"Maybe I'm not even going east. Maybe sunrise and sunset have been reduced to parlor tricks. Maybe my compass is rigged, and my magnetic north is really a remote-controlled signal easing me into an oblivious spiral.

Maybe I'll never make it home."

It begins with a reality TV show. Twelve contestants are sent into the woods to face challenges that will test the limits of their endurance. While they are out there, something terrible happens—but how widespread is the destruction, and has it occurred naturally or is it man-made? Cut off from society, the contestants know nothing of it. When one of them—a young woman the show's producers call Zoo—stumbles across the devastation, she can imagine only that it is part of the game.

Grete: So I guess the obvious first question is, what's your favorite reality show?

Alexandra: The Great British Baking Show, hands down. I love how non-confrontational and sincere it is—while still being oddly intense. Plus, the other day I walked into a local bakery and I got to be like, "A princess torte! I know what that is!" I used to be really into a bunch of survivalist shows—my favorite was a Discovery Channel show called The Colony—but I'm kinda over those now. After designing my own show for this book, I was ready to move on to other things. 

​G: Rewrites and redevelopment are part of a writer's reality. During the course of writing the book, did any of the characters end up vastly different from how you first imagined them? 

A: ​Brennan gained a lot of depth over the course of revisions. Although his scenes are all written from Zoo's perspective, I needed to make sure everything he said and did made sense, so I had to imagine every scene from his perspective as well. The ending of the book was pretty tricky to write, and deepening my understanding of his character and his perspective was key to getting it right.

​G: Who surprised you the most?

​A: Exorcist—simply by being in the book. When I was designing my cast for the show, I knew I needed a wild card character, but I wasn't sure who he was going to be. Then I came across a book someone had left on the sidewalk; it was an exorcist's memoir. I was like—yes, that's my wild card right there. I never actually read the book I found, but that's where Exorcist got his start, and I'm so glad things happened that way. Writing Exorcist and his antics was incredibly fun, and it provided a nice counterbalance to getting lost in some of the darker parts of the book.

​G: Who is your favorite character in The Last One? 

A: I identify most strongly with my main character, Zoo, but ​I also have a special place in my heart for Engineer. He's so sincere and well-meaning, and his reasons for going on the show are just so pure.​

​G: Naturally I now have to ask: If pressed, which one would you vote off the island?

​A: If I were a contestant on the show, I would want Exorcist gone ASAP. He'd annoy the hell out of me. If I were making the show, I'd get rid of Biology because she ends up being more bland than the producers had hoped.​

​G: I found the double narrative structure of The Last One especially engaging. How did you select this story-telling method? Did you try to tell the story a different way originally?

A: Thanks! ​I had the idea for The Last One while I was revising and trying to find representation for another project, so even though I knew I wanted it to be a novel, I started out by writing it as a short story. The short story was essentially a condensed version of Zoo/Mae's journey home after everything went to hell. For the novel, I loved the idea of weaving in a narrative of the show itself with an expanded version of the narrative I already had. I think I found this so appealing in large part because it allowed me to explore two extremes of Zoo's personality—the bubbly animal-lover cast on the show for her chipperness and the hardened, struggling survivor who's just trying to make it home. How—why?—did she shift from one extreme to the other? To me, that question forms the heart of the novel.

​G: What was the craziest research you did for this novel?

 A:  A two-week-long wilderness survival course in Utah. It was so intense, I lost nearly twenty pounds over just those fourteen days. More importantly, I learned about bow drills, skinning animals, and what it feels like to be starving and exhausted and to have to just keep putting one foot in front of the other.

​G: What strategies would you most recommend to a new or up-and-coming author?

A: Take a deep breath, enjoy the highs, and try not to take the lows personally. 

A: I love too many books to pick a favorite, but I recently read The Power by Naomi Alderman, and I highly recommend it. It's a fantastically ambitious novel about what might happen if girls worldwide suddenly gained a huge amount of power—the ability to discharge electric shocks. It's a premise that could easily get out of hand or come across as campy, but Alderman executes it so incredibly well. It's awe-inspiring, really. 

Check out Alexandra on social media:
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​Oh my gawd, I read so many books last year...
 
Way more than I normally do. Which is on top of the fanfic I also read, so if you think about it, this is probably just half of the total.
 
But ANYWAY I have recs for you!
 
(Note: If a book I read last year was not recced, it doesn't mean I didn't like it. I liked a LOT of books on my list last year. It just means I had to choose one for each rec category.)
 
My recs of what I read in 2017 (aka, The Year of World Craziness):
 
If you like...
 

​ROMANCE
May I please direct you to: Uncommonly Tidy Poltergeists by Angel Martinez

 
​HORROR
May I please direct you to: The Call by Peadar O'Guilin

My thoughts: Arrrrrggggh, my FAVORITE type of horror: the kind that comes out of your dreaming subconscious. This is a YA about fairies. Real fairies. We're talking Rawhead and Bloody Bones here.

​COMEDY
May I please direct you to: Fifty Shames of Earl Grey by Fanny Merkin (aka, Andrew Shaffer)

My thoughts: Oh lordy, this book. I read it on a plane. I was lucky no one badgered me to stop snort-laughing.

(TIP: Follow this guy's social media. He's hilarious.)

​ADVENTURE
May I please direct you to: Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

My thoughts: Wahoo, a heist book! It's rare that I like every single character, but I liked Every. Single. Character. The pacing is excellent, the story engrossing, the magical element ingenious, and the resolution well-executed. Of course, now I need to read the sequel...

FANTASY/SCI-FI
**BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR**
It is with wild excitement and great joy that I direct you to:
​Red Rising and the sequel, Golden Son by Pierce Brown

My thoughts: HOT DAMN. Holy shit. So, Dune has a baby with Gladiator and then, being conscientious parents, immediately volunteers it as tribute. Best thing I have read in years. My reading goal this year is not to read 30 books, but to make 30 people read these books. Flawed and complicated characters, fantastic plotting, a HUGE scope, a well-executed cause-and-effect of action and motivation, and lo and behold... the sequel was just as good! Warning: after the first 1/3 of either of these books, I had to stop reading at bedtime; the tension just kept hyping me up!
 
 
So that's it from me for 2017. Let me know what books you liked in your reading year and, most importantly, read on, my friends!