Sweet Six Interview with Amber Skye Forbes

For today's Sweet Six interview, we're chatting with Amber Skye Forbes, author of WHEN STARS DIE!

Amber Skye Forbes is a dancing writer who prefers pointe shoes over street shoes, leotards over skirts, and ballet buns over hairstyles. She loves striped tights and bows and will edit your face with a Sharpie if she doesn't like your attitude. She lives in Augusta, Georgia where she writes dark fiction that will one day put her in a psychiatric ward...again. But she doesn't care because her cat is a super hero who will break her out.

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Amelia Gareth's brother is a witch and the only way to save her family from the taint in his blood is to become a professed nun at Cathedral Reims. However, in order to become professed, she must endure trials that all nuns must face.

Surviving these trials is not easy, especially for Amelia, who is being stalked by shadowy beings only she can see. They're searching for people they can physically touch, because only those they can touch can see them. Amelia soon learns why she is being stalked when she accidentally harms her best friend with fire during the third trial. Fire is a witch's signature. The shadows are after witches.

Now Amelia must decide what to do: should she continue on her path to profession knowing there is no redemption, or should she give up on her dream and turn away from Cathedral Reims in order to stop the shadows who plan to destroy everything she loves?

1. Tell us about your book!

Put simply, When Stars Die is about one girl's determination to erase the stigma of being a witch, only to find out such a stigma is impossible to erase, not when the world has been brought up since birth to hate people like her.

2. What scene in your book do you LOVE the most?

I tend to go back and forth over what scenes I love. I don't know if other authors do that, but I do. My favorite scene is near the end of the book (no spoilers), where Amelia is walking through this paradisaical setting meant just for her, which stands in stark contrast to the turmoil happening outside of it. It's such a crucial scene, because Amelia's not buying any of it. She's not being lured in by it. She's going for something major in this scene, and she won't allow such a fallacy to stop her, even though the scene is filled with everything she loves.

3. If you had to pick a character you LOVE (and not your own!), who would you pick and why?

I'm assuming you mean a character of other books. I'd choose Gemma Doyle, because she's sarcastic, witty, fierce, and determined, while at the same time being sensitive and burdened. Her and I are very similar, and if I went to Spence Academy, we'd probably connect right away.

4. What's the craziest/most memorable valentine you've ever received?

I suppose the most memorable valentine I've ever received was one of those generic ones you can buy at a kiosk, with a little balloon and stuffed animal and some candy, because no one has ever gotten me a valentine before, until my fiance came along. So, really, it was the thought in it that touched me. I had boyfriends before him, but when valentine's day came, they never got anything for me, even though I did.

5. If you were a Brach's Heart, what phrase would be written on you?

You Crazy Nut

6. The all-important choice: flowers or candy?

Flowers, definitely. I really, really want flowers. My fiance gets me candy, but, seriously, I want those cliched flowers, even if they die the next day.