I hope you’re busy playing the YA Books Central Scavenger Hunt, which started yesterday and lasts for a whole week! There are so many amazing authors participating, and too many prizes being given away to count!

I’ll be featuring parts of my Scavenger Hunt DREAMFALL interview this week to lure you into the game. The first question:

YABC: Who is your favorite character in the book?

AMY PLUM: This is always the hardest question to answer. ALL of the characters are my favorite! Don’t ask me to pick which of my children I love the most. 🙂

But I’ll tell you about one who is very special to me. Jaime is a pre-med student on full-ride academic scholarship, having been raised in a super-rough part of Detroit. The thing that’s different about this character is that I never reveal their gender. I didn’t even let myself think of Jaime as a boy or a girl. My daughter begged me to tell her…just her…which Jaime was, and I said, “I don’t even know that myself!” “But you have to know!” she pleaded. “I won’t let myself know,” was my answer.

Jaime is an experiment in reader expectations…half of my Beta readers thought Jaime was a boy and half a girl, so I felt like I had succeeded. Because just how important is gender, anyway? And which is more important—what the author wants you to think, or how the reader interprets the characters and the story in their mind? The fate of the sleepers depends on Jaime, who will have to risk everything to save them.

But then there is the dreamy (no pun intended) Fergus, who suffers from narcolepsy. There is Cata, who suffers PTSD from her violent childhood. Ant who is…just Ant. Quirky, strange, and super-intelligent. George who is kick-ass and funny. BethAnn who is trying to overcome overwhelming guilt over her part in her sister’s death. Sinclair, the spoiled rich kid with moviestar looks. And Remi, who was the only member of his family to survive a genocide. They all have enormous problems to overcome, and you should see how that plays out in their nightmares!

Read the rest of the interview and enter to win a signed hardback of DREAMFALL here!