if Blunt backs down and the FF system is demolished. We’ll be able to make sure Meg and her friends never have to go through it at all.

From my dad: Why did you decide to write this book?

This book was birthed out of a lot of influences, some of which I’ve already talked about. But the real reason that I wrote Eugenia was simple: I wanted to explore the marginalization of alternate intelligences. Sure, Meg and Julie may not be able to test very well or do complicated mathematics. But does that make them any less intelligent? Not necessarily. I hate it when people assume that text scores and academia are the only ways to measure someone’s worth. Creative endeavors are just as important as political or academic ones. In the next draft of this book I’d like to explore this further by putting more of an emphasis on the specific creative talents of the Outties, to further drive my point home.