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Why you must read S Usher Evans’ Double Life

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Double Life is the first book in the Razia series, which follows Dr. Lyssa Peate, aka Razia the pirate bounty hunter, on her adventures.

Tell us about it.
Razia would love nothing more than to become the most wanted pirate in the universe; unfortunately, “girls aren’t pirates.” So Razia is stuck capturing purse snatchers worth only 200 credits. To pay the bills, she has to continue living her “real life” as Lyssa Peate, a scientist in the familial business. That family despises her due to her childhood position as their father’s favorite, and believe that she knows where he has disappeared to. Even her slimy boss is interested in her father’s whereabouts, assigning her an intern to spy on her.

Things get tricky when the intern is mistaken for a hostage, when Lyssa is mistaken for Razia. But suddenly, Razia is propelled to the top of the most wanted rankings. Thinking this is finally her big break, she decides to completely break from being Lyssa Peate – until her intern shows back up and demands she fulfill the obligations of the internship, or else he’ll spill the beans about her double life.

We like the sound of this. What genre is it? It’s a science fiction, in that it’s got space ships, faster than light travel, and some limited alien-stuff. Really, it’s more about character development, relationships, and our own personal journey to find out who we really are.

That’s deep. Since we can’t expect you to tell us who we are, develop Razia’s character for us.
Lyssa/Razia is a complicated, sarcastic, and closed-off individual.

The events in the prologue shape her greatly over the course of the series – starting with the belief that Lyssa Peate is just plain worthless. This drives her to seek out and create this entirely new persona, Razia, to try and prove she’s worth something. For pirates, their worth is their bounty – the higher they’re worth, the more respect they get. Razia dreams of a day when she’ll be up in the top twenty or even top ten, but, for now, she’s stuck at #594. She still knows, deep in her heart, that she can do this, that she’s got the skills and abilities to do this, and so she struggles on.

She loathes becoming Lyssa Peate because it’s a constant reminder of how doomed she is and how much everyone despises her. She spends just enough time to get her money and get out before having to interact with either her siblings or her slimy boss, although both inevitably always find her.

At her heart, she’s a girl who thinks she’s worth absolutely nothing, and tries very hard to hide that fact from the world.

What kind of readers will your series appeal to?
I think it appeals to readers who like to see strong but imperfect women dealing with their own messes. And people who like loads of snark and sass.

If you like Joss Whedon’s badass female characters, you’ll love my book.

Razia definitely sounds badass – and complex.
It’s actually kind of funny but when I was doing final edits on Razia for publication, I was going through some therapy of my own. I began to see striking parallels between my own journey to rediscover myself and Lyssa’s journey to accept both sides of herself.

For me, the writer part of me was someone who I kept locked away because I thought she was silly, and – to be frank – I was a bit ashamed of her. Once I started going to therapy, I realized that I can’t be happy while hating this whole part of myself. Lyssa finally comes to the same realization as well, and a lot of the thoughts and feelings she has at the end are driven from my own.

We’re definitely glad you unleashed the writer in you. What’s your other life – bounty hunter?
By day, I’m an IT project management consultant who does stuff for the government. I also am an avid runner (2 marathons down), I have two rescue beagle-chihuahua mixes and volunteer from time to time, and like to remodel my house.

Have you written any other books that we should read next?
Double Life is the first book that I’ve published, but I have a couple other series that I’m working on while I bang out Book 2. When I’m not doing that, I’m usually blogging about whatever pops into my head.

Where do you blog?
http://www.susherevans.com.

And where do you tweet?
@s_usherevans.

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