L.K. Below wrote Hellish Haven to bring her love of Orwell’s classic 1984 into the modern day…or near future, as it turns out.
She reads as obsessively as she writes and likes to Tweet about both at @LBelowtheauthor.
www.lbelow.net
http://twitter.com/LBelowtheauthor
Two lives. Two realities. But only one truth.
The Senator reigns all-powerful in a manifested picture-perfect world. No worries. No wars. Only the unspoken threat of oblivion if you step a toe out of line. On the other side of the divide, the rebels face a debilitating war against an invulnerable robotic army. Every day is a struggle to earn back their freedoms. Freedom to feel. Freedom of speech. Freedom of thought.
Sergeant Grant Baker is pivotal to the war effort. But ever since his wife’s abduction, he’s been walking around in as much of a daze as the Senator’s brainwashed citizens. Then Eva reappears—without memories of him or their son. And he’s willing to do anything to keep her. Even if it means jeopardizing the war.
Eva doesn’t know which side to believe. Her predictable life as a single nurse, or the man claiming to be her husband. All she knows is she needs to discover how to end the war, quickly. If she doesn’t choose sides soon, she may lose the man—and the life—she never knew she wanted.
Available at Kensington Books
Influenced by the Masters:
On Incorporating Classic Fiction into Modern Books
When I was ten, I was taught by a
teacher who worshipped books. While in her class, I read A Christmas Carol (Charles Dickens), Watership Down (Richard Adams), and several fictional chapter books
about the sinking of the Titanic. And these were only the books I read while
within the confines of her classroom for reading period. During recess, I would
sit beneath a sturdy tree and delve into whatever fantastic fiction caught my fancy.
She must have seen in me a kindred spirit because, when the year was done, she
told me:
Never stop reading.
That fantastic and clever past
teacher of mine is the reason behind my love affair with classic books. When I
left her class, she passed along her wisdom to me by recommending I read more
classic books.
I started with Jack London and
Mark Twain. From there, the sky was the limit. I read The Hobbit and The Lord of
the Rings. My father and I read The
Chronicles of Narnia to each other before bed, and it helped me to become
less nervous when reading aloud in class.
I didn’t discover George Orwell’s
Nineteen Eighty-Four until high
school, but it has remained in my top five list of classic books ever since. I
breezed through the book, through Winston’s struggle with oppression, his love
affair with toeing the line of what the government deemed possible.
I guess by now, you can guess
that Orwell’s book heavily influenced my newest release, Hellish Haven. Orwell’s themes are timeless, but in these days
filled with technological security and little privacy, they are especially
potent.
Like most things when I set out
to do them, I took those themes to the next level. In Hellish Haven, the government doesn’t merely monitor you; through a
widely-administered suggestion-enhancing drug, the government controls the
populace’s very thoughts. Through this drug and the constant subliminal
messaging and propaganda, citizens are made to feel as if they are happy. Their
careers, their marriages, every aspect of their lives is chosen for them. Even
when a war rages only blocks away, they don’t believe it exists.
One of the things which spoke to
me the most about Orwell’s book was the act of erasing a person from history.
Records of traitors were wiped clean from the archives, as if they were never
even born. But, as I read these passages of the classic book, I thought to
myself that it wasn’t absolute. The people those traitors left behind, the
people who they touched in some way, they would remember.
So I took the idea and pushed it
further. I’m good at that.
In Hellish Haven, traitors aren’t only wiped clean from the records.
Their families, their colleagues, their friends are made to believe they never
existed. The electronic photographs displayed on the wall are purged of their
image. Children are believed to be artificially inseminated or adopted. The
person’s thoughts and deeds are erased from history.
And that, I consider to be the
ultimate punishment. The ultimate horror.
I’m an author, so I like to think
my words and ideas will be around long after I’m gone. My goal, and I suspect
the goal of many writers, is to touch people. To make the reader think. To give
them strength on the days they feel their weakest. To help them forget about
their troubles for a time, if that’s what they need, or to help them challenge
the aspects of their lives which make them unhappy.
I developed my love for books
early in life, and for that I’m grateful. Because I can’t imagine being the
same person I am today without having read books like Orwell’s Nineteen-Eighty Four. Just like I can’t
imagine not writing them.
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