Active Memory by Dan Wells
Series: Mirador #3
Genre: YA Science Fiction
Publication: February 13, 2018 by Balzer + Bray
Goodreads
From Dan Wells, author of the New York Times bestselling Partials Sequence and the John Cleaver series, comes the third and final book in the dark, pulse-pounding, sci-fi neo-noir series that began with the acclaimed novel Bluescreen.
For all the mysteries teen hacker Marisa Carneseca has solved, there has been one that has always eluded her: the truth behind the car accident in which she lost her arm and a mob boss’ wife, Zenaida de Maldonado, lost her life. Even in a world where technology exists to connect everyone’s mind to one another, it would seem that some secrets can still remain hidden.
Those secrets rise violently to the surface, however, when Zenaida de Maldonado’s freshly severed hand shows up at the scene of a gangland shooting. If Zenaida is—or was—still alive, it means there’s even more about Marisa’s past that she doesn’t know. And when she and her friends start digging, they uncover a conspiracy that runs from the slums of Los Angeles to the very top of the world’s most powerful genetic engineering firm. If Mari wants the truth, she’s going to have to go through genetically enhanced agents, irritatingly attractive mob scions, and some bad relationships to get it.
Dan Wells’s widely acclaimed series continues with his most shocking, pulse-pounding, and visionary story yet.
Huge thanks to Dan for participating and for being on the blog!
Give us an elevator pitch for ACTIVE MEMORY
The wife of a crime boss died in a car crash in 2035–but in the year 2050 her freshly-severed hand shows up at the scene of a gang fight. Teenage hacker Marisa Carneseca was in that same car crash, and will stop at nothing to learn a truth that redefines everything she thought she knew.
What’s one thing that you wish you had known about publishing?
I had an image in my head of sitting in a coffee shop writing glorious prose, but I really wish I’d known how much of publishing is actually just business: filling out forms and planning releases and coming up with marketing plans and on and on. And it’s worth it, because I get to write books when I’m done, and writing books is my favorite thing, but holy crap do I wish I could skip all that other stuff and just sit and write books.
What are you hoping readers will get out of this series?
The Mirador series is about two things: first, it’s an awesome cybercrime thriller about a group of close friends who always have each other’s backs. At different points in the book I hope readers are excited and scared and sad and happy; sometimes I want them to stand up and cheer, and sometimes I want them to turn to their friends and say “OhmygoshIhavetoreadyouthispart!” Second, though, it’s a book about the future–a future with a lot of cool new technologies, but a lot of old human problems that those technologies have completely failed to solve. I’d love it if readers would think about the world, and where it’s going, and where they want it to go, and what they can do to make sure it goes there. Someday we’ll all live in the future, which is scary to think about until you remember that we’re the ones who are building it, and if we’re willing to put in the effort we can make it into whatever we want.
What advice do you have for someone who wants to become an author themselves?
- Figure out why you want to write. Is it a hobby that you do for fun, or is it a career you want to make money in, or is it somewhere in between? There’s no wrong answer, and any reason you pick is as good as any other, but it helps a lot to know your goals going in. That way you don’t kill yourself, or shame yourself, for failing to achieve some other goal that you don’t actually care about.
- Allow yourself to write a bad book. Don’t beat yourself up because your first draft isn’t perfect, and don’t revise it endlessly trying to make it perfect. Your first book isn’t going to sell, and that’s okay because it’s not supposed to: it’s job is to teach you how to write your second book, and that one’s job is to teach you how to write your third, and so on and so on until you write something so amazing you can’t NOT sell it.
- Keep trying until you get better. This is the boring advice, but it’s true. It’s also mostly just a repeat of the second thing, but it’s still true. It’s also really hard, when you’re four books in and you’re still not selling anything, but I wrote six books before one finally sold, so it takes a long time and you’ll get discouraged but it’s true. Keep trying until you get better.
- Be a good person. This applies to everything you do, but writing is part of “everything you do” so I’m including it here. The world is already full of bad decisions and mean people and it doesn’t need any more. Whatever you do, be a good person, or none of the rest of it really matters.
What’s one book you would have no trouble rereading for the rest of your life?
My favorite book of all time is Dune, by Frank Herbert, and I’ve read it several times and will probably read it several more. And I almost never reread anything, so that’s saying a lot. The other one I keep going back to is The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende.
Can you tell us a bit about your current WIP? What should we expect in the future, book-wise?
I’m currently co-writing a YA trilogy with Brandon Sanderson. It’s called The Apocalypse Guard, and it’s about a group of people who travel through alternate dimensions, saving different versions of Earth from destruction. The first book is about a girl who joins the Guard as a new cadet, and ends up stranded on a doomed planet without any rescue or backup, and has to save everyone all on her own. It’s a cool cross between SF and fantasy, and I love it, and I think you’ll love it too. We’re working on the second draft right now, so ideally we’ll finish it soon and you’ll see it on shelves sometime in 2019.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
New York Times bestselling author Dan Wells is best known for his horror series I AM NOT A SERIAL KILLER, of which the first book is now an award-winning movie through IFC Midnight. His other novels include THE HOLLOW CITY, a supernatural thriller about schizophrenia, EXTREME MAKEOVER, in which a beauty company destroys the world, and two young adult science fiction series: the post-apocalypse PARTIALS and the cyberpunk MIRADOR. He has written for television, on the upcoming science fiction series EXTINCT, and wrote and produced the horror comedy stage play A NIGHT OF BLACKER DARKNESS. He cohosts the Hugo-winning podcast for aspiring writers called Writing Excuses, which has expanded to include its own writing conference. He also writes short fiction and game fiction, and edited the anthology ALTERED PERCEPTIONS to help raise funds for and awareness of mental illness. Dan lives in northern Utah with his wife, 6 children, and more than 400 boardgames.
Other Books in the Mirador Series
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Alice is an 18 year old college student who loves the oxford comma, television shows, and the company of dogs. She finds writing in the third person odd yet enjoyable. You can find her scrolling through Twitter, Instagram, and forever organizing her shelves on Goodreads.
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