Here it is, Quinn and the Quiet, Quiet, the 6th and final book in my award-winning, middle-grade horror series, Weird Stories Gone Wrong (now available)!
Usually when I publish a new book, I write a "5 things people are probably going to ask me" blog post about it, so here they are:
1. What is this book about?
Quinn and the Quiet, Quiet is an environmental resistance dystopia, where children resist a greedy corporation, the Citizen Child Blue BrickTM company, which is destroying the local mountain.
2. How did you come up with the idea for this book?
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| Blue Brick TM Illustration by Shawna Daigle |
I knew that book 6 was going to be a resistance dystopia, and I wanted to set it on a glacier and icefield (see #3 below). I also wanted to talk about different kinds of resistance: how do we resist, can we change anything by resisting? In this story, children resist. They run away, snap blue sparks for courage, dream of a better world, commit acts of sabotage, or simply endure. But by enduring, they undergo an unexpected change, since enduring is a kind of resistance too.
A writer starts a book years in advance of publication. I started gathering notes and writing ideas for this book in 2016, three years ago, but my initial idea of writing a story on a glacier is actually decades older than that....
3. Why is Quinn's story set on an icy planet, on a glacier and icefield?
In 1982, I worked for the summer at the Athabasca Glacier in Banff (Alberta), which was an incredible experience: I hiked the glaciers, I camped on the icefield, I went deep into the back country and climbed the highest peaks. An icefield like the Columbia Icefields is astonishing, beautiful, and an amazing birthright: it stores a seemingly limitless supply of fresh water for the planet.
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| Author, Athabasca Glacier, 1982 |
In 2010 I went back to the glacier and the icefields, and I couldn't believe how much the glacier had shrunk, how green the mountains were in mid-summer instead of snow-capped. Some of the glaciers, like the Bow and Angel glaciers, were completely gone. I stood and cried at a few places along the highway on that trip in 2010.
Where was the ice? The streams? The snow? It had only been 28 years since I was last there, and those seemingly permanent glaciers were shrinking ... or gone. Today in 2019, nine years after my last visit, the glaciers are shrinking faster than they were in 2010.
Anyone paying attention over the past 30 years knows that the environment is changing, that climate crisis is real. And of course, recent events with amazing young climate activists and worldwide climate strikes are finally grabbing our attention.
The ideas and the research for this book began a long time ago, but I started writing this book 3 years ago (the final version of the edited manuscript was at the publisher almost 1 year before publication). It seemed time to draw attention to the environment, to shrinking glaciers, greedy corporations, rampant consumerism, resistance and how young people can change the world. Writers are nothing if not futurists...
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| Snowlight, Clem and the Commander Illlustration by Shawna Daigle |
Snowlight is the furry, blue Snow Creature that Clem Usher finds as she runs away from the Work Centre.
The Snow Creatures are creatures of the blue rock and ice; they are nearly extinct and cannot get the attention of the miners at the greedy corporation, because they cannot speak. They need someone to speak for them ... but they are far from helpless.
When the time comes, they have a power all their own.
Snowlight can be a stand-in for the environment, if you like, a symbol of power and vision far beyond that of a mere corporation like the Citizen Child Blue BrickTM factory.
5. Finally, what is the Quiet, Quiet?
We can all dream of a better world, a quiet, safe, beautiful place. In this story, the Quiet, Quiet is just that: a better world, according to our wishes and dreams.
I hope you enjoy this story! If you have more questions for me about it, drop me a comment below and I'll answer asap.
MORE: Quinn and the Quiet, Quiet BOOK TRAILER
More about Quinn and the Quiet, Quiet on THIS BLOG
