Tipperary author set to launch new teen fiction book in coming weeks

Tipperary author Laura-Louise Slattery is getting set to launch her new book in the coming weeks.

Titled ‘Princess Pineberry and the Sky Paladins of RAM’, the book is due to launch on Wednesday, December 3, in Bookworm, Thurles, at 7pm.

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Speaking ahead of the launch, Laura-Louise said that her book takes inspiration from several video game stories, while offering key twists.

“It’s a young adult fantasy adventure novel, so it focuses on, the main character, her name is Princess Pineberry, she’s a video game character, and she’s kind of like, if you’ve played the Super Mario games, she’s kind of based off of Princess Peach in a way, like she kind of plays the damsel in distress in her video game, and she gets to the point where she doesn’t want to be the damsel in distress, she wants to go on her own adventures, and learn how to fight and protect herself and her friends.

“She ends up causing this sort of glitch in her game which ends up crashing the game, essentially, and she ends up finding herself stuck in cyberspace, so she’s stuck inside the RAM of the computer system, and so that’s where the book takes place, it takes place in RAM, it takes place in this kind of cyberspace computer world, and she ends up meeting these other video game characters who are stuck there as well, and they’re being hunted down by these creatures called sweepers, they’re like garbage disposal programmes, and their job is basically to clean the system, and to get rid of any junk files, and these video game characters are essentially junk files at this time, and then they have to fight against these sweepers, and the villain of the story is this corrupt villainous software that wants to take over the entire computer world and also the world outside of the computer realm as well.

“So it’s kind of like a mix between Wreck-It Ralph, or Tron, it’s kind of similar to that, where you have these characters that are inside of this computer system, it’s that kind of thing.”

Laura-Louise has been interested in publishing fiction for most of her adult life, and has said is grateful for the evolution of the industry allowing her to publish her works herself without the need for traditional means.

“I’ve been a fiction writer since I was a teenager, and it’s always been something that I’ve been passionate about, my true passion in life is storytelling, and I just always wanted to put my work out there, and I think nowadays, with the world of indie publishing, it’s so easy for people to do that now, you don’t have to go through the traditional route of getting an agent and then getting a book deal. I think it’s made it easier for people to publish their work themselves, and they have a lot more creative freedom and creative control over their work as well.

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“It’s not my first book, but my other book, I published when I was like 18, but it’s not really a book that I’m interested in promoting anymore, because I wrote it when I was very young, and this one is a bit more, you know, I’ve been writing for many years now, and I’m in my 30s now, so I really wanted to publish this book after years of trying to get it published traditionally, so I decided then to publish it myself.”

Laura-Louise is a huge fan of many of the classic works of fiction, and drew inspiration from many of the great authors of her time.

“I’ve always been a huge ‘Lord of the Rings' fan, JRR Tolkien is one of my favourite authors. There are a few others like Rick Riordan, he wrote the Percy Jackson books. I really like Diana Wynne Jones, she wrote Howl’s Moving Castle. Obviously I love Richard Adams, ‘Watership Down’ is one of my favourite novels of all time.”

The book will be available from December 3, following the launch, and Laura Louise is hoping that all interested will join her at her launch event in Bookworm, Thurles.