Kate Johnson: A is for Apple

A is for Apple

Cosmos, gays and guns—it’s murder on a girl’s love life.

Cosmically inept spy Sophie Green is dispatched to the Big Apple on the trail of an invisible man. What she finds is an artist, a conspiracy and some very large men with guns.

Meanwhile, her gorgeous partner, Luke, is getting worryingly intimate. Could it really be time for him to meet her parents?

Sophie, spy extraordinaire, isn’t overwhelmed just yet. Until she’s informed of the new terms of her assignment. No longer Sophie Green: Spy, now she’ll become Sophie Green: Teenager.

Yep, she’s being sent to the scariest place on earth. Back to school.

A is for Apple

Growing up can be murder.

Warning, this title contains the following: graphic language, violence, strong sarcasm and lots of orange eye shadow. Book 3 of the Sophie Green Mysteries. For an excerpt, click here.

Available in digital format (ISBN: 1-59998-605-1) September 2007 and paperback November 2007 (ISBN: 1-59998-658-2) from Samhain Publishing.

Retailers who sell A is for Apple online include: Amazon.com, Blackwell or Barnes & Noble in the US; Amazon.co.uk, WHSmith or Waterstones in the UK. It's also listed on Amazon's other international sites, including Amazon.ca. Currently, I don't know any Australian or New Zealand sites that sell it: if you find one, please tell me!

Check your local bookstore and let me know if you see it! If you can't find A is for Apple in your local bookstore, don't despair; just take the ISBN (above) and ask them to order it for you. It's listed in international catalogues, so you should be able to order it anywhere.

"The characters are very unique, the dialogue is witty, and Sophie is her usual irrepressible self…This series is a winner." Maura, Coffee Time Romance

"A is for Apple is a wildly entertaining spy story. I can't wait to read the next novel by Kate Johnson. She's on my auto-buy list!" Carly, Fallen Angel Reviews

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Random stuff about A is for Apple

It's based on a recurring nightmare that I have to go back to school. They come and get me and say, "Okay, you had some time off to play at being a grown-up, now you have to come back," and I scream. A lot. Except for the one time I went back to school and Leonardo di Caprio was there. I didn't scream then.

As with so many locations, the school Sophie goes to is based on the one where I went. Only this one didn't have any psychopaths. I don't think. Anyway, it's based geographically on the place, is what I meant. My school was based on an ever-expanding site with new buildings being added when the old ones started overflowing. Some time in the 1960s or 70s they bought land on the other side of the lane running by the school, and started building there; so there's actually a road running through the school. Great for kids who come to school by bus; rubbish for everyone else.

The other important location in the book is New York. I went there too, ostensibly for research but really for shopping. And cheesecake.

A is for Apple was originally called Mad Hatters, after the Elton John song Sophie references towards the end. But no one else got that, so I changed it.

Is it a cliché to have Simon & Garfunkel's America here? Then cliche me up. Remember, Sophie's never been to the States before; never left Europe. It's kind of scary the first time. Everything is at once familiar and very foreign. Big, iconic, overwhelming—especially New York.

For the shopping scenes (I do love a good shopping montage) it's got to be Bette Midler singing In These Shoes. ("In these thoes? Oh, I doubt you'd survive.")

Sophie has to go back to school, and here we really ought to cue the theme from Jaws, or maybe Psycho. Because it's her worst nightmare. But actually, what always comes to mind is the mid-nineties music that soundtracked my teenage years. I remember coming back after the summer one year going, "So, what's the deal with these Spice Girls?" and knowing all the words to Wannabe. Mad.

Sophie goes clubbing and dances to the cheesy music: S Club 7 (most definitely Don't Stop Movin') and Gloria Gaynor with I Will Survive. At the time of writing, Madonna hadn't released Hung Up, but believe me it'd have been in there.

The visit to Great Aunt Tilda, and Sophie has Blur's Country House stuck in her head (another mid-nineties Britband there). Go on, try being dignified when you have "Doesn't drink smoke laugh, takes herbal baths, in the countreee" stuck in your head.

Sophie's realisation at Great Aunt Tilda's is soundtracked to Michelle Branch's Goodbye To You: "It hurts to want everything and nothing at the same time... I want you, but I'm not giving in this time."

Sophie also mentions Tara and Willow in Buffy, and what she's really talking about is the Once More With Feeling number where Amber Benson as Tara sings, "Believe me I don't want to go, and it'll grieve me 'cos I love you so."

Pretty much the whole of Sophie's return to New York is soundtracked by Elton John's Mad Hatters. This was such a theme in the book that Mad Hatters was the original working title. There's even a line in the book where Sophie "turn(s) around and says good morning to the night"; and another where Docherty tells her that the subway's "no way for a good man to go down," and both of those are direct lifts from the song.

I couldn't go without adding REM's Leaving New York. It's such a love song to the city, and couldn't have been written about anywhere else. It also has some bearing on Luke and Sophie: "It's easier to leave than to be left behind."