1--What is the title of your latest release?
EDGE OF THE KNOWN WORLD
2--What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?
Edge of the Known World is a near-future love and adventure story about a brilliant young refugee caught in era when genetic screening tests – like 23And me, or Ancestry.com – make it impossible to hide a secret identity.
3--How did you decide where your book was going to take place?
The story was always international in scope. I was an economic geography major in college, which gave me a lifelong fascination with the great upheavals and migrations in history, and the impact of those global forces on private lives. The novel puts a very appealing human face on a diaspora and Cold War in a realistic near future. While the story is grounded where I grew up, in San Francisco, it was huge fun to draw on my travels and misadventures in Asia, the (then) Soviet Union, and Russia, as basis for Alex’s journey.
4--Would you hang out with your protagonist in real life?
Absolutely! We’d laugh all night, cry a little, and definitely get in some trouble. Alex Tashen (23) is a comic and prankster; also empathetic, uncoordinated, absent-minded, and insatiably curious. After she learns the truth of her background, she struggles to adapt to a life of hiding in the open, her innate merry, affectionate personality in constant conflict with the distrust, limitations required to survive.
5--What are three words that describe your protagonist?
Brilliant, gregarious, mischief-maker.
6--What’s something you learned while writing this book?
I learned that Hitler had tried to develop a blood test to detect Jewish and Gypsy children who looked Aryan enough to be hiding in the open with German or Polish families. Such a test was not possible back then, but I wondered how that would translate with modern science and tech—not just for any of the “inferior” ethnic groups during WWII, but in other historical events around the world, where people who did not stand out by physical appearance, and were perhaps even themselves unaware of their background, would have faced deadly consequences. What if in the Rwandan genocide, the Hutu militias had a screening test to detect Tutsis? Dalits who blended with the upper castes in India? Serbs and Bosnians, Chinese in wartime Japan, too many slices of American history, and countless others.
The problem, of course, is that technology has evolved, but people have not. Recent news was a hack into 23AndMe that stole information on accounts with Ashkenazi and Chinese ancestry to sell on the dark web: https://www.wired.com/story/23andme-credential-stuffing-data-stolen/.
7--Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done?
I overthink everything, over-write, then go back the next day and look for the few pieces of gold to keep.
8--What’s your favorite foodie indulgence?
Double chocolate gelato eaten straight out the of cartoon over the sink while no is looking.
9--Describe your writing space/office!
My office is my daughter’s original bedroom, and I have sentimentally refused to re-paint the walls. So the reason I blur my background on all those professional zoom calls is to hide the birdies and bunnies motif.
10--Who is an author you admire?
So many, and across every genre. But I’m in particular awe of Jennifer Egan – she is fearless, manages the heartfelt intimate and the big cosmic moments, is truly funny, and her language is breath-taking.
11--Is there a book that changed your life?
The Aubrey–Maturin series, by Patrick O'Brian. It’s a 17-book series set in the Napoleonic wars. Imagine that Jane Austen wrote an epic adventure with deep knowledge of bloody naval warfare and seamanship, note-perfect character studies, the greatest bromance and romances, laugh aloud wit, with the leisure to digress into the fascinating natural history explorations and culture of the era. I hold it as a model for world-building and multi-dimensional writing. It’s not for everyone — but millions of fans, including poor me, lost a year of their lives to read it straight through.
12--Tell us about when you got “the call.” (when you found out your book was going to be published)/Or, for indie authors, when you decided to self-publish.
I think I was doing something romantic like feeding the dog, and saw an email pop up on my phone. Bailey the yellow lab got a double dinner out of it before I calmed down enough to tell my family.
13--What’s your favorite genre to read?
I’ve always been a promiscuous reader – I believe that great writing and storytelling is found in every category. My favorite is actually cross-genre, when the best writers don’t feel constrained by labels and really let their imaginations soar. What else to call The Handmaid's Tale, or Oryx and Crake, by Margaret Atwood; The Candy House, by Jennifer Egan; Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel; The Once and Future King, by T. H. White; or Winter's Tale, by Mark Helprin?
14--What’s your favorite movie?
Ok don’t judge me (much) but I may never laugh as hard as each of the 10 times I watched Galaxy Quest across different phases of my life.
15--What is your favorite season?
I live in the Bay area, and will never get tired of the perpetual spring here.
16--How do you like to celebrate your birthday?
By pretending it isn’t happening, then having my kids pop out as a grand surprise.
17--What’s a recent tv show/movie/book/podcast you highly recommend?
Shogun (Hulu) was spectacular – great writing, performances, and deep immersion into a different time and culture.
18--What’s your favorite type of cuisine?
I love dim sum, especially from the loud, classic push-cart places in San Francisco.
19--What do you do when you have free time?
Travel! Next trip, I hope to get Georgia (the Central Asian one), to explore and research the novel I’m working on. Living just outside of San Francisco is an open ticket to sail, ski, and hike. I’m a miserable cook and burn everything — as my 3 kids will cheerfully tell you — but admit that I do love to shop.
20--What can readers expect from you next?
Edge of the Known World began in a writing class as an outline of backstory to the original novel I was working on, titled The New World. So basically, the prequel got published first. Now my publisher is waiting for the sequel to the prequel, i.e., hurry up with that New World manuscript, and I’m trying to laugh.
Fans of Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake will be swept away by this riveting speculative fiction adventure and love story about family, genetic privacy, and the onrushing future of surveillance technology.
2024 American Fiction Awards Winner in multiple categories, including Best New Fiction, Political Thriller, and Science Fiction
Alexandra Tashen is a brilliant student, adoring daughter, merry wit, and exuberant prankster. After a blissful childhood on a Texas ranch, she learns the truth: She is a refusé, an illegal refugee smuggled into the Allied Nations as an infant. Everyone from her birth region carries a harmless but detectable bit of viral DNA from a flu vaccine. If detected by the rapid genetic testing at security screens, Alex will be returned to the Federation and a likely death. Her adoptive father developed a gene therapy to mask her g-marker, but it is not fully effective. Every g-screen presents a nerve-racking one-in-ten chance of getting caught.
When her father goes missing, Alex abandons her cloistered academic life in San Francisco for a globe-trotting Commission in a desperate race to warn him of a trap that will destroy them both. As Alex dodges g-screens on her precarious and often-hilarious adventure, a love triangle develops between her and two men: Eric Burton, a commanding and disgraced intelligence officer, and his blood brother, Strav Beki, a charismatic and dangerously unhinged diplomat. Betrayals mount and secrets unravel, building to the most confounding choices that people can face—choices between love, family loyalty, and moral obligation.
Thriller [SparkPress, On Sale: September 3, 2024, Paperback / e-Book, ISBN: 9781684632626 / ]
Sheri T. Joseph studied economics and geography at UC Berkeley, and received a JD from UC Law San Francisco. She is passionate about the need for housing and serves as executive director of a nonprofit corporation that supports creation of affordable housing for families, veterans, refugees, and vulnerable populations. She’s also a trustee for Homeward Bound, a provider of homeless services and housing. Sheri and her husband have three adventurous children and live in California. Edge of the Known World is her debut novel.
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