BLACK WIDOW: RED VENGEANCE by Margaret Stohl {Interview + Giveaway}
I recently had the exciting opportunity to be part of a group phone interview with Margaret Stohl about her newest release BLACK WIDOW: RED VENGEANCE. Each participant had the chance to ask Margaret Stohl a few questions about the Black Widow series and her experiences writing about this iconic heroine.
As part of the tour celebrating its release, and thanks to the generosity Marvel Press, I have one autographed copy of BLACK WIDOW: RED VENGEANCE for a giveaway. For a chance to win scroll down to the Rafflecopter for details and to enter.
Title: BLACK WIDOW: RED VENGEANCE
Series: Black Widow #2
Author: Margaret Stohl
Publisher: Marvel Press
Pages: 416
Formats: Hardcover, eBook, Audio
DESCRIPTION
Emotions are dangerous, which is why the graduates of Moscow’s famed spy school the Red Room are taught to keep their enemies close and their loved ones at a distance. Black Widow and Red Widow, also known as Natasha Romanoff and Ava Orlova, forgot that lesson once, and they won’t forget it again.
But the Widows have inherited something else from their shared Moscow past: a relentless need for vengeance—Ivan Somodorov is dead, but his network of terror remains.
While the Widows search South America in order to extinguish a smuggling operation with ties to their old nemesis, their own Red Room not only attempts to assassinate them both but also hacks their secure S.H.I.E.L.D. network. As a result, Ava and Natasha find themselves thrust into a trying mission of international intrigue that takes them throughout the world and back to New York City, where their friends Dante and Sana become unlikely targets as well.
Once again, nothing is as it seems, no one can be trusted, and no one is safe—not unless the Widows can stop a conspiracy involving stolen nuclear warheads, mind-altering chemical weapons, and ultimately, betrayal by old friends and enemies alike.
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Interview with Margaret Stohl
Everyone in the group had the opportunity to ask Ms. Stohl a few questions and they were all so great. I've included a few here to share with you.
Book Swoon: One of the things I loved about BLACK WIDOW: RED VENGEANCE is the fact that there’s a lot of fun globetrotting in this one. What were some of the fun research moments during this process and how was it different than the first book?
Ms. Margaret Stohl: I love travel and when I travel, I travel the way people take pictures. I write descriptions, I write about the things I love. Every day when I was in Brazil a couple of years ago on book tour, I saw a thriller here and here, and what would I blow up here? And what is amazing here? And, oh my God, that mountain you could crawl down.
That’s how I experience the world. Aside from working with Marvel, I just love spy thrillers. That’s what I read. I actually don’t read what you would incorrectly call a thrill book. But I read military thrillers, military history and spy thrillers, that’s what I love. It is a wonderful way for me to justify my globetrotting, the lifestyle anyway, is to be able to write about it.
Rio is a magical place, which is not how you hear about it from the Olympics. But if you look at the city from the big hilltop views nearby, it looks like a mouth that’s drawn in the front of a Tolkien novel. It’s incredible, it doesn’t seem like a place on earth. I’d really like to have calculated to set the Black Widow loose in there and see what happens.
MundieMoms: I love the way you write strong characters. I think readers can relate to your books, and so my question is, what have you enjoyed discovering or developing with Natasha in the main story? Additionally, as a whole, I think your characters are inspiring women and I think so often women in Marvel get misunderstood by fans. Can you speak to that?
Ms. Margaret Stohl: I am all about women of Marvel. Being on the Women in Marvel panel at Comic Con was one of the greatest “big first” moments of my career.
It was really exciting to get two Widows together in the second book. But it was super exciting this time to get Captain Marvel together with Carol Danvers, so Captain Marvel is Carol Danvers, together with Natasha Romanoff, Ava and Maria Hill, who runs Shield.
In some of those meetings, I have four kickass Marvel women together living in the world. I was like, oh my God, talk about the Bechdel test. Now it’s not even, “can you talk about a woman,” it’s, “can there be more than one woman prominently featured in a superhero story?” And the answer is yes. That is a goal of mine.
Women are as interested in saving the world as men are. I think women heroes are as heroic as any hero. I also think that, like anybody, woman really thrive in a circle of friends. So I love putting together a group of empowered women who empower each other. Women not competing with each other is one of my favorite things in the world.
I use more and more of that, which you’ll see in Captain Marvel, too. It’s actually one of the first things you open up in the issues of my reboot. You’ll see that from literally page one. So that’s what I care about. Thank you.
Book-Swoon: Okay, this is just a fun question. If Natasha and Ava were in the bookstore in the YA section, who are a few young heroines, or just heroines in general, that they might be drawn to?
Ms. Margaret Stohl: I think they would respond to my good friend, Veronica Roth, who writes a sort of damaged power teen heroines.
TheFandom: What was it like working with Marvel to develop Black Widow: Red Vengeance and how was it different from developing the first book?
Ms. Margaret Stohl: There was so much dating in the get-to-know-you process, as there is with any new publisher, but especially with Marvel because there is such a great vulnerability in entrusting a beloved character to a new author. I think it helped that I came with a pedigree. They’ve been very purposeful in how they do that. They have brought in some authors I love, like Shannon Hale, a good friend of mine and one of my favorite writers, who they gave Squirrel Girl, and Eoin Colfer. I feel like they went about this in an amazing, blue chip kind of a way. So that helped. But then, I had worked with Marvel years ago as a video game developer on Fantastic Four and on Spiderman. So I knew what I was dealing with in terms of the Marvel universe, as well as the Marvel corporate world.
Then I think I’d gotten so close with Sana Amanat, the Director of Content and Character Development, and I really used Emily Meehan on the Disney Publishing side, who’s the Associate Publisher. Those two women guide everything I do. I think they know that by now. The second time, they just said, do more of your thing. That didn’t mean they were there every step of the way, shadowing me to do better, but they definitely trusted me in knowing what was going to happen and how things would go down. So it compressed a lot of the day-to-day back and forth.
About Margaret Stohl
Margaret Stohl is the #1 New York Times best-selling co-author of the Beautiful Creatures novels (also a major motion picture) and the author of the instant New York Times best seller Black Widow: Forever Red, as well as a contributor to multihttps://www.facebook.com/MargaretStohl/ple Marvel comics. Previously, Margaret was a veteran of the video game industry, working as a writer and designer before co-founding 7 Studios with Lewis Peterson.
Title: BLACK WIDOW: FOREVER RED
Series: Black Widow #1
Author: Margaret Stohl
Release Date: October 13, 2015
Publisher: Marvel Press
Pages: 401
Formats: Hardcover, eBook, Audio
DESCRIPTION
Enter the world of the Avengers' iconic master spy
Natasha Romanoff is one of the world's most lethal assassins. Trained from a young age in the arts of death and deception, Natasha was given the title of Black Widow by Ivan Somodorov, her brutal teacher at the Red Room, Moscow's infamous academy for operatives.
Ava Orlova is just trying to fit in as an average Brooklyn teenager, but her life has been anything but average.The daughter of a missing Russian quantum physicist, Ava was once subjected to a series of ruthless military experiments-until she was rescued by Black Widow and placed under S.H.I.E.L.D. protection. Ava has always longed to reconnect with her mysterious savior, but Black Widow isn't really the big sister type.
Until now.
When children all over Eastern Europe begin to go missing, and rumors of smuggled Red Room tech light up the dark net, Natasha suspects her old teacher has returned-and that Ava Orlova might be the only one who can stop him. To defeat the madman who threatens their future, Natasha and Ava must unravel their pasts. Only then will they discover the truth about the dark-eyed boy with an hourglass tattoo who haunts Ava's dreams. . . .
Black Widow:Forever Red features all the heart-pounding adventure readers expect from Marvel, written by #1 New York Times best-selling author Margaret Stohl. Uncover a new side of the Marvel Universe that will thrill loyal fans and newcomers alike, as Stohl reveals the untold story of Black Widow for the very first time.
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THE GIVEAWAY
Red Widow is back!
One (1) winner will receive an autographed copy of Black Widow: Red Vengeance.
**Giveaway open to US addresses only. Prizing and samples provided by Marvel Press.**
Enter in the Rafflecopter below…
