Guest Post by SJ Kincaid + Giveaway: Insignia ARC!

Hi everyone! Today I have Shelley. You may know her as SJ Kincaid. She’ll be posting today for Dystopian Domination 2, Part 2: Apocalypsies and Debut Authors. Hope you enjoy the post!

Thanks for inviting me to guest post! My debut novel, INSIGNIA, comes out in early July. It's about a teenaged videogamer who becomes a government weapon in a futuristic world at war.

There's a reason I write futuristic YA. In seventh grade, I came across a novel called "Legacy" by Susan Kay. The book followed Elizabeth Tudor, Queen of England, from her birth to her death, and ignited my interest in  Renaissance England. I went onto major in European History, and this interest in the past is one of the reasons I gravitate to stories set in the future.

This isn't as contradictory as it might sound.

A clichéd but accurate saying about history is this: "Those who don't know the past are doomed to repeat it." Human history is replete with situations where individuals and civilizations make the same mistakes over and over again.

Why don't we learn? One reason might be that people really haven't changed. We modern humans have the same cognitive capacity nowadays as those villagers who burned witches at the stake hundreds of years ago, and the crazy emperors of Ancient Rome. Physiologically, our brains are a constant.

But technology is not.

Futuristic – or as people call it – ‘Dystopian YA’, is exciting to me as a writer because it liberates me to use so many incredible tools. On one hand, I can draw from history, and mirror those situations that have happened to people already, but on the other hand, I can consider possibilities where those situations might resolve in a fundamentally different manner than they do in our current world, simply due to new aspects I can introduce in the story. Technology changes everything.

Futuristic stories enable new manifestations of old situations. We all know of survivor’s guilt, but what of its new form in Suzanne Collins’ THE HUNGER GAMES, when Katniss faces off with a bloodthirsty hound with her late friend’s eyes? That’s a new way of presenting something classic, something old.

People are fascinating. Futuristic YA, Dystopian YA, YA sci-fi… Whatever you’d call it, it enables a new means of exploring just how fascinating people are. That’s why I love writing it, and that’s why I love reading it.

Giveaway: ARC of Insignia by SJ Kincaid

Add Insignia on Goodreads

"More than anything, Tom Raines wants to be important, though his shadowy life is anything but that. For years, Tom’s drifted from casino to casino with his unlucky gambler of a dad, gaming for their survival. Keeping a roof over their heads depends on a careful combination of skill, luck, con artistry, and staying invisible.

Then one day, Tom stops being invisible. Someone’s been watching his virtual-reality prowess, and he’s offered the incredible—a place at the Pentagonal Spire, an elite military academy. There, Tom’s instincts for combat will be put to the test, and if he passes, he’ll become a member of the Intrasolar Forces, helping to lead his country to victory in World War Three. Finally, he’ll be someone important: a superhuman war machine with the tech skills that every virtual-reality warrior dreams of. Life at the Spire holds everything that Tom’s always wanted—friends, the possibility of a girlfriend, and a life where his every action matters—but what will it cost him?

Gripping and provocative, S. J. Kincaid’s futuristic thrill ride of a debut crackles with memorable characters, tremendous wit, and a vision of the future that asks startling, timely questions about the melding of humanity and technology."

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S.J. Kincaid was born in Alabama, grew up in California, and attended high school in New Hampshire, but it was while living beside a haunted graveyard in Scotland, that she realized that she wanted to be a writer. Her debut, Insignia, comes out in July of 2012!

Connect with Shelley: Twitter | Goodreads | Site