Fab Five Questions for Tammar Stein, author of Kindred

Welcome to today's stop for author Tammar Stein's blog tour celebrating her novel KINDRED, which recently released on February 8th of this month. Be sure to check out the Teen Book Scene for more stops along the way! Tammar can be found tomorrow at Reading Teen where Amy will be reviewing the book.



Tammar Stein  is the award-winning author of the YA novel, Light Years, a Virginia  Reader's Choice book and an ALA Best Book for Young Adults, 2006. Her  second novel, High Dive, was nominated for an ALA Best Book for Young  Adults, 2009.

She lives in Florida with her family and bilingual dog.
Official Website  & Blog

1. In Kindred, Miriam who is caught in between a  good-evil power struggle between two angels.  Can you share with us a favorite line, scene or passage from the book?

I really love the opening line to the book: The first time I meet an angel, it is Raphael and I am eighteen. It was one of those lines that came fully formed. I sat down to write my book and that line popped up on the screen, like magic.

2. What three words best describe Kindred?

Someone. Is. Watching.

3. Kindred offers up a unique twist on the angel genre in that this time around the focus in not on one girl caught between two angels doubling as potential love interests. Can you discuss this more with us and how Kindred evolved from that first tiny spark into a full length novel?

Is it weird to say that I wanted to write a realistic angel novel? I was trying to imagine what it would be like to have an angel visit and all I could think was that it would scare the heck out of me. So that was the start of it. The spark. Having an idea for a novel, a spark as you called it, is wonderful. But it takes so much time and work to take it from that spark to a full length novel. KINDRED took me two years to write.

4. What do you love most about the main characters of Kindred?

I love how close Miriam and Mo are. They have their differences (to put it mildly) and they are very different people, but they’re family and they try to hold on to that.

5. What can we look forward to reading from you next? Any new series or upcoming projects in the pipeline?

I’m working on a companion to KINDRED. I can’t talk about it too much yet but I’ll keep you posted.

The first time I meet an angel, it is Raphael and I am eighteen.

Miriam  is an unassuming college freshman stuck on campus after her spring  break plans fall through. She's not a religious girl--when pressed she  admits reluctantly to believing in a higher power. Truth be told, she's  about as comfortable speaking about her faith as she is about her love  life, which is to say, not at all. And then the archangel Raphael pays  Miriam a visit, and she finds herself on a desperate mission to save two  of her contemporaries. To top it all off, her twin brother, Mo, has  also had a visitation, but from the opposite end of the good-evil  spectrum, which leaves Miriam to wonder--has she been blessed and her  brother cursed or vice versa? And what is the real purpose behind her mission?