Hey y’all! Today we’re celebrating the release of Megan Whitmer’s debut novel, BETWEEN.
Here’s the skinny on the book:
When a supernatural freak of nature forces her family to separate, seventeen-year-old Charlie Page must turn to her frustrating (yet gorgeous) neighbor, Seth, to help reunite them. Seth whisks Charlie to Ellauria—a magical world filled with the creatures of myths and legends—and tells her of the Fellowship, the group charged with protecting mystical beings from human discovery. (All except Bigfoot: that attention whore is a total lost cause.) But when Charlie learns that she’s under the Fellowship’s protection herself, well, “stressed” is an understatement.
Ellauria should be the safest place for Charlie while the Fellowship works to find her family, but things in the mystical realm aren’t what they seem.
Magic is failing, creatures are dying, and the Fellowship insists Charlie holds the key to saving everyone. With her family still missing and the danger in Ellauria growing, Charlie doesn’t know who she can trust. She’s dealing with a power she never asked for, falling for a guy she can’t have, and being forced to choose between her destiny and her heart. And if she chooses wrong, she could destroy magic forever. Charlie may be in over her head.
You totally want to read it right now, huh? The good news is that there are a lot of places you can get BETWEEN today!
Barnes & Noble, The Morris Bookshop, iTunes, The Book Depository, or Amazon!
Congrats, Megan!! Thanks for joining us today on Fearless Fifteeners! We’re so glad to have you and to talk about your book, BETWEEN. Tell us a little bit about it.
Between is about Charlie, a seventeen year old girl who discovers the Fellowship, a secret organization in charge of making sure humans go on thinking that so-called “mythical” creatures don’t exist. She has an encounter with the Mothman that lands her in the Fellowship’s version of the Witness Protection Program, and her entire world is turned upside down as she uncovers what led the Mothman to her in the first place. (If you’ve never heard of the Mothman, look him up! It’s a great urban legend based in West Virginia.)
So, it’s a story of a girl stuck in two slightly hopeless situations. What inspired the story?
I love secrets and conspiracies and basically wondering about all the questions I’ll never know the answers to. The idea that a group like the Fellowship keeps us from knowing the truth (that things like fairies and Bigfoot actually exist) is one that’s bounced around my imagination for years. One day I threw a teenage girl into the mix—what would happen if she found out about this group? How and why would she ever need to know about them? I didn’t mean to make her two options slightly hopeless, and I never intended to put the entire future of magic on her shoulders, but my characters ran away with the story and I just followed suit.
What do you hope readers will gain from reading BETWEEN?
I hope they laugh. Between has its heavy moments, but it was important to me to make it a fun read. Charlie’s a smart, sassy character, and I love the way she interacts with the world. I also hope readers love Ellauria as much as I do. I researched folklore from around the world to find the right mix of creatures for the book. When an organization is in charge of hiding literally every single mythical creature in existence, you have to make sure you branch out beyond the typical unicorn and dragon (as well as include examples of creatures that have never been discovered).
Tell us about your journey as a writer. What has been your most favorite/dreaded part of the process?
I love creating characters. It’s always fun learning their voices and figuring out what makes them tick. Writing dialogue is one of my most favorite activities. I hate first drafts. It’s so hard to keep going when everything you’re writing is crap (as most first drafts are). I love revising. Taking a terrible first draft and polishing it—adding details, fleshing out scenes, going through each sentence and making it better—that’s fun. Drafting is pure hell.
Since we are the Fearless Fifteeners, we’d like to know something you’re afraid of and something you’re not afraid of.
I’m terrified of spiders, but have no problem at all with snakes.
Megan Whitmer’s favorite color is blue. She’s convinced the best movie ever made is Tombstone, followed closely by The Princess Bride, The Avengers, Breakfast at Tiffanys, and Sharknado. She’s addicted to making lip-sync videos. She takes hugs pretty seriously. Her greatest failure is her inability to breakdance, but she makes up for it by being supremely gifted at The Shopping Cart. Aside from her personal blog and weekly vlog series, she’s also a contributing blogger for www.YAmisfits.com, www.allthewritenotes.com, and www.herkentucky.com. She lives in Kentucky with her family. Also, she writes books and talks a lot. Like, a lot.
Here are a few other places you can find Megan: Goodreads, Twitter, Website, or Facebook!
 Becky Wallace is the author of THE KEEPERS’ CHRONICLES: THE STORYSPINNER, a magical adventure in which a case of mistaken identity exposes a young performer to a danger she could have never imagined and a secret her father died to protect. It will be available from Simon & Schuster in March 2015. When Becky’s not writing, she’s baking cupcakes and teaching her kids ’90s dance moves. |
2015 YA & MG Debut Authors 