Oh goodness. This is the second excerpt in a row that Robin Wasserman has posted to her tumblr for this book, AND I NEED IT NOW.
Do you like creepy? *creepy smile* If you like creepy, then I think you need this book, too.
Click on the screen cap of the excerpt to go and see for yourself. (WARNING: CREEPY AWESOME. AWESOME CREEPY).
Thank you. There is nothing more incredible than knowing that something that you wrote meant something to someone else.
When you sit down to write a book, you know that it won’t be for everyone. With Nobody, I was even more aware of this than usual. It’s very different from my other books. It’s darker and more of a slow build and focuses strongly on romance. There is virtually no supporting cast. But I wanted to write a book about what it’s like to feel like you don’t matter and then to find out that you do—even just to one person, even for just a little while.
And, you know, I also wanted to write a book about assassins. And I’ve always wished that I could walk through walls…
I could keep going, but really what I wanted to say is just thank you for letting me know that this book was for you. And to everyone else reading this—if there’s an author whose book was perfect for you, you can probably bring a huge smile to their face by letting them know.
Me, at every high-school party I ever attended.
People attended parties in high school?
In Raised By Wolves, especially at the beginning, Bryn is still living with one foot in the human world. So when she’s describing her relationship to Callum, she tries to put it in human terms. He’s like an uncle… He’s like a big brother… and so on. But the thing is, you really can’t describe their relationship in human terms. He was her alpha. Eventually, Bryn will stop trying to fit that into neat little human boxes, but at the beginning of Wolves, she’s much more of a human, mentally, than she is at the end.
But that answers a different question (why does Bryn describe him like an uncle or a brother, when he’s really not that much like an uncle or a brother at all?). To answer the question as to why Bryn never refers to him as being like a father—in the very first draft I wrote, she did. But my editor, wise woman that she is, wrote back and said “but he’s really not a father figure, is he? He’s her alpha, and that’s a totally different thing.”
So I thought about it and decided that she was right. Ali is the one who raised Bryn. She’s her mother, in a way that Callum is absolutely not her father. Callum was this larger than life figure who swept into and out of Bryn’s life when she was younger. He was a very central figure, yes, but it was always very clear that Ali was the parent, and Callum was the alpha, and those are two very different things. In fact, if you look at the arguments that Ali and Callum have in Raised By Wolves, you’ll see that Ali wanted that to be very clear. Bryn was always her daughter, not Callum’s. Ali always, always puts Bryn first. But Callum? Like Bryn in later years, he has to play the long game.
Think of it this way: Callum’s relationship with Bryn has a lot of parallels to Bryn’s relationship with Lily in the later books. Callum rescued Bryn from a rabid werewolf when she was very young. Bryn rescued Lily from a rabid werewolf when she was very young. Callum was Bryn’s alpha, but Ali was the parent day-to-day. Bryn is Lily’s alpha, but if you read between the lines in the books, it’s really Ali who’s raising Lily, alongside the twins.
So imagine, ten years from now, that Lily is describing Bryn. The first term she’d go for is alpha, of course, because that comes loaded with meaning to werewolves and describes their relationship perfectly. They’re family. They’re pack. Bryn would do anything to protect Lily. And so on. But what if Lily were trying to put it in human terms?
She might describe Bryn as being like an older sister. Or maybe like an aunt. But can you imagine her describing Bryn as a mother-figure? For me, the answer to that question is no. Werewolves very much so have an “it takes a village to raise a child” perspective, but alpha and parent are still not interchangeable, even when the child in question is very young.
My dedication and acknowledgements accidentally got left out of the NOBODY final copies. This is sad (and hopefully my publisher will be able to fix it for the paperback), but it also seems somewhat appropriate, given that Nobody is about teenagers that are supernaturally unnoticeable. No one ever really looks at them. People are continually forgetting they exist at all. This is obviously a very lonely way to live—until these two teenagers meet each other. Then things get less lonely and more just STEALTHY.
So I like to think that the dedication/acknowledgements are just stealthy, too…
NOBODY DEDICATION
This one’s for Ally, for snickerdoodles, friendship, and keeping The Crazies at bay.
NOBODY ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The writing of this book spanned four years of my life, and it went through five major revisions. Major thanks are due to the people whose comments helped me find the story and refine the way I told it: my agent, Elizabeth Harding, who was there for every draft (and a few freak outs along the way); my first readers, Sarah Cross and Melissa Marr, whose spot-on insights gave me the much-needed push to see this book through to completion; and my tirelessly passionate editor, Regina Griffin, who managed to intuit exactly what this story needed and helped me bring it there. Thanks, too, are due to the team at EgmontUSA, particularly Katie Halata, who coordinated the marketing for this book, and to superstar cover designer Sammy Yuen, who never fails to surprise me—in a good way!
I am also incredibly grateful to my graduate school advisors and friends, who were so supportive during the writing and editing of this book (and my dissertation). Laurie Santos, Paul Bloom, Christina Starmans, Mark Sheskin—just to name a few—you are greatly appreciated! And thank you to my writing friends—Ally Carter, Sarah Rees Brennan, Sarah Cross, Melissa Marr, Carrie Ryan, Melissa de la Cruz, Team Castle, and BOB, among others—who kept me company during various stages of this book (and kept me sane).
As always, I am blessed in my family, and so thankful for each and every one of you (and special thanks to my mom, who was the very first person to read this book).
Most possibilities have occurred to me at one point or another. Devon/Lake, Devon/Caroline, Devon/Bryn… for someone who does not get any kissing time in the books, Devon gets a lot of shippery action from readers online.
There’s a short story—currently only available in the e-anthology including all of the RBW books + Every Other Day—called Sweet Sixteen, about Lake’s sixteenth birthday, that shows a lot of how Lake and Devon interact when Bryn is not around. I think that Lake/Devon shippers will find it interesting (though there is no romantic content per se).
I believe the answer to this is yes to both, but I think the UK is publishing them in a different order—Naturals first (in the fall) and Nobody later.
I think SRB is trying to tell me that she has a Raised By Wolves ship?
And this…
So. There you have it. Friends bully friends to write kissing they want to read.
I do not feel qualified to predict what readers will and will not see coming. Readers are smart. They are crafty! They bring their own experiences with fiction and reality to the table.
I can tell you that there were several parts of the book that were a surprise to me as I was writing it. So if, as a reader, you do see them coming, you’re one up on me.
That’s one of the reasons that I don’t outline a lot of my books—I love the surprise, the thrill of finding out with the protagonist what all of the little clues mean. So about a chapter or two before something big happens, I’ll start to get suspicious. ”Does this mean what I think it means? OH MY GOSH, NIX, DOES THIS MEAN WHAT I THINK IT MEANS?”
Even when I think I know what’s going to happen in a story, a twist inevitably comes along that I did not see coming. My brain, this is how it works.
