Book Description
YA Fantasy
Date Published: 8/6/2013
16-year-old
Zippy Green never meant to fall in love with a girl, but when she does,
her ultra-conservative father tries to send her to anti-gay camp. At
the Kansas City airport, however, she hides inside a giant suitcase and
sneaks onto an airplane headed not to the camp, but to Seattle, where
her online love Mira lives. Halfway through the flight, the plane
barrels out of control and crashes into the ground, knocking her
unconscious. When Zippy awakens, she finds that most of the passengers have vanished. She doesn’t know what’s happened, but she’s determined to find out. She begins a quest on foot toward Seattle, and along the way, she meets a teenager with a concussion , a homeless man with a heart condition, a child without a shred of bravery, and a terrier named Judy. Together the group discovers that more than two-thirds of the world's population has mysteriously disappeared. But that's only the beginning...
All Zippy wants is to find her Mira, but before she can she has to contend with two outside forces. The first is her homophobic father, who does everything in his power to keep her from the girl she loves. And the second is extinct creatures of all shapes and sizes, including living, breathing dinosaurs, which have replaced the missing population.
Book Excerpt
The
end was coming, faster and faster, as the plane plummeted. I peered into the
carrier to see a little white terrier staring back at me.
When I closed my eyes for the final time I felt two ice-cold tears
roll down my cheeks.
“Mira… I love you… I love you… I—”
The plane collided against the Earth, and I launched forward, struck
my head against the cargo door, and blacked out.
The Author's Guest Post
Over
the Rainbow, a book that incorporates a love story, loads of action, the
rapture, dinosaurs, and The Wizard of Oz, started with one simple idea. What if
a gay teenaged girl escaped from her bigoted father by packing herself into a
large box and mailing herself across the country, all the way to her true love?
This nugget of an idea stuck with me for a few years, and I'd always been
meaning to explore it. It wasn't until I told the concept to Shaunta Grimes
(author of Viral Nation) in January 2012 that I started getting more excited
about turning it into a book.
Shaunta
was so enthused about the project that she started working with me on it almost
every day in spring 2012, allowing me to toss ideas off her. She helped me
conclude that putting her on an airplane would be more interesting than her
just getting packed away in a mailing box. And she also helped me with the apocalyptic
elements of the scary new world I introduce in the book. I'll never forget the
look on her face when I told her I wanted to incorporate dinosaurs into the
plot. The book was already getting a little crazy, and then I made it even more
nutso by introducing the living, breathing dinos. I really wanted to be the
first author to mix an LGBT coming-of-age story with a Jurassic Park-like
action adventure. Lo and behold, Over the Rainbow was born.
Over
the course of eighteen months, Over the Rainbow has turned into something
entirely different than I ever could have imagined way back in January 2012. It
has certainly evolved into something unique and surprising, over the course of
ten drafts, professional editing, and two rounds of copyediting. But I'm proud
to say I think it's my best and most ambitious work yet. And I'm so very
excited to for all of you to read it.
About The Author
Brian Rowe is a writing fiend, book devotee, film fanatic, and constant dreamer. He's written nine novels, dozens of short stories, five feature-length screenplays, and hundreds of film articles and essays. His fiction has appeared in Dreamspinner Press, Mobius Magazine, and Wilde Oats Literary Journal. He is one half of the YA book blog Story Carnivores, where he reviews the latest in books and film. He is currently pursuing his MA in English at the University of Nevada, Reno, and is hard at work on his first New Adult novel, which will be released in November 2013.
Website: brianrowebooks.com
No comments:
Post a Comment