Q&A with Rebecca Danzenbaker

 

Photo by Candace Boissy

 

 

Rebecca Danzenbaker is the author of the new young adult novel Soulmatch. She is also a photographer.

 

Q: What inspired you to write Soulmatch, and how did you create your character Sivon?

 

A: Fifteen years ago, I drove past a cemetery and wondered out of the blue whether my former self was buried there. Did we share any common traits? What if someday we have the technology to connect our souls from life to life?

 

That idea stuck with me for 10 years, until I had to temporarily shutter my non-essential photography business during the Covid outbreak. Left with hours to fill and mounting anxiety, I purchased a pre-recorded workshop by Lisa Cron called Wired For Story, and by following her advice, started crafting my characters and a basic outline for Soulmatch.

 

Even though Soulmatch is set 200 years in the future, I wanted the main character, Sivon, to feel like a contemporary teenager. Like many, she has no idea what she wants to do with her life, other than make a difference. She has no useful talents, skills, or interests to guide her, just an uncanny ability to win every game of chess she plays.

 

So she very much anticipates her government-mandated soul identification–-a process known as kirling–-when she’ll learn about her past lives, receive her inheritance, discover if she has a soulmate, and get much-needed direction. Little does Sivon know, her seemingly useless chess master skills become instrumental to surviving her post-kirling reality.

 

Q: The Publishers Weekly review of the novel says, “Debut author Danzenbaker conjures a futuristic dystopia that uses reincarnation to summarily explore ideas of criminal rehabilitation, predestination, and the perils of constant surveillance...” What do you think of that description?

 

A: In Soulmatch, your kirling results are published for the world to see and judge, so if you have a criminal history, you carry that stigma for eternity, making it impossible to outrun the mistakes of your past lives.

 

If someone receives a multi-life prison sentence, they need to literally serve each one of those, and are incarcerated following their kirling. Even those with minor convictions from several lives prior struggle to redeem themselves in the eyes of “good souls.” So the criminal rehabilitation portion of the review is spot on. 

 

Coincidently, the next two, “...predestination and the perils of constant surveillance,” better describe my sophomore novel, Predestined, an unrelated YA dystopian romance slated to publish in fall of 2026. It’s like a YA Minority Report, where AI can predict the next 24 hours. In Soulmatch, your future isn’t so much predestined by your past lives as restricted by them. 

 

The “constant surveillance” perhaps refers to Sivon’s celebrity status as she departs the government institute, with cameras flying in her face and her social media accounts being scrutinized, but the government doesn’t monitor her every move to the extent characters deal with in Predestined.

 

Q: How did you create the world in which the story takes place?

 

A: Once I got the idea for Soulmatch, I couldn’t let it go. So over the ensuing years, I occasionally made notes on how scientific proof of reincarnation would change the world order, religion, laws, currency, and how we view ourselves, life, and death. While Soulmatch is a fun dystopian read on the surface, far deeper layers form the foundation on which the story was built.

 

It wasn’t until later revisions that I added in much of the futuristic technology. I tried to make the advancements–-from furniture to art–-feel magical, in hopes of inspiring a sense of wonder in the reader.

 

Q: What do you hope readers take away from the book?

 

A: Primarily that no one can tell you who you are. Only you know your own soul.

 

I hope they also note that, despite her intelligence, Sivon only succeeds with the help of her carefully curated team of friends and allies. We need each other. We cannot win alone.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I’m neck-deep in developmental revisions for Predestined, which I hope will be as fun as Soulmatch! A future-predicting AI can introduce lots of plot holes, so it’s tricky, but like Sivon, I love a good challenge!

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

A: I somehow haven’t mentioned the romance yet! Soulmatch is an angst-fueled, slow burn, forbidden romance with a delicious HEA that will leave you kicking your heels and squealing with delight.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb