Milena asked Pippa DaCosta:

Hi Pippa. How did you come up with the idea for Girl From Above? Synthetic humans? What inspired you to write this story? I love it by the way :-)

Pippa DaCosta Girl From Above was a completely random, out of the blue, slap in the face idea. And it came entirely from the cover itself. Authors get ideas from everywhere (literally, every-freakin'-where, it's distracting) but when I saw the GFA cover, the writerly part of my brain just went 'BOOM!'. I nabbed the cover quick, (you can buy 'pre-made' covers from cover artists. I collect them for later stories) put aside my current work-in-progress (which I'd been struggling with after burn-out from my epic Veil Series), and just let the ideas flow. It was amazing. Just like Book 1 in The Veil Series, Girl From Above took over my life. When I wasn't writing it, I was thinking about writing it—even dreaming about it! What interested me most was writing from the point of view of a machine. How does one do that? I worried whether #1001 (the synthetic human) would be too cold and unlikable as a main character. I needed a reason for her to be more human, so we could identify with her; and that's how her story started. Happy with her, I then worried whether Caleb was too much of an asshole to be a lead character. Then I wondered why on earth I was writing sci-fi when all my fans wanted urban fantasy.
GFA was a crazy thing for me to do. But the story gripped me, and I'm in a position where I can run with these crazy ideas and see where they take me. As it happens, the risk was worth it. Girl From Above seems to have hit a sweet spot with fans, and even those who don't usually read scifi, love the book.
Thanks for asking!

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