Lynn Slaughter Novelist
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It’s a delight to welcome back Janet Raye Stevens to my blog as she embarks into the world of YA fiction with her new pen name, Evie Kelley. Below are her responses to my interview questions:

 As someone who started out as a young adult writer and now writes both young adult and adult fiction, I was fascinated to learn that you are now dipping your toe into writing for young adults as well. What led you to decide to write young adult fiction?

Thanks, Lynn. It’s great to visit with you again and talk all things YA! You could say I’m following your trajectory in reverse with my recent pivot from writing mystery and time travel for adult readers, to scribbling young adult fiction.

That journey happened almost accidentally. I’d been noodling with a memoir-ish story based on my high school days for a long time, but it wasn’t until a cancer diagnosis nearly 3 years ago that I got serious with the story. I put aside my “will get around to it someday” attitude in favor of “no time like the present” to get it done.

The result became my most personal book, My Bicentennial. A coming of age set in 1976, the story focuses on high school senior Deidre Daly, who, like most teens in any era, struggles with body image issues. Thankfully, attitudes have changed in this age of body positivity, but in the skinny ’70s, body shaming was particularly pernicious. Fed up with being told “thin is in” and she is out, Deidre decides to change how she looks. Surely “getting skinny” will land her a date to the prom and she’ll finally fit in with the popular crowd whose lives are as perfect and problem-free as hers is a disaster.

I channeled a lot of teenage me into this story. Deidre’s poor, lives in public housing with her spectacularly dysfunctional family, dreams of going to college but has little hope of paying for it, plus her concerns about her weight. Her journey is full of ups and downs, frequently funny, often emotional, and occasionally heartbreaking, as she navigates her life at both school and home and eventually learns to love herself as she is. And—spoiler alert—she even gets the guy.

One thing I learned in my long, strange trip back to the ’70s while writing My Bicentennial is that those far-out fashions should never come back into style (looking at you, polyester leisure suits and those ridiculous women’s “body suits” that look like a toddler’s onesie and snap at the crotch).

Another thing I discovered – I like writing young adult characters, and not just a character based on my younger self. I like crafting complex stories of teens finding themselves and who they are. Learning to make their own choices, however difficult they may be, and standing up for themselves. I like it so much that I’m planning more stories in the genre and even adopted a new pen name, Evie Kelley, to mark my new direction and the new me.                 

That leads me to your next YA project. The Nascent Bloom is science fiction and markedly different from your coming of age book. Can you share with our readers a bit about that project and what inspired it?                                                                                                                     

I’ve always loved sci-fi, ever since I was a kid. I point to my mother for sparking that interest. A voracious reader, sci-fi was her favorite genre, so it became my passion too. 

The sci-fi books I loved then, and now, are the ones with a message mixed into the action. The genre has a long tradition of using alien worlds or futuristic/dystopian settings to comment on the foibles of contemporary society. A world gone wrong or governments behaving badly with only a core group able to fix it is especially prevalent in sci-fi and fantasy aimed at young readers, with the added bonus of adolescent angst, hormones, and copious kissing. Think The Hunger Games and The Maze Runner series. 

I set out to do something similar in The Nascent Bloom: Book 1 Caught. 

In a world with only two classes, rich and poor, Kai’s on the wrong side of the equation. Working as a servant at an elite school catering to his so-called betters, he vows to fight the system that keeps his people down. His classmate Meili, born into privilege, struggles against society’s strict controls, where a girl’s only value is the wealth and status she’ll bring to a marriage. When pirates attack their spaceship on a school field trip, kidnap everyone on board and force them into indentured servitude on a planet far from home, they’re suddenly equals, with one desperate goal. To escape. The only way to do that is to put aside their differences—and the forbidden feelings growing between them—so they can somehow find a way home. 

I put Kai and Meili into an impossibly sticky situation, forcing them to discover if they have the courage and strength to get out of it. Making them rely on each other, where they begin to question their world and what they’ve been taught ups the stakes. And when they fall for each other, well… Fireworks follows.

I loved interviewing you about Books 3 and 4 in your Beryl Blue, Time Cop series, written as Janet Raye Stevens. Do you anticipate continuing the series at some point down the line?

Yes! I wrapped up the major mysteries of how librarian Beryl Blue became a badass time cop in the previous books, but that doesn’t mean Beryl isn’t up for some new adventures. I’m thinking Beryl and Sully chasing a rogue time traveler to post-World War I Boston could be exciting, with the flu epidemic and the Great Molasses Flood as historical elements to explore.

Of course, that’s down the line. I’ve got so many stories circling like planes waiting to land at a busy airport, but they can only come in one at a time.

Well, which story has the go ahead to land? What’s next for you writing-wise?

Next, I’m going to resolve things for Kai and Meili. I’ve got two more books in the Nascent Bloom series to get them home and to find a way for them to be together in a world where their love is forbidden. That journey will be fraught with danger and drama, and it’s a sure bet there will be plenty of kissing too.

Anything else you’d like to add, or wish I’d asked that I didn’t?

I always appreciate you hosting me here and giving me a chance to talk. And, since I mentioned the “C” word earlier, I want to let you and your readers know I’m doing great, staying healthy, and crossing my fingers it stays that way. Thanks again!

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BIO 

Meet award-winning author Janet Raye Stevens/Evie Kelley – mom, reader, tea-drinker (okay, tea guzzler), and weaver of smart, stealthily romantic tales.

 As Janet Raye Stevens, she writes both short mysteries and novel-length fiction that includes the fun and fast-paced Beryl Blue, Time Cop time travel adventures and the WWII-set historical suspense and Daphne du Maurier award-winning A Moment After Dark. Writing as Evie Kelley, she’s recently released the first in a young adult sci-fi suspense series, The Nascent Bloom: Book 1 Caught, a Killer Nashville Claymore Award Finalist and Top Pick. She’s also published the coming-of-age novel My Bicentennial, set in the 1970s era of mood rings, platform shoes, and the eternal debate of who’s cuter, Starsky or Hutch.

 Janet/Evie lives, writes, and drinks copious amounts of tea at her home in central MA.

janetrayestevens.com

https://www.eviekelley.com/

BOOK/BUY LINKS:

MY BICENTENNIAL:  https://books2read.com/u/mqRoyv

THE NASCENT BLOOM:  https://books2read.com/u/mvl6wJ

BERYL BLUE, TIME COP:  https://books2read.com/u/3LVgJ5