Arise by Tara Hudson is out now. Read a fantastic Q&A with the author

A stranded spirit, and a love story that crosses the divide between the living and the dead…

Arise, the hauntingly lovely sequel to HEREAFTER, is out now.

Amelia – still trapped somewhere between life and death – continues to fight for her relationship with her mortal love, Joshua.

Read this fantastic interview with the author and let us know your thoughts.

How does Arise follow on from Hereafter?

ARISE takes the same characters from HEREAFTER – Amelia, Joshua, Jillian, Ruth – and escalates the stakes for all of them.  Amelia accompanies the Mayhew family on a holiday to New Orleans, where her afterlife becomes ever more complicated by new ghosts, Voodoo, and the return of the demons.

Your writing is described as ‘lyrical paranormal romance’; is this something you set out to achieve when you began writing Hereafter?

I do, actually – I love descriptive writing that appeals to all my senses.  When I read, I not only want to imagine the characters and settings, but I also want the writing to appeal to my sense of smell, taste, and touch.  I try to embue my writing with those same elements.

What or who inspired the character of Amelia?

She reminds me of a few girls I knew as a child.  While I was never a shrinking violet, I knew girls who were – girls who felt like they were invisible and suspected that they might disappear at any minute.  In writing Amelia, I wanted to take one such girl and place her in an extraordinary situation that tests her mettle.

How does your past influence your writing?

I love to draw on places that meant something to me as a chld.  Wilburton, Oklahoma is one such place.  My grandparents had a ranch there about twenty years ago, and I remember loving Robbers Cave State Park, the family cemetery, etc.  I also went to New Orleans for the first time when I was a child, and I definitely wanted to recapture that sense of eerie wonder that the city inspires in Amelia on her visit there in ARISE

How (and which songs) have bands like Death Cab for Cutie, The Temper Trap, The Black Keys and Florence + The Machine inspired your writing?

I can’t write without them!  I never, ever, ever write without a mood-themed playlist going in the background.  (They’re entitled “Action Jackson” and “Oh La La,” ha!)  The idea of a haunted bridge actually came from the Death Cab song “Bixby Canyon Bridge!”

What motivated you to set the book in New Orleans?

Not only is it my favorite city in the U.S., shopping and food-wise, but I also love its complex, troubled, exciting history.  This is a place where religion and piracy and piety and excess have mixed for centuries.  Everyone assumes it’s haunted, and for good reasons: I can’t imagine a soul wanting to leave it after death!

Author Becca Fitzpatrick is a fan of your writing – how does it feel to have other authors enjoy reading your writing?

Awesome and terrifying!  Even though ARISE is my second book to be published, I still feel like a newbie, honored and flattered anytime someone who isn’t related to me even READS the books…much less likes them!