I wanted to give her a secondary job that was about as different as you could possibly get from her initial career. She’s taking the janitorial job to get away from her family business on Earth. Why did you decide to give her that job as opposed to making her a scientist or a soldier or middle management? There’s body horror, there’s a love story, there’s action, there’s a bit of mystery, it’s working inside a lot of genres.Īs you said, the hero of Salvaged, Rosalyn Devar, works as a space janitor. Everyone knows what the monster is, and the conflict is in fighting it without also fighting the innocent hosts it has decided to use. It’s not straight horror, because this isn’t a “What is the monster? Where is it?” kind of book. It’s really a sci-fi horror thriller romance, which is a mouthful, but I think that better encapsulates it. Salvaged sounds like it’s a sci-fi horror story. It doesn’t have the same outcome as Beauty And The Beast, it should hopefully surprise you a bit with who survives and who doesn’t.

I think it evolved in the sense that I let myself get creative with the conclusion and the way the side characters are handled. It’s a journey of self-discovery for the “Belle” character.

It follows some of the same story beats, but it takes that fairytale and makes it darker, twistier, while still keeping the core of that story intact.

I initially conceived the novel as an ode to Beauty And The Beast. Where did you get the original idea for Salvaged and how did that idea evolve as you wrote this novel? That’s the most I can say without spoilers. It’s her journey trying to save these people as much as she can, save herself, and try to stop this huge threat against humanity. She’s sent to clean up a completely dead crew on the Brigantine, but when she gets there she realizes it’s not at all what she expected: the crew has been taken over by a hostile alien fungus, and they’re slowly being turned against themselves and against her. It’s not her passion, it’s not what she was born to do, but it’s a way for her to escape the problems she doesn’t want to confront in herself. She’s dealing with a lot of issues, a lot of trauma, and she’s taken a tough job cleaning up failed research projects in space. Salvaged is really at its core Rosalyn’s story.

I always like to begin with an overview of the plot. In the following email interview Roux discusses what inspired and influenced this novel, and her plans for more stories in this universe. But in Madeleine Roux’s new sci-fi horror thriller romance Salvaged ( paperback, Kindle), we see the folly in running away from your problems by going into outer space and working as a janitor on a space ships whose crew is…lets just say they’re not themselves these days. Though not the best choice, a lot of people do find comfort in running away from their problems.

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