Rebellion by J. A. Souders Guest Post & Giveaway

Hello, everyone!

Who among us isn't a huge fan of J. A. Souders's Elysium Chronicles? I can't even begin to tell you how much I love these books. When I first read Renegade several years ago, I fell completely in love with the Evie's enchanting underwater world. Now that the trilogy is approaching its exciting finale, I am thrilled to welcome J. A. Souders to The Nocturnal Library. 

She's here to talk about my favorite part of Elysium - the challenges and the possibilities of building a world underwater. 

I hope you enjoy her post. Make sure to enter the giveaway for the entire trilogy below.

The thrilling conclusion to J. A. Souders’s riveting SF psychological thriller series for teens
In this conclusion to J. A. Souders’s thrilling, twist-filled Elysium Chronicles series, Evie Winters and Gavin Hunter return to the isolated, dangerous underwater city that they fought so hard to escape.
Back in Elysium at last, Evie has finally found her true self hidden under layers and layers of false memories implanted by the woman she knew as Mother. Thanks to the intervention of her father, she knows the horrible truth about Mother and her insidious plans for her city. With the help of the love of her life, Gavin, and her best friend, Asher St. James, she’s determined to free her people from the cruel dictatorship of Mother’s laws. But how do you free people who don’t know they need rescuing?
Working with the growing Underground rebellion, Evie tries to remove Mother from her position by force—with disastrous results. As the body count rises, Evie must find a way to save Elysium before Mother destroys them all.

Hello, Nocturnal Library! Thank you so much for having me today.  I’m super excited about this blog post, because I loved the question!

So…what are the challenges and possibilities when building a world underwater?

Well, the super simplistic answer for that is that every possibility brings its own challenges to the table. And vice versa. The challenges are also the possibilities.

But, I’m sure you want a better answer than that! So let’s delve a little deeper. 

The wonderful thing about writing futuristic science fiction, and especially with a setting that no one’s ever really experienced in real life, is that the door to what you can do is wide open. There’s no worry about current technologies, or if this is possible or is that possible. If you make it believable, it’s possible.

For me, aside from the basic laws of physics, I didn’t have to worry too much about pre-conceived notions. Most people haven’t lived at the bottom of the sea ( ;P ) so they only have a basic idea of what it would take to live there. And that means I can do a lot with my city and only really ask myself: is this believable? Whose to say this wouldn’t be possible or that wouldn’t happen? I’m only limited by the size of my imagination.

Of course the not so wonderful thing about writing futuristic science fiction, is that no one’s really ever experienced any of it in real life and that door is wide open. Therefore, your imagination has to work double-time and sometimes making something believable requires more research than a historically accurate regency romance novel.

My biggest challenges were the most essential to not only to the believability, but to my plot. So before I even started I had to ask myself a ton of questions, that never even get asked or answered in the course of the series. Like how would it get down there? How does it stay down there? How do they breathe? How do they eat? What do they eat? What about fresh water? Climate control?

And questions led to other questions. What are the effects of the mass amounts of pressure on the people? On the structures? What do they do if repairs need to be done? If there’s a water breach? What constitutes a breach? A trickle, a drip, a deluge? What safety measures are in place to prevent disasters?

The questions went on and on and on.  And during the course of writing and editing the story even more questions presented themselves. And presented me with opportunities to take what I know, what I researched, and what I made up and make it not only work for my world, but make it unique from everything out there.

And some answers, fixed multiple problems.

For instance, how do they power the city? Simplest answer? Geothermal energy.

My research of the ocean floor showed an excellent option. An underwater mountain range, which housed a deep trench and a dormant volcano. And that dormant volcano answered even more issues. The heat from the magma is used to heat the city. And the extra fertile volcanic soil on the ocean floor is used to grow even more nutritionally dense plants. Including the trees, which are used to supplement the oxygen that’s recycled in oxygen scrubbers powered by the volcano.

I could literally go on forever about the awesomeness of building this unique world, but I think I’ll stop here before I bore you to death. I’ll save the dying for the books. J

Speaking of questions, feel free to ask me questions below! I love answering them.

Thanks for having me!


Please make sure to visit the other tour stops. Here is the tour schedule:

July 11 – Chapter by Chapter

July 12 – Seeing Double in Neverland

July 13 – Short n Sweet Reviews

July 14 – Gizmo’s Reviews

July 15 – The Artsy Reader Girl

July 16 – The Nocturnal Library

Giveaway time!!! Enter to win the full Elysium trilogy (US/CAN only). Good luck to all!

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