I Can Feel Her...

As some of you might know, I also do adult writing. For the longest time, I tried to make Rachel's story happen as an adult story. I must have rewritten it a half-a-dozen times. But, she was, ultimately, a teenager and I am so excited by her journey.

For some time now, I have been writing one of my adult series. I love it and it's going well. But, I can feel Rachel in there. She is bothering me. Its time for me to get started.

Does this happen to you? Do you just feel compelled to write again, like you must answer the need?

The WOW Factor

One Sunday afternoon I found myself with some time on my hands. That is an amazing feat for a woman with three children who are six years old and under. With this occurrence, I would usually read a book but decided, instead, to see which movies were On Demand.

I decided to rent a movie I thought my husband would not be interested in watching and chose I Am Number Four, a movie I didn’t know much about except that it was categorized at Young Adult. I watched a few minutes before I decided that the husband would, in fact, enjoy it and I called him to come upstairs and watch it with him.

We sat and enjoyed the movie very much. A few minutes into the movie, in this modern age, I googled the title and—boom—wouldn’t you know—the movie was made from a book. I hadn’t read it but I decided that since I had enjoyed the movie I should read the book. If there was a series being written about these characters I didn’t want to find myself not having read the first book.

So I sat down to read the book on my Kindle a few days later. I had enjoyed the movie. The book is so much better.

Lucky for me, since I had discovered the book late, the second book in the series The Power of Six, was coming out later in the month. I pre-ordered it for Kindle and waited. The day it came out, I read the whole thing.

What is it that I loved so much about these books (and think I will love in the future for the next books?) It’s the WOW factor. Something about these books makes me go OH WOW when I read them. I am so transported to another world—the world from the viewpoint of Four, Six, and the others that I cannot wait to keep reading.

I think every author wants to do that—we want to make the WOW factor but I think it’s particularly important in Young Adult books. Lets face it. They have a lot to choose from when it comes to their reading selections. It is the WOW that is going to make the difference.

And as for me, I cannot wait to go WOW again about this series. Can I beg an author to write faster?

What makes you go WOW?

HELLO!

I’m very excited to be here today with all of you. I think this should be a wonderful blog and I’m really happy to be a part of it! Although I am usually an adult author (yes, if you are under 18 stay far-far away from my other series) a book idea came to me and after I tried to write it 3 times unsuccessfully, it finally became clear to me what the problem actually was: my heroine was sixteen years old.

If you’re not a writer perhaps this doesn’t make a lot of sense to you but sometimes we, as writers, find that the story tells itself to us as opposed to the other way around. And thus Rachel Clancy and her unbelievable story was born.

If you’re unfamiliar with the story, let me introduce you to it by way of the first story: Initiation.

My name is Rachel Clancy. Thirty years before I was born, the world ended. Today is my sixteenth birthday. Today I will go Upwards to fight the monsters and, statistically speaking, I won’t be coming back—at least not still living.



Initiation is the story of sixteen year old Rachel Clancy, born with a specific set of genes that let her fight monsters, she has trained her entire life to kill Vampires and Werewolves. Knowing since birth what her destiny would be has not made the onslaught of emotions she faces as she journey Upwards any easier. It doesn’t help that her father is drunk and her best friend just doesn’t get ‘it.’



Rachel isn’t prepared for the level of deception she faces, and before long she will find herself on a quest she is in no way prepared to handle. What happens next will alter not only Rachel’s life but the lives of everyone she knows. She will learn beyond a shadow of a doubt that sometimes the monsters we know are worse than the ones we don’t and that love can surprise us when it comes from somewhere we never anticipated it.



If she lives, she will be a Warrior. If she doesn’t, no one will ever remember her name.






~Excerpt~

“My mother used to call this apple cider weather.”

I had been doing my best to pretend I was unaffected by Jason’s presence, but I wasn’t. He felt warm, even the distance we walked apart, like he was a hot presence in a world of freezing cold eventualities.

“I know what apples are. We get them sometimes. What is apple cider? Some kind of drink?”

“Breaks my heart that you live in a world with no apple cider.” The grimace on his face was a huge indication then he meant what he said. He really was…beautiful, in a way most guys, or even grown men, were not.

Jason seemed to light up from the inside out. Maybe it came from actually being outside all the time but his skin glowed with freshness. Or maybe it was a Werewolf thing, a monster thing.

“Do you do this all the time? Take on Warriors and not tell them why you’re holding them prisoner?”

He raised an eyebrow, his lips quirking into a smile before falling straight again. “Do you feel like a prisoner?”

“Do you answer every question with a question?”

“No.” He shook his head. “I did promise you answers. But first, tell me if you feel better out here? Less likely to hurl away all that fine turkey?”

I stopped walking and turned to look at him. “I feel much better, thank you.” I got my first look at the house we had just exited. I covered my mouth with my hand to suppress my gasp and I looked again. It wasn’t really a house—it was a giant tent—standing in front of a dozen giant tents just like it. I could see from where I stood how it was built. The walls were solid, but only because large beams in the ground held them up. I hadn’t thought to feel the walls earlier. Why would I? They had looked like concrete, but they weren’t, they were actually cloth and something else—vinyl, maybe?

“You guys are prepared to leave at any time, aren’t you?”

“We’re nomadic. We never stay anywhere very long.”

I couldn’t be sure, but I thought I heard sadness in his voice. I could ask him about it. He’d put his emotion right out there for me to hear it, which begged the question: just how well did I want to know Jason?

At some point, I was going to turn a corner with this Werewolf where I was going to start thinking of him as a living, breathing, cognizant being whose head I wouldn’t be able to cut off. I wasn’t sure I wanted to do that.

And yet…

“Would you rather stay put?” I spoke the words.

"Maybe. See, I can still remember what it was like, to have a house that was a home, to have neighbors, to go to school."


If you’re interested, you can find out more about Rachel here. I’ll be back the first Monday of every month to talk about Rachel, her life, and Young Adult writing. Hope you’re all well.

Thank you Kimber for putting this together!

Rebecca Royce