The summer between my junior and senior years of college I worked as a hotel maid at the Denali Park Hotel--a hotel that was inside the borders of the national park but has since been torn down. I was a beachy Florida girl through and through. I'd never tent camped. Ever. I got a pedicure before my trip and it never once occurred to me that taking the dead, protective skin off my feet was a bad idea before the intense hiking I was about to experience. I had zero camping gear. Like, not even the proper water bottle. I thought I was all set because my mom bought me a new pair of hiking boots. Boots I did not break-in.
It was a little much for me to be going to Denali.
But I went because I was up for anything and, while studying abroad in Spain, I'd met a girl from Spokane who said she was going to work a summer in Alaska, so I said--me too!
It remains one of my best life decisions.
This story first became fictionalized as “Me and The Boys in Alaska,” a short story that appeared in my grad thesis. Somewhere in the UNCW library it still exists. I often wondered if it might make for a light and funny YA novel, but I didn't have plans to turn it into one.
Until I needed a new YA novel for the writer's retreat I attended back in 2016 (yes, that long ago!) because it required me to have a YA novel, and I didn't want to work on DEVIL SPRINGS. I wrote a new fifty pages which got me into the retreat, the enthusiasm of the authors who read those pages caused me to keep going.
So I wrote and re-wrote and shelved it, and then looked at it again and realized I still loved it, so I re-queried and placed with Orange Blossom Publishing (yay!), so now I will re-write again…
Is this book the story of that summer?
No.
I took some of my experiences and gave them to a character, Dawn, in a very different situation than I was in, and I populated her story with people of my own creation that she needed for her journey.
But there is a scene with a moose that totally happened :-)
Stay tuned for pub dates!