The Ambuzzador Dualed Blog Tour! (Interview + Giveaway)

Hi guys! I am so excited to be part of the Dualed blog tour today. As a matter of fact, this post should have been up sooner, but I was under the weather for most of this morning + afternoon and it totally slipped my mind. My bad.

For those who haven't yet been exposed to the awesomeness that is Dualed, here's a reminder:

You or your Alt? Only one will survive.

The city of Kersh is a safe haven, but the price of safety is high. Everyone has a genetic Alternate—a twin raised by another family—and citizens must prove their worth by eliminating their Alts before their twentieth birthday. Survival means advanced schooling, a good job, marriage—life.

Fifteen-year-old West Grayer has trained as a fighter, preparing for the day when her assignment arrives and she will have one month to hunt down and kill her Alt. But then a tragic misstep shakes West’s confidence. Stricken with grief and guilt, she’s no longer certain that she’s the best version of herself, the version worthy of a future. If she is to have any chance of winning, she must stop running not only from her Alt, but also from love . . . though both have the power to destroy her.

Elsie Chapman's suspenseful YA debut weaves unexpected romance into a novel full of fast-paced action and thought-provoking philosophy. When the story ends, discussions will begin about this future society where every adult is a murderer and every child knows there is another out there who just might be better.

Intense, yes? And it's such an honor to have Dualed's very own author, Elsie Chapman, on Watercolor Moods today! I was allowed to ask three questions, and I hope that you'll enjoy the answers Elsie gave. (She's totally awesome.)


Hi Elsie! If you looked back at your writing journey now, is there anything you would do differently?
Hi Kaye! I think I would be more aware of the impact of social media and be more
careful with it. Not just in terms of how much time it takes to keep up with it, but
how certain aspects of it aren’t necessarily healthy. When I started DUALED, I
was on one writer’s forum, Absolute Write, and that was it. No twitter, no author
Facebook, no website, no blog. I didn’t even know YA had a community. I didn’t fully
realize that getting a book published often meant you were no longer a person but a
name.

So you'd definitely learn more about the community - good to know! After Dualed, what other worlds do you plan on exploring?
Probably something just as dark. I have some ideas I’ve been stewing over, but I
don’t know how far I want to pursue them—they might be too crazy.

If they're anything like Dualed, I know they will totally rock! did you get inspired to write a dystopian? Were there any challenges in taking up this genre?

It wasn’t that I was inspired to write dystopian as much as it just happened. I knew
when I started querying that the market for it was already very competitive. But I
had nothing to lose by sending it out—it was already written, my time already spent.
And I thought it was a bit different than the usual dystopian, so I had that on my
side. Obviously not all readers are going to like that, and that’s fine.

 Elsie lives in Vancouver, Canada, with her husband and two kids. You can find her on her official website, or poke her on Twitter (like I always do). 



Thank you so much for being such a good sport, Elsie! (FYI: If I'd been allowed more than one question, I'd probably have gotten around the embarrassing high school memories. Mu-wa-ha-ha!)

Be sure to follow along with the rest of the Ambuzzadors participating in the blog tour here - and remember, you have a chance of winning one of two Dualed ARCs during the tour. All you have to do is tweet that blog tour schedule and add on the hashtag #Dualed. As a bonus, I'm adding in one of my copies of Dualed, so if you comment underneath and are a follower of Watercolor Moods, you have one more chance to win! Good luck!