LA Weatherly
About Author
LA Weatherly is the author of the bestselling Angel series, as well as almost 50 other books for children and teenagers.
She's originally from Little Rock, Arkansas, but now lives in Hampshire, England. Lee's Angel trilogy has sold over 60,00 copies across the trilogy in the UK, and 475,000 copies worldwide!
Her latest series is The Broken Trilogy, which began with Broken Sky.
Interview
BROKEN SKY
USBORNE BOOKS
MARCH 2016
In BROKEN SKY, author Lee Weatherly builds an intriguing and believable alternate 1940's, albeit set in the future, where war is against the rules. Instead of war (which led to the previous civilisation's destruction), peace is maintained by individual pilots whose airborne fights determine the outcome of disputes over issues from territory boundaries to mineral rights.
Into this world steps Amity, who lives to fly. She is one of the 'Peacefighters' and is deeply aware of the responsibilities she shoulders during each of her flights. She recognises the growing threat posed by a powerful neighbouring state whose leader John Gunnison - who is likened to the Nazis - uses astrology to drive his decisions and to control his enemies.
Gradually, Amity comes to believe that the fights she so firmly believes in are compromised and that peace is under threat, but questioning the status quo would put her and all those she loves in peril.
Broken Sky is the first in the Broken Trilogy and we asked author Lee Weatherly to tell us more about it:
Q: What sparked the idea of the Peacefighters who lie at the heart of Broken Sky?
A: Unlike many of my other books, I can't say where this story actually began. I was talking to my husband over dinner and I had this thought; what if there were a society where war was outlawed and there were individual fights instead to keep the peace?
The image of Spitfires came into my head straight away and that gave me the whole era and feel for the setting of the books. It just felt right. The world itself fell into place very quickly, but describing it was a challenge as it had to be set against the ruins of our present world, so some things are there and some aren't.
Q: What were the strongest influences in creating this world?
A: I love old films and as I started writing Broken Sky, I realised the story would be very film noir with lots of play with light and dark, shadows and unseen figures. So I watched a lot of old films to research the era, including Mildred Pierce, Sunset Boulevard and Double Jeopardy.
I also drew on history, particularly World War II, and as the series progresses we will see more of that emerging, especially the dictatorship of Gunnison and the terrible things that happen around that.
Q: Did you need to do a lot of research into history to get the details right for your world?
A: Actually, most of the research for the first book was around flying. I needed to do a lot of research to make it as accurate as possible, given that I'm not a pilot.
The most useful memoir I read by a pilot was Brian Wayne's Spitfire. He was a pilot during WWII and was killed in 1943/44. Although he was quite a young man, a photograph of him in the book just stuck in my mind because he looks as though he's in his 40's, he is so tired and haggered. It must have been taken during the midst of the Battle of Britain.
The Spitfires are called Fire Doves in my story; I was trying to make it resonate with the 1940s. I found that there was a variety of different models of Spitfires; the first model was produced in 1939 and while they got better after that, they were still very dangerous to fly. Initially the windscreen glass wasn't even bullet proof, and the gas tank was stored in an area beneath the pilot's seat.
In my story, I didn't want the pilots to die all the time so I had to think carefully about what they'd do and to make my planes a bit more stable and secure.
Q: Have you ever flown a plane yourself?
A: I flew a Spitfire as part of my research for the book and found it absolutely terrifying! As with any research, talking to experts and reading books are great but if you can do something yourself, so your experience is first hand, then it adds details that wouldn't be in your work otherwise.
Having done this, I respect my main character, Amity, so much more. I realised she had to love the thrill and the rush of it. I was in this plane in the sky, twisting and turning, and I knew you must love it to do it. I also flew in a Harvard, which is the plane they used for training pilots, which is much slower in the air.
Q: How close do you feel to your main character, Amity?
A: I love writing Amity, she is such a wonderfully strong female character. She is very brave and a bit 'black and white' about her beliefs in book one. She goes through a real learning curve as the series goes on.
But although she's very strong, she's also very vulnerable about what happened to her father and her family, and that resurfaces when her old friend Collie re-enters her life. She's vulnerable in the things she cares about but I love her strength; she does all these things that I'd be too scared to do.
In some ways it was quite a straight forward story to plot, about a woman who slowly realises that the world around her is corrupt. That becomes clear to her, but there is also an unexpected twist at the end for the reader. One of the characters seems very straightforward, but isn't, and I had to work hard to plot that through the story. Once you get to the end of the book, you can't go back and read it in the same way.
Q: The leader of one of the territories in the book, Gunnison, uses astrology to guide his policies. Why did you decide to use this and how much did you know about the subject?
A: The astrology in the series came from Hitler's supposed interest in the occult. The astrologer, Kay, came into the story quite simply because I needed a character who would get close to Gunnison. I wrote her scenes in just two weeks and had a lot of fun with her.
I have a shaky interest in astrology myself although I don't think that it rules our destiny or fate, but some of my family members are really interested in it and if they meet someone new, the first thing they'll ask is 'what is their sign'. So I knew a little bit about astrology but I needed to research how to plot birth charts, which is very complex and complicated; it's like a snapshot of the sky at the moment you were born.
Q: What can we expect next in The Broken Trilogy?
A: The second book takes place in a much darker world, which there are hints of in book one, but it's still a fairly stable society there and Gunnison hasn't yet taken over everything.
In the second book, Amity is forced to face a lot of unpleasant things and secrets about some of the characters are explained. Ultimately, though, it's a book about love and friendship, and hope.
Q: You draw on quite a lot of imagery and events from WWII in re-imagining the world in this story. Do you feel that we learn from our history?
A: I'm not sure that human nature can ever change; we grow and learn and think things are getting better, but then you get something like Isis and it's horrific and we seem to be going backwards. Unfortunately, these are the cycles we go through. It would be lovely to think that in 2000 years we would be an enlightened society but I think that probably won't be the case....
Q: Does your upbringing in the US find its way into your stories?
A: I've lived in the UK for 20 years although I grew up in the States and some of the themes in the setting for this book defnitely came from my childhood. One of these is that love of old movies, which my dad and I shared, so the plot for Broken Sky is very much in that film noir, Hollywood, 1930s and 1940s era.
As an author I'm drawn to big, epic storylines and I love to explore human reactions and the 'big society' questions. I like to wonder, if you were in that society, would you be a hero or keep your head down and stay safe? I'm afraid I think that would be me, keeping my head down and staying safe. When you put all those things together, my big, epic story lines need a big, epic space to explore them in, so that often takes me to the US for my settings.
Q: When is your best writing time?
A: I write from my office at home and I start quite early because my husband leaves for work early, so I'm usually up and about by 6am or so, and I really like to write when the rest of the world is still asleep, so by 9am or 10am I've usually written quite a lot.
Q: How would your favourite day go?
A: My favourite day would involved a lie-in, I'd probably be on Facebook, and I love going for walks and getting out in the open, so I'd want to get out and exercise; that's often when storylines fall into place for me. I also love making jewellery so I'd do some silversmithing because it's creative and a real escape from writing.
Broken Sky
