In 2019 our goal is to work with as many debut authors as possible and spread the word about their debut novels. Follow us this year as we pick the mind of the 2019 debuts and chat with them. Also stay tuned for news of giveaways, twitter chats and more!
-Amber
About Rory!
Rory Power grew up in New England, where she lives and works as a crime fiction editor and story consultant for TV adaptation. Wilder Girls is her first novel. Keep up with Rory: Twitter / Instagram
Interview!
The Book Bratz: How does it feel that WILDER GIRLS is debuting this year?
Rory: There are so many amazing books debuting this year, and I’m so excited that WILDER GIRLS gets to hang out in their company. The actual pub date still feels very far away - I’m not sure it’s sunk in yet that it’s this! year! this year!!!!! - but right now that’s working for me, as I definitely need time to adjust to the fact that the book is no longer just a Word doc saved on my computer as “WILDER GIRLS probably the final one maybe fix it though.”
Rory: My preferred pitch is: the girls! They’re WILDER! But understanding that that’s not super helpful, WILDER GIRLS is about:The Book Bratz: Where did your inspiration for WILDER GIRLS come from?
- an all girls boarding school on an island
- it’s been quarantined (oh no)
- because they’re all v sick (oh NO)
- and then one of girls disappears (OH NO)
- so we gotta go find her but everything’s terrifying and gross (OH! NO!)
- also it’s f/f (oh yes)
Rory: I’m someone who loves setting more than almost anything else in a book, so it’s to nobody’s surprise that the inspiration for the book came from a place. I visited Harkers Island in North Carolina in 2015, and immediately knew I wanted to write about it somehow. The island in WILDER GIRLS ended up being set much further north, and it looks a bit different, but it’s rooted in that initial inspiration (and one of the characters is named Harker as a tribute).The Book Bratz: Is there anything from your personal life that you used as inspiration in WILDER GIRLS?
Rory: There’s nothing too specific that made its way from my personal life to the page, but my three main characters (Hetty, Byatt, and Reese) each have something of me in them. In particular, Hetty and Reese are queer, which is own voices, and with Byatt I wanted to represent a very specific kind of feeling - that of not understanding yourself, and of feeling grateful when you finally get an explanation, no matter how strange or unsettling that explanation may be.The Book Bratz: Can you share a secret about WILDER GIRLS that not many people know yet?
Rory: I’m not sure this is the sort of secret anybody wanted to know, but at one point this book featured a page-long monologue about shrimp. (It does not anymore.) (I’m so sorry to disappoint you.) Bonus secret in case that somehow wasn’t what you were looking for: Also omitted from this book is a very detailed explanation of how emergency sprinkler systems can operate without electricity.The Book Bratz: If you had to create Twitter or Instagram handles for your characters, what would they be?
Rory: Reese wouldn’t have any social media, and would pretend that it’s because she’s old school and above it, but really she doesn’t know how to get apps on her phone. Byatt would have managed to have all her handles just be @byatt, and Hetty, poor Hetty, would either have some unintelligible pun that only she thought was funny (@momsspaghetty), or something like @hettyyyyyyyy154.The Book Bratz: Do you have any ideas you plan to visit after WILDER GIRLS?
Rory: PLENTY! Right now I’m working on something with lots of corn and also some family secrets, and there are a bunch more waiting for their turn. WILDER GIRLS is a standalone, but I hope to come back to the island someday, too.
About WILDER GIRLS!
Title: Wilder Girls
Author: Rory Power
Genre: Mystery
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Publication Date: July 9th 2019
Buy The Storm Crow: Amazon / B&N / Indie Bound / Book Depository
Summary: It's been eighteen months since the Raxter School for Girls was put under quarantine. Since the Tox hit and pulled Hetty's life out from under her. It started slow. First the teachers died one by one. Then it began to infect the students, turning their bodies strange and foreign. Now, cut off from the rest of the world and left to fend for themselves on their island home, the girls don't dare wander outside the school's fence, where the Tox has made the woods wild and dangerous. They wait for the cure they were promised as the Tox seeps into everything. But when Byatt goes missing, Hetty will do anything to find her, even if it means breaking quarantine and braving the horrors that lie beyond the fence. And when she does, Hetty learns that there's more to their story, to their life at Raxter, than she could have ever thought true.
Thank you so much Rory for stopping by and answering our questions! We LOVED WILDER GIRLS and we can't wait for it to hit the world on July 9th!
I am SO EXCITED for this book! It's been on my radar for ages!
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