Gemina, the second book in The Illuminae Files series and the sequel to the hugely successful Illuminae is now about to be released. Can you tell us a bit about it?
GEMINA is both a sequel and a companion novel. Chronologically, it picks up around 5 minutes after the end of ILLUMINAE. But the initial focus of the book is on Jump Station: Heimdall, a space station orbiting a seven-way wormhole that leads to the wartorn Kerenza system, as well as back to the galactic Core. The refugee crew of the Hypatia were trying to reach the sanctuary of Heimdall for most of ILLUMINAE, and in GEMINA, we finally discover why their distress calls went unanswered.
The story focuses on Hanna Donnelly, the pampered daughter of the station’s commander, and Nik Malikov, a reluctant member of the station’s criminal underbelly, as they try to fight off a BeiTech invasion force sent to intercept and destroy the incoming Hypatia before news of the atrocities in book 1 get out to the universe at large.
We pitched it as Die Hard meets Aliens.
I guess you could have chosen to continue the following Kady and Ezra, but in Gemina we have moved to Jump Station Heimdall. Why this shift?
It was always our plan to have a different set of main protagonists in every book of the ILLUMINAE FILES. We want to study the metaplot and conflict of the books through different eyes, and explore different themes through different lenses. This is the story of a massive criminal conspiracy that spans galaxies and touches thousands of lives. We wanted it to feel BIG.
That said, everyone who survives the pages of ILLUMINAE appears in GEMINA and plays a significant role. It’s a true sequel in that sense.
Can you give us some insight into the minds of our new heroe
s, Hanna and Nik?
Hanna is something of a spoiled rich kid, a fashionista and a military brat. But her father is a soldier, and he’s raised her with an eye for strategy and a couple of black belts in martial arts, so there’s definitely more to her than the party girl exterior.
Nik is a neophyte member of an interstellar criminal syndicate known as the Dom Najov (House of Knives). He’s a drug dealer and petty thug with a dark past and some killer dimples. But again, as BeiTech’s invasion force take Heimdall, we find out there’s more to Nik than just tattoos and a criminal record.
You also have to tell us a bit about your rather unique writing style. How did you come up with this idea of telling stories?
ILLUMINAE started as a dream. Amie had a dream she and Jay were writing a book together – she couldn’t recall what it was about, but she knew it was written in email form. Once we decided to actually try and write together, and stick to the email format, first we had to figure out why two people would be talking constantly through an electronic medium as opposed to face-to-face. So we decided our protagonists were on two different refugee spaces ships, separated by thousands of kilometers of vacuum.
But once we’d decided it would be an alternate format book, we started playing with the nature of what a book was. Trying to push the envelope and redefine what a book was and could do. We wanted the object itself to be part of the story, rather than just a vehicle for it.
Of course, when we were writing it, we thought the idea was just too crazy for any publisher to buy. So we wrote it like nobody was watching, and that freed us up to do anything and everything we wanted.
In Gemina, you also have a couple of new document styles. Anything you can reveal?
The coolest addition is a visual diary—Hanna is an illustrator who records her thoughts by drawing them, and during the siege of Heimdall, she has her trusty journal with her. We’re incredibly pleased to report that Marie Lu, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the LEGEND and YOUNG ELITES series is going to be doing all of Hanna’s illustrations. We’ve seen the finished product and they look INCREDIBLE.
Do you get a lot of feedback about your writing style?
We get a lot of ALL CAPS TWEETS about the twists if that counts? Page 498 seems to be the kicker in GEMINA.
What new challenges did you set for yourself with in Gemina?
We wanted to make GEMINA a book that could stand on its own two feet. ILLUMINAE was so well received and so different to any book out there, it was always a risk that GEMINA would forever live in its shadow. But we’ve had a huge number of early readers tell us they liked GEMINA more than ILLUMINAE, which is everything you want to hear after writing a sequel.
Plus, the book had to 
be bigger. Grander in scale and grander in its themes and ideas. We got into some strange science-fictional territory in GEMINA, and we can’t say too much for fear of spoilers, but if you thought the twists in ILLUMINAE were mind-blowing, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
When authors collaborate I’m always curious about how they work together. How do you work on ideas together, how do you divide the work?
We’ll concept together, usually at the pub. We plot about 100 pages in advance, break those 100 pages down into scenes. Then we divide the work based on narrator PoV – in GEMINA, Jay writes Nik and Ella, Amie writes Hanna. With secondary characters, we tend to flip back and forth, and later in the book, those lines tend to blur. It’s an incredible creative and collaborative experience, and there really is no “I” in “team”.
How did you start working together in the first place?
We met through the IRS, strangely enough. Amie needed some advice on one of the incredibly archaic and convoluted forms that international authors are required to complete if they’re earning money in the US, and Jay had just completed said form (after three failed attempts). He gave advice on said form in exchange for a fried breakfast (there is very little Jay won’t do for a cooked breakfast).
We started out just as friends – we were both soon to be published authors in a city that didn’t have a huge writer community, so we’d get together and do brunch once a month. Once Amie had the dream about collaborating, we decided to try and write something together. The rest in history!
So, listen to what your dreams are telling you is the lesson there.
What are your plans for The Illuminae Files series?
Three books and we’re wrapped. We’ve handed in first draft of the book 3 to our editor and we’ll begin the finesse work on that soon. But, for those folks who’ve enjoyed our collaboration on ILLUMINAE, fear not, we’re bring out a new SciFi series in 2018! There’s a few details about it here.
Thanks for having us!
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Interview by Dag Rambraut – SFFWorld.com © 2016
