August Prather is Not Dead Yet
Danielle Roux
Publication date: August 7th 2018
Genres: Fantasy, LGBTQ+, New Adult, Romance
Blurb:Katherine Garnet is a writer who has never cared much about much, making it awfully difficult to create new content. Despite the fact she has the “edge” of being trans (according to her cis male editor) she is not looking to capitalize on her own personal story.
Garnet tries to sneak a peek at her rival, August Prather’s, latest fantasy manuscript about a quest for the elixir of life. While reading, Garnet gets accidentally dragged into a bizarre cross-country road trip that may or may not have a purpose and begins to see parallels in the story of the manuscript and the reality of their journey.
Along the way, they encounter a parade of equally troubled individuals, including ghost-hunting priests, a robot magician, a discarded piece of furniture, a runaway teenager, and a Japanese rock star. As Garnet confronts her past, she begins to understand why someone might want to live forever.
Why I Write
I just dyed my hair pink and the first thing someone asked me was, “Why did you do that?”
I’ve always wanted to have pink hair, since I was a kid. This color matches my book cover. Also, it’s cool. Objectively. All this explanation is a bit complicated and personal, so instead of opening up, I just shrugged and walked away.
When someone asks me why I write fiction, I also have a tough time giving a reason. There’s a lot I need to work through, personally. I’ve never been good at keeping a journal or recording my own experiences of things. I guess it’s never all that interesting for me to write things down that happened to me because I was there, so I know what happened. Yet, I have a lot of repressed emotional stuff that I bottle up because, who doesn’t? For me, it’s always been easier to work through my understanding of myself through imagined characters. Even as a kid, I would work through the fights I had with my mom by pretending that my pioneer/fairy/warrior princess doll was having a fight with their mom. Telling stories is cathartic to me in a way nothing else ever can be.
I wrote August Prather is Not Dead Yet to work through some of my personal nonsense, but also to tell a story where a bunch of queer characters got to lead a fantasy story where none of them die and they all get to live happily ever after. Or happily-ish, you be the judge.
My current projects are also weird and queer, I’ve still got a lot of stories that I want to tell, and things to work through. I’ve got a dark comedy that’s a queer Rosemary’s Baby inspired story, and a series that’s more YA-geared (less smutty) with psychics and ghosts in a dystopian city called This Will Kill That. I’m excited to keep sharing my weird characters and twisted imagination with the world, so look out.
Also, my hair will be blue next, because, why not?
Author Bio:
Danielle K. Roux is a writer, teacher, and historian. Her first novel August Prather is Not Dead Yet is currently available in e-book and paperback through Parliament House Press (and soon will be available in hardcover and audio book). Danielle has always loved reading and telling stories – especially stories with adventure, mystery, humor, romance and at least a little bit of spookiness. Not Dead Yet has all this covered, with a story-within-a-story structure and a quest for immortality in the early twentieth century paired with a present-day road trip. There’s a lot of existential crisis and a male/male romance that is sweet and steamy.
Danielle has been writing fiction since she was nine, after getting tired of reading from the perspective of white, straight male characters in fantasy novels. Her first written story involved a group of middle school girls who find necklaces used by a dead witch that give them supernatural powers. It was written in notebooks in purple and green gel pens that are currently housed in a box in her linen closet. She is inspired by travelling to new places and reading about the stories tied to landscapes. She has at least three novels building in her brain (or wherever novels come from) and wishes she was writing them all right now.
Danielle lives with her wife and two orange cats in the San Francisco Bay Area. She has added a lot of young adult fantasy fiction to her bookshelves recently, and regrets nothing. Her dream library would be accessed through a secret door and look something like the library in the animated Disney Beauty and the Beast, although it would also have a cute barista or sentient coffee machine that once was said barista.
When she isn’t writing or thinking about writing, Danielle is building houses in the Sims, listening to podcasts, or taking Buzzfeed quizzes to find out what kind of tree she is based on her hair color. She has recently been watching lots of old BBC period pieces, and some of them are good. She has begun to drink Diet Coke and is worried this might be a real problem. Coffee and tea are still her primary beverages of choice.
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