Mundie Moms

Thursday, February 21, 2013

Triple Threat Blog Tour: Also Known As by Robin Benway


Welcome to another exciting author interview with today's Bloomsbury Teens's Triple Threat Blog Tour. I'm thrilled to have Robin Benway author of Also Known As, on the blog today! Robin's newest book will be hitting book store shelves this upcoming Tuesday!



By: Robin Benway
Published by: Bloomsbury Teen
To Be Released on: 2/26/13
Pre-Order from Amazon | Barnes & Noble
Add it to Goodreads

Being a 16-year-old safecracker and active-duty daughter of international spies has its moments, good and bad. Pros: Seeing the world one crime-solving adventure at a time. Having parents with super cool jobs. Cons: Never staying in one place long enough to have friends or a boyfriend. But for Maggie Silver, the biggest perk of all has been avoiding high school and the accompanying cliques, bad lunches, and frustratingly simple locker combinations.

Then Maggie and her parents are sent to New York for her first solo assignment, and all of that changes. She'll need to attend a private school, avoid the temptation to hack the school's security system, and befriend one aggravatingly cute Jesse Oliver to gain the essential information she needs to crack the case . . . all while trying not to blow her cover




Hi Robin! Welcome to Mundie Moms! We love spy books. What kind of research did you do prior to writing Also Known As?
Thank you for having me! As for "AKA," I researched different kinds of safes, ways to open them, which drills are effective on which safes, that sort of thing. I really wanted to talk to a professional safecracker, but no one would return my emails! I didn't want to know their lock-picking secrets (it's their bread & butter, after all), just how it feels to crack a difficult safe, so I ended up watching a lot of YouTube videos and reading online tutorials. I'm pretty good at opening a MasterLock now, but I still can't break into my house. (Please don't ask how I discovered that.)

I can only imagine how much fun it is to write a spy book. What was your favorite element to write about / create for Maggie's story? 
I think my favorite part was watching her react to normal life situations--parties, school, potential curfews. This is a girl who's lived in a grown-up world for her entire life, so to drop her into Teenager Land and watch this incredibly skilled girl flounder was so much fun! (Fun for me, not for her, haha.) I also loved her relationship with Angelo and how well they work together, despite their age difference. She's definitely his protégé.

Maggie sounds like a fun character to get to know. How would you describe her in ten words or less?
An excellent safecracker, a wonderful friend, and a terrible accessorizer.

 Which of your characters surprised you in terms of how big of a roll they ended up playing in Also Known As?
Roux, Maggie's best friend, and Jesse, Maggie's love interest, surprised me not for the size of their roles, but how they ended up changing. Roux ended up being far more tenderhearted than I thought she would be, and Jesse was supposed to be that teenage "bad boy" when he really wasn't. There's a scene where Jesse announces that he doesn't drink, and I don't know who was more surprised--Maggie or me!

As a teen, what books had an impact on you as a young reader?
I remember reading Elizabeth Berg's "Durable Goods" and crying my eyes out, I loved it so much. Deb Caletti's books were my first introduction to YA literature and I also devoured every single "Baby-Sitters Club" book when I was younger. I can still quote whole sections of "Boy Crazy Stacey." (#8 in the series, for those of you who are curious.)

Are you currently working on any new projects you can tell us about? 
I'm currently editing the sequel to "Also Known As," which is so much fun! I've never written a sequel before, so it's been amazing to meet up with my characters and send them on brand-new adventures.

Thank you for stopping by Mundie Moms today Audrey!

About the Author:

I'm the author of "Audrey, Wait!" and "The Extraordinary Secrets of April, May & June." My new book "Also Known As" will be released on February 26, 2013. I live in Los Angeles with my extremely stubborn shih tzu, Hudson. I've gotten a lot better at cooking. I still love coffee. We should be friends.

Visit Robin via her: Website | Twitter | Facebook | Tumblr | GoodReads

No comments:

Post a Comment

Labels