Craig DiLouie

Craig DiLouie is an author of popular thriller, apocalyptic/horror, and sci-fi/fantasy fiction.

In hundreds of reviews, DiLouie’s novels have been praised for their strong characters, action, and gritty realism. Each book promises an exciting experience with people you’ll care about in a world that feels real.

These works have been nominated for major literary awards such as the Bram Stoker Award and Audie Award, translated into multiple languages, and optioned for film.

DiLouie's new novel is Our War.

From his Q&A with Tammy at Books, Bones & Buffy:

For readers who haven’t read Our War yet, can you please tell us about the story?

I’d be happy to, Tammy—and thanks for having me as a guest on your blog! Set in the near future, Our War is a dystopian adult novel about a brother and sister forced to fight on opposite sides of a second American civil war, and the people whose lives they touch.

The read is more similar to what you might find in books like The Handmaid’s Tale than dystopian action-adventure like The Hunger Games. While there is certainly action in the story, it is not so much a war novel as a novel about a war.

Otherwise, I should point out the novel was published by Orbit, one of the world’s leading speculative fiction publishers, and is available in all formats, both online and in bookstores.

The events in Our War seem eerily familiar, especially if you live in the United States.

I thought the story I was writing was prescient, but just in the past few weeks it seems torn directly from today’s headlines. The novel presents a president who is impeached and removed from office but refuses to step down. Right-wing militias regard the impeachment as a soft coup by the Deep State and mobilize in a national armed protest that becomes a revolution. These concepts should be familiar to those following the news lately.

When did you start writing the book, and why did you decide to tackle such a potentially volatile subject matter?

Thematically, Our War is about political tribalization in the United States and its consequences. I conceptualized the novel in 2017 and finished it in 2018. The president in the story is loosely based on ...[read on]

Visit Craig DiLouie's website.

My Book, The Movie: One of Us.

The Page 69 Test: One of Us.

Writers Read: Craig DiLouie.

The Page 69 Test: Our War.

--Marshal Zeringue