Featured Interview With Sandra Bats
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I’m Sandra Bats, living in Frankfurt, Germany with my husband and so far I published two novels in English, despite German being my mother tongue. Besides writing and reading I enjoy baking, drawing and going to the gym. I’m also a fan of storytelling in general, no matter the medium, so I watch a lot of TV and frequently go to movie theaters. Recently I’ve also started to learn about narrating and recording audiobooks with the hopes of turning my own novels into audiobooks soon.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I’ve loved books from the moment that I learned to read. There were a lot of times my parents had to wrestle a book from my hands.
When I was eleven my family was vacationing in Australia. Unfortunately I was (and still am) quite afraid of spiders and earlier that day I had seen a spider lurking around the pool area. Convinced it surely was a deadly spider I refused to go to the pool that afternoon. This was before everybody carried laptops and every hotel had wifi and since my English at that age wasn’t good enough to watch TV I grew bored quite quickly. I had a journal with me though and since I’ve always been rather bad at keeping a diary it was still mostly empty. That was when I wrote my very first story — a very typical children’s story about a girl and her horse Tornado. That was the very first story and I haven’t stopped writing since.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
I read a lot of urban fantasy, fantasy and paranormal romance. Lately I’ve been reading Cassandra Clare and I’m impatiently awaiting the next Jennifer L. Armentrout novel. I also enjoy reading Sarah J. Maas and Marie Lu, whose Legend Series I found especially inspiring when writing my own dystopian trilogy. I will read almost anything, but I mostly enjoy if the story has at least a little romance.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
My latest novel, Persephone’s Grief, is a dystopian romance and the second novel in the Persephone’s Curse trilogy. While the first novel was inspired by the question of how a person can learn to trust despite past trauma, this novel hinges on another question: How far would you go for the person you love?
Like the first installment in the trilogy the story follows Jayden and Elin as they navigate living in a future where women die in childbirth due to a horrible virus. In the second novel Elin and Jayden have to deal with an impossible mistake that threatens Elin’s life. It leaves Jayden struggeling with his ethics as he desperately tries to keep Elin alive.
As an avid fiction reader myself the first thing I hope the reader takes away from the book is of course simply being whisked off into another world. Beyond that I hope Elin’s and Jayden’s story shows how different people deal with trauma and how impossible choices can force them to cross lines they didn’t think they’d ever cross.
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