Following is an interview with author Alycia Ripley who has an event coming up at the Burchfield-Penney:
Are you originally from Buffalo?
I’m originally from Buffalo and graduated from The Buffalo Seminary for High School. I then went on to Syracuse University and received my MFA in Creative Writing from NYU. I lived in New York City for 6 years before moving to Los Angeles. I’ve been back in Buffalo for 3 years and my current home base is Clarence when I’m not traveling to promote the novels.
What was the name of the first book?
My 1st published novel was called Traveling With An Eggplant and was published in 2006. It’s about a music journalist who is being haunted by a negative person/presence from her past while she navigates working at a music magazine in New York City along with a relationship with a brilliant but socially awkward neuroscientist. That novel focuses on destiny, the state of modern romance, and how when we don’t deal with unpleasantness in our past it can often come back to haunt us.
What’s this about a retrospective?
While a high school student at the Buffalo Seminary, a story I wrote was sent in and won a New York State writing contest. An English teacher of mine also sent that winning story into the Atlantic who published it when it won their contest. Soon after I submitted more stories to contests and publications and continued to win some prizes and be published and it was because of this 1st winning story that someone on the admissions board of NYU remembered my name and decided I should be admitted to the graduate school. I’ve been writing for 20 years now including novels, stage work, articles, etc and so much of it began here in Buffalo that we decided to combine the launch of the new novel with a 20 year retrospective and offer all the books for sale at the launch as well as photos and press books for people to look at from over the years.
Can you tell us about your second book?
In January 2011 my novel The Final Alice was published and that was the 1st novel in my ‘Alice’ trilogy. It centers on a young woman, a depressed writer, presented with an offer- to become a sort of vigilante, a fixer, someone who eliminates all the worst people or puts them into place in order to keep good and evil balanced in the world and prepare for a terrible threat that will soon occur. The novel focuses on the new job she takes on, the fact that she is thrown into it with little information, and the relationships she forges with the members of the team there to help her. It deals with many psychological and theological questions as well as with themes of sacrifice, destiny, faith, good vs evil and family.
The sequel, the NEW book, will be released in the next few weeks, with the formal launch on May 8th. It’s the sequel, entitled, Alice’s Army and its story takes place 10 years after the events of Book One. It acts as both a prequel AND a sequel, filling the reader in on the backstories of the characters and explaining why they said yes to the complicated job of working with Alice. The plot concerns a serial killer in Nigeria who poses corpses in grisly ways that resonate with Alice and have much to do with the enemy she fought at the end of Book 1. It explores how haunted and alienated Alice has become from 10 years on the job and focuses on the mystery of just what she’s fighting and whom. The themes center on alienation and addiction and again, good vs evil. The story is a look at a complicated person who has given up a normal life for the sake of helping humankind to not cave under the influence of a negative threat.
When is the sequel launching?
Alice’s Army is launching Thursday May 8th, 2014 with the formal book tour to follow in various cities, at booksignings in bookstores, libraries, and book club appearances. It will then be available in bookstores and at all online retailers.
Anything else?
I’m happy to be celebrating 20 years of published work in my hometown of Buffalo.