The Debut Club: An interview with Jenny Moyer, author of FLASHFALL

Swanky Seventeener Kim Foster recently interviewed Sweet Sixteen Jenny Moyer, author of the YA sci-fi/fantasy novel FLASHFALL, published by Henry Holt/Macmillan on November 15, 2016.

About the Author: 

Jenny Moyer studied writing at Seattle Pacific University, and has written and voiced national commercial spots. She co-owns Luminary Creative with her filmmaker husband, Jacob. They have lived all over the U.S., and currently call Des Moines home.

She keeps busy with her three boys—who are steadily growing taller than her–and her three pound dog (who stays small, and mostly just sits on her legs while she types.)

One of Jenny’s dreams came true the day Sarah Davies invited her to join her list of talented authors at Greenhouse Literary. Now when she sips lattes at coffee shops and daydreams, she can call it ‘work.’

Find Jenny on her website,  on Twitter,  on Facebook, on Instagram, on YouTube, on Tumblr, and on Pinterest.

 

About FLASHFALL:

Orion is a Subpar, expected to mine the tunnels of Outpost Five, near the deadly flash curtain. For generations, her people have chased cirium―the only element that can shield humanity from the curtain’s radioactive particles. She and her caving partner Dram work the most treacherous tunnel, fighting past flash bats and tunnel gulls, in hopes of mining enough cirium to earn their way into the protected city.

But when newcomers arrive at Outpost Five, Orion uncovers disturbing revelations that make her question everything she thought she knew about life on both sides of the cirium shield. As conditions at the outpost grow increasingly dangerous, it’s up to Orion to forge a way past the flashfall, beyond all boundaries, beyond the world as she knows it.

FLASHFALL is available at Amazon, Powells, Books a Million, Barnes and Noble, and IndieBound.

Meet the Author: Lisa Koosis

In high school, much to the dismay of her guidance counselor, Lisa Koosis traded AP English for a creative writing class and a class in speculative fiction. She never looked back. Lisa is a member of the SCBWI, an ambassador for National Novel Writing Month, and an active member of her local writing community. Her short stories have been published widely. When she isn’t writing, you’ll probably find her out walking her dog, or chilling with her cats..

Lisa’s debut novel, RESURRECTING SUNSHINE (Albert Whitman & Co./AW Teen, October 2016), is Young Adult science fiction. A grieving young musician must make an impossible choice about cloning the girl he loved, in this novel about memory and identity, love and loss.

• Favorite book growing up: Probably L. Ron Hubbard’s WRITERS OF THE FUTURE anthologies, which published contest-winning stories from amateur science fiction and fantasy writers. She swore she would have a story in the anthology series one day. (Note: she never did, but not for lack of trying! She only made it as far as the semi-finals.)
• Childhood aspiration: Veterinarian
• Favorite time of day/place to write: Lisa is a night owl. She does some of her best work long after the clock strikes midnight.
• Book currently reading/most recently read: Stephen King’s THE BAZAAR OF BAD DREAMS
• Favorite things to do (other than reading): Walking her dog, beachcombing (whenever she can get back to the shore) and getting together with her local writing friends.
• Surprising personal fact: Lisa has an unnatural love affair with feather earrings and has upwards of 15 pairs!
• Greatest thing about being a 2016 debut author: Not only fulfilling a lifelong dream/goal, but also getting to connect with so many amazing writers along the way.

Where to find her:

Website | Twitter | Facebook

Meet the Author: Jenny Moyer

Jenny Moyer studied writing at Seattle Pacific University, and has written and voiced national commercial spots. She co-owns Luminary, a production company, (http://www.luminarycreative.com) with her filmmaker husband. Their creative exploits have taken them all over the U.S., but they currently make their home with their three boys in Des Moines, Iowa. Jenny writes young adult fantasy and sci-fi.

Pitched as Red Rising for teens, FLASHFALL (Henry Holt/Macmillan, November 2016) is the first in a series and tells the story of a girl who, with her people, is forced to mine terrifying tunnels for precious metal in return for freedom, only to realize that they’ve been betrayed but that she still carries a powerful secret that could change their world.

Fun facts:

• Favorite book growing up: FROG AND TOAD.
• Childhood aspiration: Writer, pilot, actress, teacher, singer.
• Favorite time of day/place to write: In the morning after she gets her kids off to school. Coffee shop or curled up in the window seat with her dog, Emmy. With coffee.
• Book currently reading/most recently read: CRESS by Marissa Meyer.
• Favorite things to do (other than reading): Spending time with her kids, date nights with her husband, movies, traveling, running, assisting on set.
• Favorite sports teams: Um . . . Gryffindor?
• Surprising personal fact: She married her high school sweetheart!
• Greatest thing about being a 2016 debut author: Connecting with readers and writers, and proving that dreams really do come true if you never give up!

Where to find her:

Website | Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads | Add Book

Meet the Author: Katie Kennedy

Katie Kennedy is a college history instructor. She used to teach in a fire station. When the alarm rang, the entire class jumped up and ran out of the room. She became an LPN in order to write more accurate medical scenes. She has been lost in Moscow, and rousted by the KGB for sitting in Red Square to eat her ice cream. She has been bitten by a fish. Katie lives in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula with her husband, daughter, and son, in a town with a million bats.

Katie’s debut novel, LEARNING TO SWEAR IN AMERICA (Bloomsbury, July 5, 2016), is a Young Adult contemporary/sci fi crossover. With an asteroid approaching, NASA calls in seventeen-year-old Russian physics prodigy Yuri Strelnikov. While he’s trying to save the world, Yuri meets Dovie, and catches a glimpse of what it means to live a life worth saving.

Fun facts:

• Favorite childhood book: THE LITTLE HOUSE books by Laura Ingalls Wilder.
• Childhood aspiration: She wanted to be a history teacher. And she is.
• Being a 2016 debut author: She still thinks it’s an elaborate hoax.

Where to find her:

Website | Twitter | Add Book

Meet the Author: Kristy Acevedo

Kristy Acevedo is a high school English teacher and huge Star Trek, Doctor Who, and Harry Potter fan.  As a child, her “big sister” from the Big Brothers Big Sisters Program fostered her love of books by bringing her to the library every Wednesday. Her debut novel, Consider, won the 2015 PEN New England Susan P. Bloom CBD Award. A member of SCBWI, she lives in Massachusetts with her husband, two daughters, and two cats.

Kristy’s debut, CONSIDER (Jolly Fish Press, April 2016), is a Young Adult sci fi novel. As if Alexandra Lucas’ anxiety disorder isn’t enough, mysterious holograms suddenly appear, heralding the end of the world. They bring an ultimatum: step through a portal-like vertex to safety, or stay and be destroyed by a comet they claim is on a collision course with earth. How’s that for senior year stress? Alex must consider what is best for her friends, her family, and herself. To stay or to go. A decision must be made. (Book Two will follow in Fall 2016.)

Fun facts:

• Favorite book growing up: THE BABYSITTER’S CLUB: KRISTY’S GREAT IDEA (come on, her name was on the cover!) and THE PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH
• Childhood aspiration: Librarian and Biochemist
• Favorite time of day/place to write:  During the summers between 9-11 am.  During the school year, 8-10 pm.  She loves writing at the beach or in a local cafe, but she usually just writes in her bed with a bunch of comfy pillows and blankets around her.
• Book currently reading/most recently read: WE WERE LIARS by E. Lockhart
  Favorite things to do (other than reading): Writing, acting silly with her kids and husband, binge-watching Netflix, walking to the beach, playing with her cats, Milo and Khaleesi.
• Favorite sports teams: Celtics
• Surprising personal fact: She can do crazy moves with a baton. She can also recite the “Prologue” to THE CANTERBURY TALES in Middle English
• Greatest thing about being a 2016 debut author: She has TWO books coming out in 2016! Spring and Fall! Craziness!

Where to find her:

Website | Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads | Add Book

Meet the Author: Ava Jae

Ava Jae is a YA and NA writer, an Assistant Editor at Entangled Publishing, and is represented by Louise Fury of The Bent Agency. When she’s not writing about kissing, superpowers, explosions, and aliens, you can find her with her nose buried in a book, nerding out over the latest X-Men news, or hanging out on her many social media channels.

Her debut, BEYOND THE RED (Sky Pony Press, March 2016) is a Young Adult science fiction novel. A feud on a distant, crimson planet with established nanite technology creates a violent uprising that threatens the reign of a teenage queen and forces her to turn to her rebel half-blood bodyguard for help, before the planet’s human population is destroyed at the hands of her power-hungry twin brother.

Fun facts:

• Favorite book growing up: The HARRY POTTER series, of course! And just about anything written by Ted Dekker. She actually read more adult fiction when she was in middle and high school than she does now.
• Favorite time of day/place to write: Early morning, at her desk with a hot cup of tea.
• Book currently reading/most recently read: OUT by Natsuo Kirino and SECOND POSITION by Katherine Locke.
• Favorite things to do (other than reading): Writing. And Photoshopping (she loves digital painting), and watching movies.
• Favorite sports teams: Team USA. In the Olympics.
• Surprising personal fact: Her first language isn’t actually English—it’s Spanish! But unfortunately she forgot most of her Spanish growing up, so now she understands it relatively well, but is often too embarrassed to try to speak it.
• Greatest thing about being a 2016 debut author: She gets to celebrate debuting a month before graduating college, which is pretty serendipitous timing.

Where to find her:

Website | Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads | Add Book

Meet the Author: Parker Peevyhouse

Parker Peevyhouse lives with her family in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she has worked as an instructor and tutor and currently volunteers with teens. She can usually be found wandering local trails, playing board games, or watching science fiction movies.

Parker’s debut, WHERE FUTURES END (Penguin/Kathy Dawson Books, February 2016), is a Young Adult science fiction novel. It is a collection of five time-spanning, interconnected novellas that weave a subtly science-fictional web that stretches out from the present into the future, narrating an eerily plausible end of the world.

Fun facts:

• Favorite book growing up: MY TEACHER IS AN ALIEN
• Childhood aspiration: Surprise Astronaut, in the vein of SPACE CAMP.
• Book currently reading/most recently read: CHALLENGER DEEP by Neal Shusterman
• Surprising personal fact: She owns all kinds of weird versions of Clue. Her favorite is currently Clue: The Office, which includes such weapons as a Dundee Trophy and a Bacon Grill.
• Greatest thing about being a 2016 debut author: Getting ARCs of awesome upcoming books.

Where to find her:

Website | Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads | Add Book

The Debut Club: An interview with Melissa Hurst, author of THE EDGE OF FOREVER

Sweet Sixteener Emily Skrutskie recently spoke to Fearless Fifteener Melissa Hurst about her debut YA science fiction novel, THE EDGE OF FOREVER (June 2, 2015 from Sky Pony Press).

About the Author: 

Melissa Hurst lives in the southern US with her husband and three kids. She writes YA science fiction and fantasy, which means she considers watching Star Trek and Firefly as research. She dreams of traveling around the world and maybe finding Atlantis one day. You can usually find her with a book in one hand and a Dr. Pepper in the other. Or consuming lots of chocolate.

Find Melissa on her website, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, and Goodreads.

About THE EDGE OF FOREVER:

In 2013: Sixteen-year-old Alora is having blackouts. Each time she wakes up in a different place with no idea of how she got there. The one thing she is certain of? Someone is following her.

In 2146: Seventeen-year-old Bridger is one of a small number of people born with the ability to travel to the past. While on a routine school time trip, he sees the last person he expected—his dead father. The strangest part is that, according to the Department of Temporal Affairs, his father was never assigned to be in that time. Bridger’s even more stunned when he learns that his by-the-book father was there to break the most important rule of time travel—to prevent someone’s murder.

And that someone is named Alora.

Determined to discover why his father wanted to help a “ghost,” Bridger illegally shifts to 2013 and, along with Alora, races to solve the mystery surrounding her past and her connection to his father before the DTA finds him. If he can stop Alora’s death without altering the timeline, maybe he can save his father too.

THE EDGE OF FOREVER is available for purchase at Amazon, Powell’s, Books A Million, Barnes & Noble, and Indiebound.

The Debut Club: An interview with Wendy Brotherlin, author of FREAKS OF NATURE

Sweet Sixteener Kali Wallace recently spoke to Fearless Fifteener Wendy Brotherlin about her YA science fiction debut novel, FREAKS OF NATURE (May 6, 2015 from Spencer Hill Press).

Great headshot of Wendy by Dennis Carney.

About the Author:

Wendy Brotherlin is a screenwriter, music enthusiast and all around geek-goddess. She earned a Masters in Screenwriting at the University of Southern California and went on to write for children’s television including Nickelodeon’s Are You Afraid of the Dark? Today, she lives in Manchester, Maine with her husband and two little super-heroes-in-training.

Find Wendy on her website, Facebook, Twitter, and Goodreads.

 

 

 

About FREAKS OF NATURE:

Seven psionic teenagers travel by jet to an unknown location, all of them in trouble with the authorities for escaping their assigned government detainment facilities. One of them, a telepath named Bai Lee Chen, claims to have the means to escape. All the others have to do is convince her that they’re worthy of freedom.

FREAKS OF NATURE is available for purchase at Amazon, Powell’s, Books A Million, Barnes & Noble, and Indiebound.

 

The Debut Club: An interview with Krista Van Dolzer, author of THE SOUND OF LIFE AND EVERYTHING

Sweet Sixteener Celeste Lim recently spoke to Fearless Fifteener Krista Van Dolzer about her MG historical science fiction debut, THE SOUND OF LIFE AND EVERYTHING (May 5, 2015 from G.P. Putnams’s Sons Books for Young Readers).

About the Author:

Krista Van Dolzer is a stay-at-home mom by day and a children’s author by bedtime. She lives with her husband and three kids in Mesquite, Nevada, where she watches too much college football and looks for her dead people online. She’s the author of THE SOUND OF LIFE AND EVERYTHING (G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers, May 2015) and DON’T VOTE FOR ME (Sourcebooks Jabberwocky, August 2015).

Find Krista on her website, Twitter, and Goodreads.

 

About THE SOUND OF LIFE AND EVERYTHING:

Ella Mae Higbee is a sensible girl. She eats her vegetables and wants to be just like Sergeant Friday, her favorite character on Dragnet. So when auntie Mildred starts spouting nonsense about a scientist who can bring back to life cousin Robby, who died defending the country in WWII, Ella Mae doesn’t believe her–until a boy steps out of the scientist’s pod and drips slime on the floor right before her eyes.
But the boy is not Robby–he’s Japanese. And when Auntie Mildred refuses to take responsibility, Ella Mae convinces her mama to take the boy home with them.

Determined to do what’s right by her new friend, Ella Mae teaches him English and defends him from the reverend’s talk of H-E-double-toothpicks. But when the boy’s painful memories resurface, Ella Mae learns some surprising truths about her own family and, more importantly, what it means to love.

Signed copies of THE SOUND OF LIFE AND EVERYTHING are available for purchase at The King’s English Bookshop. Other buy links: Amazon, Powell’s, Barnes & Noble, Books A Million, Indigo, and Indiebound.