Happy Friday, everyone! I’m excited to bring you another guest author here on my blog. Today, Lisa Alden is here to tell us about her novel Linked, which is available in ebook format.
Linked by Lisa Alden
In Linked, Fourteen-year-old Andra Quincy’s summer in Marina, the fog pit of Monterey County, isn’t exactly off to a great start. It’s her birthday, and her best friend has ditched her for a boy. Her parents are cruising the Caribbean while she’s at home rubbing her goose-bumpy arms and dreaming of sunshine and adventure, and being baby-sat by her flaky uncle, Ryan. But when Andra puts on her only birthday gift, a silver charm bracelet from Ryan, it plunges her into a magical alternate reality for each seven-o’clock hour.
Andra discovers that a local six-year-old, Morgan Baxter, thought to have been kidnapped, has actually disappeared into the Seven, a place that few have entered and most never escape. Determined to rescue Morgan from the Seven even though the kid is trying to kill her, Andra enlists the help of a dorky classmate she’s only known as Golf Ball Head, who turns out to be much more than she imagined, and Joel Westin, a trigger-happy boy from 1874, who both terrifies and charms her. Andra must figure out who to trust and how to get Morgan and herself out of the Seven before it’s too late and they become a part of it forever.
Onto the interview!
Every guest on my blog gets their own intro music! So tell us, what’s your song pick?
“This Is the Stuff,” by Francesca Battistelli. Especially during the extra craziness of the Christmas season!
What inspired the story of Linked?
I spent my teen years in Monterey County, home of the first capital of California and many other firsts, including California’s First Theater, which happens to be a small wooden building with an adobe add-on and such charming decor as whale ribs accenting the front door! Jack Swan, an English sailor of Scottish ancestry, built the wooden portion of the building in 1845, with lumber salvaged from a shipwreck.
While the building and its original owner, Jack Swan have a fascinating history, it was the shipwreck that captured my imagination. How did the ship sink? Were the passengers rescued? No one I asked had the answer.
One of the joys of writing fiction is making up the answers to my own questions, so I wrote about that shipwreck. That scene, where a tragic clash of magic not only rips the ship apart, but destroys a family, became the opening scene in Linked.
The same magic that caused the shipwreck in the 1840’s is locked in a silver charm bracelet, which becomes modern-day teen Andra Quincy’s only birthday present. And that bracelet transports Andra into a magical alternate reality every seven-o’clock hour. There, Andra discovers the power of the magic that destroyed that ship, and which still infuses the old timber walls of California’s First Theater.
Oh, I love history and I love when stories are inspired by real events! That sounds like a really cool starting point for imagining a story.
Which character in the book did you have the most fun writing?
I had a lot of fun with Joel, a young stockman (cowboy) born in Kentucky and raised in Salinas. He’s been trapped in the Seven, an alternate reality, since 1874. He struggles with who he is and how to relate to Andra, a girl from a modern world he doesn’t understand, and who desperately needs his help.
Fun question: If you had to eat just one thing for the rest of your life, what would it be?
Soup! Because you can put just about anything in soup. Cold soup for summer, hot soup for winter . . .
Thanks for stopping by for the interview, Lisa! Readers, you can find out more about Lisa and her book Linked at the sites below:
Website: http://www.linkedthenovel.com
Buy Linked from Amazon US, Amazon UK, Barnes & Noble, or Smashwords.