Hi all!! Today’s post is super exciting because we’re bringing you an author interview for one of my favourite books of this year!! A huge thank you to the publisher, Zephyr for putting this tour together and of course thank you to Kat Dunn for agreeing to do an interview with me! Be sure to check out everyone else’s posts!! I hope you enjoy – Amber ❤
For those who don’t know yet, can you tell us what Dangerous Remedy is about?
Think Six of Crows meets Frankenstein. Camille and her Battalion are hired to rescue innocent people from the guillotine in Revolutionary Paris, but this time the girl they’ve rescued isn’t who they thought she was – and she’s not exactly human either. Trapped between the Royalists who hired them to rescue the girl, and the Revolutionaries who want her back, the Battalion have more than just the fate of one girl in their hands – the future of the revolution, and France itself may be at stake.
There are *so* many incredible scenes throughout this book, but which scene was your favourite to write and why?
Almost all of them? There are definitely a couple of scenes that I’d had in my mind from the start so those were super exciting to write – but I can’t tell you what they are without spoilers! Any scene with Al was always a joy to write – there’s a scene later on between him and Ada that was particularly moving to write.
(I LOVE Al so much, he’s my baby)
Which character do you see the most of yourself in?
As a writer I think you put a bit of yourself in all your characters, but I definitely put a lot of my anxiety and hard-on-myself feelings into Camille – and the self-loathing nihilistic bits into Al.
Which 2 upcoming books are you most excited for?
Definitely These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong out November 2020 and Witches Steeped in Gold by Ciannon Smart out April 2021
(I recently read These Violent Delights and it was so good!!)
Were there any scenes you ended up cutting out that you wish you could’ve kept? If so, could you describe them for us?
There weren’t too many scenes that got the chop entirely, more often I was rewriting and repositioning the same scenes over and over again during edits. There was a fun sequence where the Battalion fake an outbreak of plague that went early on – but you never know what might show up in later books…
(PLEASE let this pop up in one of the other books, I imagine it was so funny xD)
The cast of this book is so unique and each character is incredibly loveable. If you had to choose, which one would you say is your favourite and why?
I love all my children equally and could never choose. (It’s Al, shhh don’t tell the others.)
(totally agree)
Were there any other titles you considered before deciding on Dangerous Remedy? Was it set as that from the beginning, if not, could you tell us more about how you came to choose the title?
Dangerous Remedy was the title from the start! It’s from a quote attributed to Guy Fawkes, ‘A desperate disease requires a dangerous remedy’. I played around with a few different ways of phrasing it, but this one stuck early on and I was pretty surprised and pleased that it survived all the way to print.
(wait this is so cool!!)
What was your biggest aim when writing this book? Is there anything in particular you hope readers will take away from it?
What readers take away from a book is entirely up for them to decide, but I think there were 2 things in particular I wanted to talk about in Dangerous Remedy.
The first is about rewriting queer narratives back into history, and moreover to do it in a way that’s just casually, incidentally queer. Being queer isn’t my entire identity, so I wanted to tell a story where that wasn’t the main point. Camille and Ada are together, and that’s just that – the drama isn’t about that.
The second is about the idea of choice. I have heard too many times ‘both sides are as bad as each other’ used as an excuse not to do anything, and that’s just nonsense. Sitting on the fence is a position reserved for the privileged, those who don’t think they’re going to be affected. At the start, the Battalion have that attitude towards the revolution – but when they’re challenged by the idea of the Royalist regime returning, they realise how hollow that idea is, that both sides are just as bad. And so they know they have to make a choice in all their actions – no more fence sitting.
(I love this so much, and the casual incorporation of characters being queer is something that I appreciated and noticed immediately!!)
The ending of this book was explosive to say the least, what can we look forward to in book 2?
There’s not much I can say without giving big spoilers, but I can tell you that this time the Battalion are split between London and Paris, and to protect Olympe they’ll have to face an enemy they never saw coming…
(oh lord pray for us)
Again, a huge thank you to the publisher and Kat Dunn for working on this with me!!!
Sasha and Amber Read 
This book is one of my most anticipated reads for this year. This was a great interview!
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Ahh!! Hopefully you love it when you get to it then! Thank you ❤
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Great interview! I loved this book too!
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Thank you!! ❤
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Also maybe search into why saying ‘X is my spirit animal’ is problematic? I’m sure you aren’t aware when you used it so I just wanted to bring it to your attention.
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AHHH NOO!! Sorry!! I’ve just changed it, I had no clue about that, thank you for letting me know! 🙂 – Amber ❤
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This is a great interview, the questions and answers were very interesting. I loved Dangerous Remedy and I can’t wait until the next book!
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Thank you so much!! I’m excited to see what happens in the next book too!! ❤
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