Samantha Sotto: An Interview

Once I finished Before Ever After by Samantha Sotto I was intrigued to find out more about the lady behind the novel and about how the novel originated. I recently reviewed the novel and loved it (you read the review here ). With Before Ever After being Samantha's first novel, I was excited to find out what the futures holds for her. Read on to find out what she has to say.

Thankyou for taking the time answer my questions. I absolutly loved Before Ever After, as it seems does everyone who reads it. Where did the idea for the novel come from?
Thank you! I'm thrilled you enjoyed it. Max popped into my head while I was stuck in traffic. I think it came about as a result of the Doctor Who marathon I had just emerged from and the "hangover" I had from reading The Time Traveller's Wife.

Did you visit all the places that you mention in Before Ever After?

I've been to all the countries in the book except Slovenia - which is probably why I had the most fun writing the chapter about it. My imagination had a bigger playground.

Where has been your favourite place that you have travelled to?

I love Venice. I have absolutely no sense of direction and Venice is the perfect place to get lost in.

Did you have to do a lot of research to ensure all the historical facts in Before Ever After were correct?
 The book took me about a year to write and half of that time was spent on research. It was one of my favorite parts of the process. And yes, I'm a nerd. ;-)

Why did you decide to make chickens and eggs a focal point in Before Ever After?

I thought that a character like Max would have developed some interesting quirks in the course of his life. His love for chickens just made him feel more real and charming to me. On a symbolic level, eggs have long been associated with the concept of life and rebirth.

If you were to make Before Ever After into a movie, who would be your dream cast?
As much as I'd love to answer that question, I have to bite my tongue. (Ow.) I want readers to be able to imagine Max and the gang without influencing them.

How did you celebrate getting Before Ever After published?

I was in Hong Kong when my agent called me at 4AM to tell me about the book deal. My hubby and I ordered champagne and omelets from room service right after I got off the phone.

Do you have a special place where you do your writing?
I wrote Before Ever After at the same table at Starbucks for an entire year.

Do you advice to aspiring authors wanting to get published?

Show up for work and write even if inspiration decides to play hooky.

Will there be another book, and if so can you tell us what it will be about?

I'm working on my second novel. I can't say much about except that chapter twenty four is trying to sip my brain out with a very small straw ;-)

Thankyou so much for taking the time to answer my questions. I, and I'm sure everyone else, cannot wait for your second novel!

Thankyou :-)

Thankyou to the beautiful and talented Samantha Sotto for stopping by Chick Litaholic

You can visit Samantha Sotto's website here

And remember you can purchase Before Ever After below:

Before Ever After: A Review

Samantha Sotto - Before Ever After

When Was It Released?: 2nd August 2011
Where Did I Get It From?: The library
Who Published It?: Crown Publishing

Every once in a blue moon a book comes along that grips hold and of you and never lets go. A book that transports you to another world that you never want to leave. Where fairytales might just come true and maybe just maybe you may get your happily ever after. Well that’s just what Before Ever After by Samantha Sotto did for me. I never expected to fall in love with a novel quite as much as I did with this one. Before Ever After is a modern day Romeo and Juliet, with more of a fairytale twist.

One day Shelley and her husband Max were madly in love and couldn’t be happier, the next Max dies and Shelley is left behind as his widow. It has now been three years since Max’s death and Shelley has still been unable to adjust to living without him. Until, suddenly, the doorbell ring and standing there is a man who looks just like Max in everyway. Shelley cannot believe her eyes and thinks she must be going crazy until the man introduces himself as Paolo and shows Shelley some photos from his childhood. He tells her that the man in the photos is Paolo’s grandfather, Max. Her Max. And it seems he is still alive! How could he be alive when Shelley knows he died? And the question Shelley wants the answer to the most - why has he not come to find her? Desperately wanting to find the answers to her questions Shelley and Paolo travel across the world, while Shelley recounts the European tour where they met and the stories Max told her along the way. Shelley comes to some astound revelations and comes to discover that her happily ever after may not be all it seems.

How do I convey to you a book that has completely changed my view on books forever? Before Ever After is a book that I will now compare all other books to, and I know that many will fail to come even close. There are so many elements to this incredible story - romance, history, a wide range of emotions from loss to hope and adventure throughout the pages, resulting in there never being a dull moment. The character of Shelley was so likeable that I found myself routing for her ’happy ever after’ and feeling her emotions the entire way through. I found all the characters to be important within the novel, playing a part in Shelley’s story. I particularly loved the historical stories that Max told throughout the novel, finding them to be not only interesting but intriguing too, filling the story with adventure. With all the emotion the story could have become sombre, however Samantha Sotto manages to throw some humour in with the use of chicken and eggs, making the novel much lighter and natural. I now want to find out how to make the perfect baked eggs. The magical realism within the novel was a welcome change, which I do not normally enjoy. I like my novels to have some elements of realism but they way in which Samantha brought this story together made it much easier to believe that Max could still be alive.

It is very hard to tell you anything I didn’t like about the novel! If pushed I would tell you that perhaps I would have liked to have found out more about Rose and Jonathon as well as Brad and Simon, feeling that their stories were never really looked at or completed.

As you can probably tell I loved this novel! I borrowed this book from the library and because I love it so much will now be purchasing a copy so I can come back and read this book again. I would recommend this novel to everyone, and have been doing ever since I finished the book. You can’t begin to understand how incredible this novel is until you read it for yourself, and then you will be taken away with the story and laugh cry and hope along the way. I am eagerly awaiting another novel from Samantha Sotto and will be first in the queue for the next book.