Book Tour: A Long, Long Sleep Author Anna Sheehan Interview + Giveaway

We are happy to bring you a interview with Author Anna Sheehan. Her debut novel is A Long, Long Sleep. So we hope you enjoy the interview and read below for a great treat. 

Anna Sheehan Links: Website / Facebook / Goodreads 

Welcome Anna,

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk about myself. (Everyone’s favorite subject!)

OUaT: What do you do when you are not writing?

I live on a small ranch, so I milk a cow, feed horses, collect eggs, and generally get dirty. I care for my daughter, take classes and read to educate and update myself on the world, and watch a lot of movies. Sometimes I have been known to waste time at the local community theater (where I pretend to be an actress.) I sew, I bake, and try to volunteer my time at local children’s venues – foster programs and my daughter’s school. Sleep. Sleep eludes me often. I’m prone to insomnia.

OUaT: Is there any particular author or book that influenced you in any way either growing up or as an adult?

Diana Wynne Jones saved my life when I was in Middle School. She was my favorite author. School was hard for me – I was the kid everyone hated, because I was bookish and odd – and I was prone to depression. I had some dark moments where I considered suicide. But in running un-excused out of pergatory-like classrooms and hiding in the library, I happened to come across an entire shelf of Diana Wynne Jones books I had not read. "Oh," I thought. "I can’t kill myself until I’m done with these." By the time I was done, I wasn’t so depressed anymore. I’d love to do that for someone someday.

OUaT: Have you written a book you love that you have not been able to get published?

I’ve written dozens of books, but I really haven’t tried very hard to get many of them published. I’ve only recently had an agent, and I know my weaknesses. If I ever become famous enough for my silly self-indulgent scribblings to be worthwhile revisiting, I’ll try. I’ve written pirate novels set in an alternate history that I particularly like, and the first child of my heart were a series of intense dramatic faerie stories of novella length which are completely unpublishable, but meant a lot to me at the time. Still do, in some ways.

OUaT: Is anything in your book based on real life experiences or purely all imagination?

I had an interesting experience as a friend of mine called me up and said he had read my novel, and that he found huge chunks of his life ripped out of my past and stapled onto the page. To the extent that he had to go and talk to his psychologist. I hadn’t noticed as I was writing it that it was that close, but when I look at it, it wasn’t the story itself – it was the echo of the emotion. I’ve had a lot of very troubled friends. In truth if you had to give me a position in life from the characters in the novel, it was probably more akin to Bren or Xavier when it came to the more unpleasant aspects – witnessing subtle horrors, not being quite sure how involved you should get, simply unable to give enough to fix it. But I’m an odd duck, myself. I don’t know. The emotions are real, but I’m not sure where each bit came from out my psyche.

OUaT: What was your favorite chapter (or part) to write and why?

I loved writing the chat conversations between Otto and Rose, because of the organic, tit-for-tat nature of them. When dialogue grows well, it flows like a river. If you have the characters in your head, you know exactly what they would say given a certain statement, and it just falls out of your fingers – and for me out of my lips, because I read aloud as I write. (I pretend to be an actress, remember?) The worst bits in any book to write is always the "Ladderback in Tibet" – where you need to have an awkward retrospective bit for the book to make sense, but it doesn’t fit organically in the flow of the narrative.

OUaT: How did you come up with the title?

The title was one of those serendipitous things which you can’t believe happened by chance. I had written this "sleeping beauty" idea, and I had had great luck in the past with titles pulled from Shakespeare or from poetry. I went looking for old poems which might have mentioned Sleeping Beauty, or at least sleep, and as I was looking I came upon A Long, Long Sleep by Emily Dickinson. Upon looking at the poem, not only had I found my title, but I had found the perfect epigraph. It wasn’t really about Sleeping Beauty, but about idleness, the inability to change or see the sun. That fit Rose to a tee. And, wonderfully, Emily Dickinson’s works are so vast and broad and evocative that I will be able to find poems that match the rest of the series perfectly as I go on. I’ve already found two more.

OUaT: Are there certain characters you would like to go back to, or is there a theme or idea you’d love to work with?

Oh, I’ve already determined to go back to certain characters. Everyone loves Otto, and he’s just too interesting not to explore. And personally, I have great interest in Xavier.

OUaT: What has been the toughest criticism given to you as an author? What as been the best compliment?

The most annoying criticism was when someone accused me of not having done my research. I wouldn’t have minded if he’d complained about the magical technology I’d glossed over, like the stass tubes or the neo-fusion or the hovercars. (How do those work? Very well, thank you.) But what he fixed on was the GMO corn. I’d gone all the way to India to study globalization and the culture of the GMO food revolution. He knew considerably less than I did, but had decided, (without having done his research) that he was an expert and I had gotten it wrong. I don’t mind being told when I do get it wrong. I mind being spat at by willful ignorance. That was the only criticism I have ever answered. Most of them I just accept as a matter of course.

The best compliments are always when someone tells me that my book resonated with them, changed their lives, or brought them out of something dark. That’s why I write. To touch people, and maybe even to help them.

OUaT: What genre are you most comfortable writing?

I love YA. I often think I never stopped being a teenager. There are things about me that I will never grow out of – being too loud, tripping over my own feet, acting a little dismissive, failure to organize. I often feel like a big, responsible fifteen year old. I love how teenagers’ minds work, and where they are in their lives, when everything seems so important, and IS so important, because it will change their futures. I love having fantastic or SF elements to my stories, and one day I may branch out, but YA is my bread and brie. I will never outgrow it.

OUaT: How much of your work is realistic?

I try very hard to make my works realistic, in the sense of researching psychology and social-structure and medicine. When something is important, I make sure it matches human experience.

A Long, Long Sleep
Author: Anna Sheehan
Pages: 352
Reading Level: YA
Published: August 9th 2011
Available: Amazon / Barnes & Noble / Indiebound

Summary: (from goodreads) It should have been a short suspended-animation sleep. But this time Rose wakes up to find her past is long gone— and her future full of peril.

Rosalinda Fitzroy has been asleep for sixty-two years when she is woken by a kiss. Locked away in the chemically induced slumber of a stasis tube in a forgotten subbasement, sixteen-year-old Rose slept straight through the Dark Times that killed millions and utterly changed the world she knew. Now, her parents and her first love are long gone, and Rose— hailed upon her awakening as the long-lost heir to an interplanetary empire— is thrust alone into a future in which she is viewed as either a freak or a threat. Desperate to put the past behind her and adapt to her new world, Rose finds herself drawn to the boy who kissed her awake, hoping that he can help her to start fresh. But when a deadly danger jeopardizes her fragile new existence, Rose must face the ghosts of her past with open eyes— or be left without any future at all.

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