Goodreads asked Lisa M. Lilly:

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Lisa M. Lilly I'm currently working on Book 3 in The Awakening series, which follows a young woman whose virgin pregnancy might bring the world a female messiah or trigger Armageddon. Why this premise? First, completely aside from religion, I’ve always been intrigued by world changing or world ending stories. A great example of this type of story is my favorite movie, The Terminator.

Second, the role of gender in myth and religion fascinates me. I'm particularly intrigued by how three major religions envisioning God as male affects the world. So when I began putting together my plot for The Awakening series, I considered not only what opposition and disbelief a pregnant virgin today would face, but how that might change once she revealed her child would be a girl.

I also wanted to explore many potential causes for such an event. My protagonist, Tara Spencer, is not religious, though her parents are, which adds to her confusion and makes the issue more complex. The event that starts the story--her pregnancy though she's never had sex--could have been caused by some sort of god, an adversary to god (such as Satan), a different supernatural being or force altogether, a scheming scientist, evolution…the possibilities are endless. All these causes remain on the table for most of the series, so the answer to the other question often asked of me, which is whether the series is a Christian one, is no.

I chose to go beyond one thriller and into a four-book series in part due to my original thought that the Biblical character of Mary gets short shrift. In the end, her value is mainly as a Mother with a capital M. Likewise, in stories that flip the narrative and portray a supernatural pregnancy that is a danger to the world, such as Rosemary’s Baby (one of my favorite books), the woman’s role also is primarily as a mother/victim/woman in peril. In contrast, I wanted to explore Tara Spencer, my protagonist, as a person who is a force in the world and has her own goals, powers, and challenges. Her own friends and enemies. In short, her own life. The Awakening series is primarily about Tara as a person, not as a pregnant woman.

Book 3, The Conflagration, will be released in the first half of 2016, though I don't have an exact release date set yet. I'm hoping to get the fourth and final book finished and released within a year after The Conflagration is published.

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