Hi Zadie! *waves* It's great to have you here. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Are you sure you want to know? I’d hate to scare you off. Well, I’ll start with the not-so-scary stuff: I’m sixteen. I have an older sister named Mara. My mom’s never around, but I don’t want to say why. My dad’s a workaholic. And, well, yeah, the rest is a little hard to believe. Like the strange things I can make happen. And the dark shadows following me around.

Now tell us about this boy that you like. Why'd you decide to tell him about your, erm, ability?
It was an accident! I didn’t mean to let it slip. But I got so lost in Gavin’s gorgeous blue eyes and the slight upward curve of his lips. And maybe a part of me thought he might understand. I should really learn to be more careful.

I understand that you had to perform a spell to disrupt the Reaper's Rite. Was it hard to do?
Honestly, I didn’t even know what I was doing. At first I was just winging it, going along with something my best friend Naomi started. But then—I don’t know—something came over me. Something I couldn’t control. Something that shook in the core of my body and took over my actions. I hope I didn’t do something I wasn’t supposed to.

It must have been weird seeing your sister, Mara, after you brought her back to life. Were the two of you close? Before she died, I mean.
We were close when we were little, but then she became popular and got a boyfriend and stuff. We kind of drifted apart after that. Then she had her accident and I thought I’d lost her forever. But now that she’s back … well, I can’t even say that it’s her. She’s so strange now. It’s like it’s someone else in there behind those vacant eyes.

Lightning round!
• potato chips or cupcakes? Cupcakes
• vanilla or chocolate? Chocolate
• beach or mountains? Beach
• high heels or flats? Flats
• fiction or reality? Fiction (which is pretty close to reality at this point, yikes!)
• comedy or horror? Oh please give me comedy. I’ve got enough horror in my life!
• steak or bacon? Bacon-covered steak! Mmm.

MY SISTER’S REAPER by Dorothy Dreyer
Publication date: May, 2013
Publisher: Month9Books, LLC.

Sixteen-year-old Zadie’s first mistake was telling the boy she liked she could bring her dead sister back to life. Her second mistake was actually doing it.

When Zadie accidentally messes with the Reaper’s Rite that should have claimed her sister Mara, things go horribly wrong. Mara isn’t the same anymore—Zadie isn’t even sure she’s completely human, and to top it off, a Reaper is determined to collect Mara’s soul no matter what. Now Zadie must figure out how to defeat her sister’s Reaper, or let Mara die … this time for good.

Dorothy Dreyer has always believed in magic. She loves reading, writing, movies, and spending time with her family and friends. Half-American and half-Filipino, Dorothy lives in Germany with her husband and two children.

twitter / website / facebook / We Do Write blog

Hi Mariah! Do you have a nickname?

I’ve heard that you’re a senior in high school. What’s your school like? Do you have any favorite subjects?

I go to Fairfield County High, which is in the middle of the cornfields in the middle of Ohio. Literally. We drive down Highway 22 past rows and rows of corn to get to the school. It’s not too big, so pretty much everyone knows everyone else, which can be a good thing and a bad thing. But living in small town Ohio is like that.
I love, love, love, biology. I want to be a veterinarian when I get out of college. Right now I work at the Happy Paws Rescue Shelter for this really nice doctor. That’s where I got my little schnauzer, Lady. She’s the best dog ever. The last dog we rescued was a Great Dane. We named her Jelly, because she snarfed down a jelly donut I accidentally left sitting on the table when I was grooming her. Then she put her paws on my shoulders and looked at me as if to ask, “Why didn’t you bring more of those?”
I love animals so much that I'm donating 10% of the royalties from my story to the ASPCA. I hope it helps save a few more lovable pets.

When did you realize that you had the ability to see the future? 

It’s actually not me seeing the future. It’s these glasses. They are soooo sweet! Hay-Bay and I found them one day at the White Cottage Restaurant. Can you believe someone was actually careless enough to leave a $400 pair of sunglasses in a diner? Jackpot for us! We share them, 50/50.

For some reason, they only show the future to me, not Hayley. So one day I was wearing them while I was driving, and I heard a truck honk, long and hard. I saw this big rig coming down the wrong side of Highway 22. I freaked out, slammed on my brakes, and pulled off onto the dirt shoulder. When I pushed the glasses up on my head, nothing was there except the blue sky and empty road. It was totally freaky, but that’s not the weird part. The weird part was, when I was sitting there letting my heart rate get back to normal, a red Peterbilt came barreling down the road, on the wrong side! It would have crushed me to bits if I hadn’t been on the shoulder already.

  Seeing into the future must be really cool, huh?  

Yeah, that’s what I thought. At first. But sometimes there are things you just really don’t want to know. Scary things. Bad things.
Let’s move on to your next question.

Okay, last question. It’s time to get serious here. Who would win in a duel, a pirate or a ninja? 

Ooh, I lurve these questions! Okay, hear me out...

The pirate has docked his ship, the Marauder of the Seas, at his secret cove. It’s a new moon, and the sky is as black as ink. A ninja swims from the shore, climbs up the side of the ship, and silently leaps onto the deck. The pirate, after long years at sea, has a sort of sixth sense, you know? So he feels the prickly hairs on his neck standing up, and he whisks his sword out of its scabbard and whirls around, just as a ninja star whizzes past his head and into the main mast. The pirate, let’s call him Bloody Jake, charges with his sword, but the ninja, let’s call him Kai, springs over the pirate and onto the mast. Kai pulls his ninja star out of the mast, and whips it toward Bloody Jake. Kai follows by leaping off the mast and landing with a kick to Bloody Jake’s breastbone. The pirate falls to the deck unconscious.

Kai steps over to him and bends down to pick up his sword. That’s his first and fatal mistake. Sneaking up behind him, making no more noise than the whisper of a wasp, is Villainous Veronica. She delivers a roundhouse kick to Kai’s temple, and as he falls, she tosses a noose around his chest and arms and drags him to the starboard rail. He tries to kick her, and she slices the tendon in the back of his knee with her dagger. Then she pulls down Kai’s black face mask, kisses him on the lips, and tosses him back into the sea.

My advice? Never mess with a girl pirate who has deadly ninja skills.
~-~


I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did!
Click here to find the purchase links for "Shades of the Future" on Amazon.
You can stalk find out more about the author through her website, blog, and goodreads page.