Press release from Piatkus. Posted by Grace MW in Author News, Book News, Fiction, News, Recommended Reading. 14 Nov 2014
We are delighted to announce a brand new, global acquisition for Piatkus Fiction – Who’s Afraid? by the fabulously talented, debut author Maria Lewis!
This is a marvellous new urban fantasy by 25 year old Australian Daily Mail journalist Maria Lewis. Set predominantly in modern day Scotland and featuring a fab heroine who slowly begins to discover just how powerful she is, this is smart, fresh, sexy stuff!
Fans of Patricia Briggs, Keri Arthur, Sherrilyn Kenyon and anyone who loves Joss Whedon (you know who you are, people, and you rule) should definitely check this book out – we think it will be right up your street! Piatkus will be publishing Who’s Afraid? next year, so keep a look out for news and exclusive excerpts – and in the meantime we have a message from Maria herself . . .
Hey you. Yes, you. No, don’t look behind you: I’m specifically addressing this at you – Who’s Afraid?’s potential reader and (hopefully) a newfound fan. My name is Maria Lewis, a tattooed twenty-something from this wee island out in the middle of nowhere called Australia. Or, as we locals and Hugh Jackman call it, ‘Straya mate’.
Who’s Afraid? is my debut novel and the result of growing up on an unhealthy diet of horror stories and sassy female protagonists. I’ve always been obsessed with werewolves and the idea of duality: how do you not only live with a monster inside of you, but contain and control it? How do you manage to be both Diana Prince and Wonder Woman? The important questions. Who’s Afraid? and Tommi Grayson’s journey over the following books is an attempt to look at that.
I lived in Dundee, Scotland for several months as I got to know the setting for this series and also managed to sneak in trips to Berlin, Edinburgh, Glasgow and London to expand the universe. I fell in love with – as the cliché goes – the people and the places here, making the characters spend as much time in the UK as they did in my home country of New Zealand.
Growing up as a teenager working the police beat at my local newspaper and covering murders, plane crashes and bikie gangs on the regular, there’s enough gore and grim material in Who’s Afraid? to make Guillermo del Toro thirsty – so you have been warned. But there’s also a sense levity, romance and humour, which I think comes from my lifelong love of comics books and their creators. Having been a film and entertainment journalist for the Daily Mail, the Daily Telegraph,Empire magazine and a handful of other publications you can also expect plenty of pop culture references. Because I bleed them.
Enjoy the book, but most importantly I hope you enjoy meeting my heroine Tommi Grayson. She’s physically strong like the Huntress or Black Canary, but about as emotionally stable as Rocket Racoon or Emma Frost. She’s someone who walked into my head and refused to leave. I hope she does the same for you. Feel free to social media at me via my official Facebook page, Twitter and Instagram – @MovieMazz – or my website MariaLewis.com.au.
Happy hunting x
Maria Lewis got her start covering police rounds in a newsroom as a teenager and has been working as a professional journalist for the past 10 years. Making the switch from writing about murders to movie stars was not a difficult decision. A former reporter at the Daily Telegraph, she also wrote about all things film and entertainment related as the Showbusiness Reporter for the Daily Mail. Her work has appeared in the New York Post, Empire magazine, Huffington Post, the Sunday Mail, Junkee and BuzzFeed, to name but a few.
She appears on 2SER 107.3 FM’s weekly Drive segment Gaggle Of Geeks every Wednesday, talking the latest comic book and pop culture news and every Tuesday Breakfast for TV Talk. As a proud member of the Graffiti With Punctuation crew – a collective of Australia’s leading film bloggers – she makes up half of the Pod Save Our Screen podcast.
Based in Sydney, she lives in a house with too many movie posters and just the right amount of humans. Maria can often be found spending much money on comics, watching horror movies at stupid hours, inhaling books on modern feminist theory (aka anything Caitlin Moran touches) and holding on to the one belief she has had since she was five: that unicorns exist. She is most likely Mark Wahlberg’s future wife. Most likely.
Who’s Afraid? is her debut novel and is set to be released worldwide in 2015 from Piatkus/Little Brown Books. The sequel – Who’s Afraid Too? – is also scheduled to hit bookshelves shortly thereafter.