Blog Tour and Guest post: Replica by Jenna Black

Title: Replica
Author: Jenna Black
Published: July 2013

Synopsis: Sixteen-year-old Nadia Lake comes from a high-class Executive family in the Corporate States. Her marriage has been arranged with the most powerful family in her state, which means she lives a life of privilege but also of public scrutiny, followed everywhere by photographers, every detail of her private life tabloid fodder. But her future is assured, as long as she can maintain her flawless public image — no easy feat when your betrothed is a notorious playboy.

Nathan Hayes is the heir of Paxco — controller of the former state of New York, and creator of human replication technology, science that every state and every country in the world would kill to have. Though Nadia and Nate aren’t in love, they’ve grown up close, and they (and the world) are happy enough with their match.

Until Nate turns up dead, and as far as everyone knows, Nadia was the last person to see him alive.

When the new Nate wakes up in the replication tanks, he knows he must have died, but with a memory that only reaches to his last memory backup, he doesn’t know what killed him. Together, Nadia and Nate must discover what really happened without revealing the secrets that those who run their world would kill to protect.

Buy: Amazon / Barnes & Noble / Indiebound

 

Guest Post: The One that Got Away by Jenna Black 

When I was given “a memory you wish you’d made” as a topic for this post, I had a surprisingly hard time coming up with an answer. I spent a lot of time thinking over the things I’ve done (or not done) in my life, and I realized I’ve actually done a pretty good job of seizing my opportunities, realizing in advance the things I will regret not doing—and therefore doing them.

I have traveled to all seven continents. I stood on the bridge of our repurposed research vessel and watched the waves crashing over the bow as we crossed the Drake Passage on our way to Antarctica. I have ridden a camel in deserts of Egypt, ridden an elephant in jungles of Nepal, camped out in the African bush, and swum in a lake while our tour guide fished for—and caught—a piranha over the edge of the boat.

So you see what I mean when I tell you I don’t have a lot of regrets in my life, why finding something I could say with any conviction that I wish I had the memory of doing was a pretty big challenge.

Eventually, I stopped trying to think of big, adventurous actions—of bucket list candidates—and started thinking on a smaller, more personal scale. And that was when I finally came up with something.

When I was in college, I met and fell in love with a boy who was a first-generation American. For the sake of anonymity, I’ll call him Sam. Sam was a truly extroverted, talkative, friendly guy, and he seemed like the perfect complement to my shy introversion. He was also a selfish, manipulative, borderline-emotionally-abusive liar, and though he showed me evidence of his true self time and time again, I was so badly trapped in his gravitational pull that I continually tolerated his bad behavior. For four years!

In the last couple years of our relationship, we spent a lot of time arguing over marriage. His family was not American, even though he’d been born here, and they came from a conservative, religious background—the kind of background where sticking to your “own kind” was the only acceptable way to marry. There was a part of me that knew he was never going to marry me. But he kept promising to. Kept promising that after one more event (such as getting into graduate school, or getting a better job) happened, he would be ready for marriage.

This conflict went on for about two years, until finally, he was set to attain his goal of getting into graduate school. He promised that we were finally going to get engaged, so I gave up my apartment so we could move together to the location of his grad school. And then, when he finally had official word that he’d been accepted and I asked him if that meant we were going to get married, I was met with deadly silence. And I knew it was over.

So all of that was pretty rotten, and there’s a part of me that wishes I never had to go through it. But there’s also a part of me that appreciates the slew of life lessons I learned, brutal as they were. I understand the state of mind of women who stay with abusive men, how you can slowly lose your sense of self-esteem and identity to the point of thinking no one else could possibly love you. And it has made me appreciate my wonderful husband that much more. The part where I really wish I could insert a new memory happened later.

Sam moved away to go to grad school, and for a while we didn’t speak. However, I didn’t want our friends to have to choose between the two of us when he visited, so I made peace with him. And he once again weaseled his way back into my life. We entered into a long-distance relationship, and when he visited, he stayed with me. Then, a couple of weeks after one of these visits (less than a year after we broke up because of he “wasn’t ready” to get married) he called to tell me that he was engaged. Naturally, I assumed this was something that had just happened, though I had to wonder how his fiancée would feel about what he’d been up to during his visit.

Although I was initially infuriated, and the phone call ended very poorly, I decided to take the high road, and I wrote him a letter, wishing him well. I forgave him for everything that he’d done, and if he had any conscience at all, I presume my gracious response made him feel guilty as hell. Because now we’re finally getting to that memory I’d like to have.

I later found out that Sam had already been engaged when he’d been visiting—that he’d told all our friends about it, and that he’d even claimed to our friends that I knew. (One of them later confided in me that he was pretty sure Sam was lying about that because I wasn’t upset enough to have heard the news.) So, although writing that gracious letter does leave me with the knowledge that I took the moral high road, I kind of wish I could take it back and replace it with a memory of telling Sam—in a calm and rational manner—what a lowdown, dirty, lying snake he was. I wish I had a memory that’s reminiscent of the movies, where the heroine makes a grand, empowering speech, cutting the man who wronged her down to size and then making a dignified exit.

Maybe that’s petty of me. Maybe I should be proud of the way it did end, even though I wouldn’t have written that forgiving letter if I had known the truth. But still, it would be nice to have that little glow of satisfaction to look back on, and to feel like I’d really and truly stood up for myself at the end.

About the Author:

Jenna Black is your typical writer. Which means she’s an “experience junkie.” She got her BA in physical anthropology and French from Duke University.

Once upon a time, she dreamed she would be the next Jane Goodall, camping in the bush making fabulous discoveries about primate behavior. Then, during her senior year at Duke, she did some actual research in the field and made this shocking discovery: primates spend something like 80% of their time doing such exciting things as sleeping and eating.

Concluding that this discovery was her life’s work in the field of primatology, she then moved on to such varied pastimes as grooming dogs and writing technical documentation. She writes paranormal romance for Tor and urban fantasy for Bantam Dell.

Website / Twitter / Goodreads

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