I had the pleasure of interviewing Divergent author Veronica Roth recently for SFX magazine (where else) about her new book, Chosen Ones. Despite a title that riffs on one of the staple tropes of the kind of YA literature Roth is famous for, this is her first adult novel – it’s actually more of a story of what happens to former teenage “chosen ones” when they grow up.
I won’t spoil the SFX interview here (it’ll be in issue 326, on sale a few weeks), but, of course, we spoke about a lot more than ended up in the magazine article. So here’s one the deleted scenes, as it were.
The book contains what Roth called “interstitials” - little pieces of faux journalism, or academic papers, or letters and memos, that come between the proper chapters, adding depth and background. These are all attributed to whole host of apparently made-up authors and writers. But were any of the names, I asked Roth, injokes or references to people she knows?
“For the most part they are,” she confirmed, before revealing one specific example. “Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff who wrote the Illuminae series, they included my name in their books. And somehow I survived all three of their books, so one of the names in Chosen Ones is a reference to both of them. And there’s loads of other things like family member and fans.”