Hi everyone! You met Boshra Rasti on Creator’s Roulette recently where she shared about gendered genres. Today, I am thrilled to host her for an interview about her book, Surrogate Colony. It has rave reviews and I am excited to dive into it as soon as I get a chance. Check out the excerpt from the book and see if you would be interested in it too!
Get to know the author: Boshra
Welcome back to Armed with A Book, Boshra! Tell me and my readers a bit about yourself!
I was raised in British Columbia, Canada and works as an expatriate teacher in Qatar. I received a Master’s degree in Educational Leadership at Royal Roads University, which proved a fateful blow to her belief in anything hierarchical. However, it did spark my desire to flee from the real world and start writing about other ones. When I am not working to earn a living, I enjoy the escape that reading and writing lends me. I also enjoys physical running, even if it is of the sadistic variety in Qatar.
What inspired you to write this book?
A combination of a writing workshop/prompt at my writing group in Qatar – Doha Writers Forum. Mehdi Rifai, a good friend of mine, had a workshop about Cyberpunk and we had to write a monologue as the main character in our own Cyberpunk novel. Adriana’s (the main character’s) voice was born from that assignment.
How long did it take you to write this book, from the first idea to the last edit?
It took me about 7 years to write the novel. It started with a monologue, grew into a scene, then into a PowerPoint layout for the plot. I didn’t have time to write it, until COVID lockdown. The novel is a post-pandemic novel, so living the lockdown really helped me resonate with Adriana as the muse and main character of the novel.
What makes your story unique?
The novel is unique in that I’ve never read a dystopian novel with reference to Eunuchs. Historically, Eunuchs have had a tremendous influence on guarding the status quo of rulers, and they just seem to have disappeared from history in the 20th Century. So, a future world without some sort of physical control exerted by the powers-that-be, doesn’t make sense to me. I think Eunuchs shows a dystopia very well.
Who would enjoy reading your book?
Anyone interested in Science Fiction, Dystopia, and Post-pandemic novels.
What’s something you hope readers would take away from it?
That even though we have developed technologies that ‘assist’ us to make choice and influence everything from what we see on google to what we talk about on social media, we can become prey to it all.
Do you have a favorite quote or scene in the book that you find yourself going back to?
This is the first monologue I wrote for the novel, and through all the edits (and there were many, many, edits) the majority of the monologue remained:
“I don’t know how I came to have one blue and one brown eye. The scientists must have gotten it mixed up when they did my genetic testing before I was born. It’s very rare that a doctor who does the Endowing gets it wrong, but freak accidents happen; we’re all human, right? Maybe he was inebriated. Scientists are exempt from the alcohol ban in MicroScrep, needing something to curb the stress of their job. Perhaps absent-minded, getting the DNA peptide nucleic acid calculations wrong. Anyways, it is what it is. I’ve embraced my freakishness.
But still, I wonder how can you get something like that wrong when we all start out in petri dishes? Wasn’t the point of the “In-Vitro for All Campaign” to not have to worry about abnormalities? Arthur Mills, the founding father of MicroScrep, had a lazy eye, I saw in one of the history books at school. Arthur Mills created MicroScrep with the help of only one hundred scientists who were caught in a gas explosion after the Cleanliness Campaign had been launched. Only seventy bodies were found, but all the scientists were immortalized in MicroScrep for their contributions. I wondered if they had abnormalities too. I have a stubborn sense that some things have been deliberately kept out of the history books. I look at my mother’s oblivious smile and am sure of it.
When I commented about Arthur Mills’s eye to my teacher in high school, she swiftly tutted me. “Don’t ever say that again! The photographer’ timing must have been wrong!” I still remember Laura scoffing at my comment. In fact, that’s the only time Laura really reacted to anything I said in school, although she did have an air of ruthlessness about her.
I still have a hard time believing what the teacher and the textbooks said. What I don’t understand is how people are selected for their positions in society. Like, can I have the specific algorithm please? That bugs me; there are certain people I frankly don’t want to be matched with. Harmony is supposed to be all knowing, having algorithms to figure that out. I reckon the chip that is inserted in us as embryos collects that information too, as well as giving us X-ray vision. As a child and young adult, I would ask these questions, but aside from a vague answer and a reprimand, I was given nothing.”
Surrogate Colony
In MicroScrep, a post-pandemic world, one politician, Arthur Mills, brings all scientists and engineers together to create a vaccine and rebuild a world where harmony ensues.
What results is a society where algorithms control who you marry, who your child is, and what position you have.
Adriana Buckowski is not normal. Her eyes are two different colors, making her less susceptible to the system’s propaganda, she has a unique connection with a boy named Zach, and she has questions.
Weird occurrences happen as she gets closer to her Calling Ceremony, where she’ll be given a position.
When she finally starts piecing together the twisted motives at play in MicroScrep, she becomes a cog in the wheel of the state.
Her only option for survival lies with Zach, and the hope that she will be vindicated through a vigilante group off-grid.
Content notes: None declared by the author.
Find this book on Goodreads and Amazon. Check out the trailer here.
Book Excerpt from
Surrogate Colony
I notice more people filtering in and decide to go back to my chair. I scan the audience and seating for viruses. Finding my chair, I am almost ready to sit down, when a little, frail, blond girl approaches me, tapping me on the back before I take my seat. She can’t be older than ten. A cloth patch covers one eye. I recognize her; she’s a little girl that lives on our compound. I haven’t seen her before with the patch over her eye, though.
“Oh, is this your chair?” she asks, one bright, blue eye looking up at me.
“Yes, sorry sweetie, it is. Where are your parents? Aren’t you here with them?”
“Sort of. They are in charge of the music,” she says, looking down to the ground. “They won’t play any of the music that I’ve composed,” she says glumly.
“What kind of music do you create?” My curiosity piqued. I’ve never heard her playing music before on the compound. Come to think of it, I’ve never heard of a child composing music. I thought it came from an algorithm from Harmony.
“Nothing like the music played here. Father tells me to imagine what a flowing stream sounds like, or what birds must sing like, off-grid.” She mumbles this quietly, and I incline my ear to listen to her whistle a tune.
Goosebumps cascade down my arms, I choke out a whisper. “That’s very beautiful. You have a great talent.” This is the closest to an emotional response to music I’ve ever had. How peculiar, I notice that beyond the little girl is Laura, who is facing me, the dog lunging and barking at us. When she notices me watching her, she turns, pulling the dog away.
The little girl smiles, her one eye fixated on my face, and without a word, she turns and skips away. I want to follow her, to make sure she gets a seat and to compliment her and her parents at the end of the parade, but something on the other side of the plexiglass grabs my attention. Kevin is walking with Cody, their backs to me. I can see that their heads are tilted towards each other as if they are exchanging private comments. This strikes me as strange, Cody seems to increasingly spend more time with Kevin, even though Kevin is far older than Cody is. I wonder what they have in common that makes them spend so much time together? They do have soccer in common, but would a sport make two people so close? Kevin places an arm around Cody’s shoulder, and he gives it a pat as they part ways. Kevin wraps around the last plexiglass barricade and sits in the audience beside the little girl who whistled so sweetly.
My mind overwhelmed with all these sights and sounds around me, I now desperately want the parade to begin and be over so that I can go home. The parade will start shortly. I can hear the music amplified and the people in the parade taking their positions on, or in front, of their floats. I look around for Mother and Father and see them in the distance. I wave them over and take my seat.
A holographic projection reads, “Pre-MicroScrep Barbarians.” The music starts off chaotically to match the first floats that depict the pre-MicroScrep era. An unorganized swarm of actors dance wildly with synthetic blood covering their faces. They run up towards the plexiglass, sticking out their tongues, or showing long, bloody fangs. They hoot and holler to communicate; the audience taken aback by the abruptness, some laugh and point. A flash of light brings oohs and aaahs from the crowd. Everything goes black. The next float that passes is of people coughing and sputtering, some are choking. Cody’s body lies covered by a flag, one of a half dozen strewn on the ground. The holographic projection reads, “The Pandemic Hits.” A strong, large man depicting Arthur Mills stands back, bringing the scientists together in a circle to come up with a solution to the terrible pestilence that has hit mankind. All the while another float depicts men and women swaying, depicting the animalist urges that they did not control and what caused the pandemic to move through the population. Then finally, a float depicting the children that came of these wild pairings. Ugly, dumb and mad. Their mouths contorted into barbaric sneers.
The music becomes softer, timelier and more organized, although still electronic. A hologram of Arthur Mills projects largely to the clap of the audience. Some are in tears, pointing to their Perfect Family Matches, the grandness of his face, the redness of his hair, the symmetry of his features. A float of scientists that are busy working on a vaccine is depicted. The music becomes grander and louder, the crescendo coinciding with the hologram showing the mandatory vaccine inoculating the masses against the unseen enemy, the virus.
Interested?
Find this book on Goodreads and Amazon.
Connect with Boshra on Goodreads, Twitter and Instagram or check out her website for updates. I will be back with a review of the book as soon as I have read it!
If you are an indie author and would like to do a book excerpt, check out my work with me page for details.
Cover image: Photo by Breno Machado on Unsplash
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