Hey guys!

I welcome you all to another session of interviews here in the studio☘️

Now this interview is very special to me because I have actually had this book in my library for months now and I didn't get a chance to read it until Queen_of_life_Heba recommended it.

A big shout out to her for providing me with an opportunity to finally read this wonderful story. I must say I wasn't disappointed❤️

Sophie: You are talking to much Lilly, just start already🙄

Lilly: Did someone bite you today or something?😏

*whispers to the audience* Sophie is always in a bad mood i n the mornings😂

Any who, today I have with me the creator of the book of the moment, "King Eden" and I am talking about none other than the marvelous🥰 and the talented,RowanCarver. . .

Welcome to the Garden of Eden Interviews, Rowan!😁

Ro: Thank you so much Lilly and Queen, you are too sweet.
I really appreciate this.✌🏼

Li: Awww🥰

Sophie: 🙄 just get on with it!

Li: Rowan, please ignore my assistant. She had rotten tomatoes for breakfast😂😂😂

Question one☘️

I also have a book where my main character's name is Eden and I have to say part of the reason why I chose the name is because I am also Eden😂😂

Ro: oh really?

Li: Yeah, it's my middle name.🌚

Now my question is, what was your reason for going with the name King Eden?

Ro: Well characters in this story choose their own names when they kill their first Corrupted when they're kids.

And then if the characters become Lords they choose new names, usually ones that have to do with royalty.

I chose King for my main character because it fit her personality and all of my characters are named after prog/alt bands.

King is named after King Crimson but in the story she chose it when she became a Lord and it fit her background.

Li: How about Eden?

Ro: Eden is her original name and I can't tell where she got that from or it'll spoil the story.

Li: 🥺🥺 but I love spoilers.

Sophie: No spoilers Madam❌❌❌❌

Li: Okay, since the spoiler police is here, let me ask other things then.😥

While answering the question, you mentioned the term "corrupted". Now this came up a lot in the story and I got a bit confused, what are they?

Ro: They are zombie-like monsters.

Li: Ah okay. Now you said they killed these corrupted when they were kids🤔
Kids of about how old are we talking about here?

Ro: Like ten to twelve years old. . .

Li: Waw🤔what a crazy world they live in! At such a young age they get exposed to so much danger🤔 No wonder Eden is so fierce.

Now, how did you create Eden's character?
And then why King Eden, why not Queen Eden?😁

Ro: Two years ago, I started coming up with a story while I was trail running. I was training for a half marathon and King's story just sort of came into my head.

I saw scenes of this powerful woman battling a posts apocalyptic world, usually inspired by whatever work out playlist I was listening to.

Eventually, I decided to put the idea on paper and I created King.

I didn't want to name her "Queen" because I wanted to name her after King Crimson and I wanted to write a story that defies gender roles and features a diverse cast.

Li: I think you really achieved that. Who could think a woman would do all the things King did, amazing tale people!

Oh and Queen will really like to have that playlist sometimes😄

Moving on, I really liked Elliot's character. The boy was just amazing. Tell us a bit about him.😁

Ro: Eli is really hard to write because he's a ten-year-old boy and I don't have kids. I take lots of inspiration from the way Raz is written in Psychonauts and Walt from Lost.

The story is written from King's POV but in the third volume one arc, it is written from Eli's POV.

I'm working on that arc now and it's extremely challenging because it's hard to properly convey a kid that age from first person.

Lots of people criticize me for making him sound too old but I've been teaching kids music and dance for over a decade and all of my students his age act way more mature than people think. They're extremely smart.

I try to convey that with Eli, because I dislike it when kids are portrayed as dumb or clumsy in movies and TV shows.

He has a pretty big role in this story and I like writing a character who's so pure when the rest of the cast is pretty evil, including King herself.

Li: First off, I think you are right. Ten-year-olds are not as childish as people think them to be. I have a friend who is ten years old and she is so smart and mature you'll never even guess her age right through messages.

In my opinion Elliott's responses and reactions in the story are just right for his age.

Now, in the book, you mentioned the corrupted,  the martians and the tribes. Can you give us a quick summary of what these people are?

Ro: Oh yeah the premise of this book is very anime and kind of dumb.😉

Li: 😂😂 no it isn't

Ro: Yeah😁 so I wanted to write a Zombie story that's a mash-up of Mad Max and Akira lmao. 😂

It takes place a few centuries  after a virus broke out called "Corruption" where instead of making Zombies, it violently mutates people into twisted monsters.

This resulted in a nuclear war that pushed Earth into posts apocalyptic society and destroyed everything.

The wealthy people were able to terraform Mars and escape. They eventually become the Martians and they are the antagonists.

The survivors on Earth eventually became clandestine tribes (they are the Ancients). Instead of killing all the corrupted they learned that they've evolved to tolerate the disease in small doses and they infect themselves with it on purpose because it gives them special abilities that help them survive.

Centuries later the disease is getting out of hand because people are infecting themselves with it.

Meanwhile, the Martians are dying on Mars because their efforts to terraform the planet were a failure and they're out of resources. So they are massacring the Ancients in an effort to take over the Earth and come back home, since they see the Ancients as grossly infected Zombies rather than people.

That's pretty much what the book is about.😁

Li: Oh, thank you so much for that insight!❤️
I thought the Martians were Aliens! So they are humans😂 wow!😂😂😂

I have another question still on the history, How do the Ancients extract this virus and inject themselves? Plus what kind of enhanced ability does it actually give them?

Ro: Oh, so they can do it in a number of ways. If they take straight doses of Corruption then they'll mutate. But there are merchants in this world. The most famous one is a Lord called Empress who's like a cyberpunk evil scientist.

People hunt down fully transformed Corrupted and sell the corpses to merchants like Empress.

She takes the bodies and extracts the disease, pretty much waters it down into different doses that people can tolerate.

She then sells them to the Tribes (or sets up a trade for resources for her own Tribe and such).

Li: So this self injection isn't too dangerous for the Ancients?

Ro: Self-Infection allows the Ancients to survive in a world this brutal. It gives them inhuman strength, resilience and the ability to heal very quickly after the first few weeks of taking a dose.

But these abilities wear off over time so a lot of times they come back to take another dose, and every time they infect themselves again they get closer to becoming the Zombie monsters that haunt the wastelands. So it comes with a price.

Li: Wow, so they know these doses aren't entirely safe but they keep taking it?

Ro: They kind of  expect to become those monsters one day though and it's actually a part of their culture to send each other on their 'last journeys' once they take too many doses and get too sick, ready to Corrupt for good.

Li: Wow! I don't even know what to say. So, they know they'll die or become Zombies, yet they still do it?

Ro: It's considered to be a very honourable way to die in their culture because they've accepted the true fate for humanity that nature has planned for them.

Li: Your story is really awesome, what message are you spreading with it?

Ro: The design principle for the overall plot, sort of follows how man creates their own destruction' theme.

But for King, the main character, her arc is all about learning whether or not she can love and love without consequence in a world where kindness can get you killed.

Li: This reminds me of that Ali guy in Squid Games.😂😂😂 He got killed because he loved the wrong person.

Finally, you have so many awards, how did you do it?

Ro: I entered a bunch of awards when the forums went down because my story is science fiction and it doesn't have any romance or anything else that this website prefers.

So getting readers is harder for me than someone who writes werewolf stories.

I ended up winning a lot and I am not sure why? The feedback I've been getting lately has been overwhelmingly negative.

I took King down a few days ago for about the fourth time to start from scratch again.

If I've won awards its probably because my prose is decent since I have training as a technical writer but I don't think people actually find the story good because the reviews I get tend to be pretty scathing.

Li: Sometimes people want to dictate how your story should go and I don't think that's right. In my opinion, King Eden is a great story and it will get the right amount of popularity with time.

As writers, we shouldn't be forced to go into a particular genre just because people want it. Unless, you want to commercialise your work then you have to write a genre that is in demand at the time, but as long as you are writing for YOU, then those negative comments are not important Rowan.❤

We have come to the end of the show, do you have any shout outs?

Ro: I love my writing community. It's a pleasure to work with writers like Queen_of_life_Heba who is so talented as well and I really enjoy learning from Her and the other community members here.

Thanks so much for taking the time to interview me.

Li: awwwww That's sweet. Thank you too for honouring our invitation.

👑👑👑👑👑👑👑👑👑👑👑

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for reading, I hope you enjoyed it and learnt a thing or two❤

Shout out to the amazing RowanCarver for being here.❤

Shoutout to my baby girl Sophie for always having my back.❤

Please stay tuned as we keep bringing you amazing interviews.

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