Jennifer Lynn Barnes

NOBODY dedication and acknowledgements

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).

Anonymous asked: Did the possibility of Devon and Lake mating ever occur to you? (It might be just me but I really hoped they did.)

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).

withhernosestuckinabook asked: Hi Jennifer. I was just wondering whether you knew if Nobody and The Naturals are being published in the UK?

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.

Shipping (and Writer Friends)

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. 

Anonymous asked: Will there be a giant plot twist in NOBODY that readers won't see coming?

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.

Anonymous asked: I've read your reasonings behind leaving Raised by Wolves as a trilogy; however, as a reader who likes a liitle more closure I don't feel the trilogy closes Brynn's story. If she is linked to her pack what happens when they feel her being attacked? How does her and Callum's relationship carry-on after she feels let done? What about Devon and Brynn. Do they ever end up together. Her life took a big hit in the third book and I feel she deserves some goodness in her life.

I completely get where you are coming from here, and I’m not opposed to possibly returning to Bryn’s story someday.  But at the same time, I also believe that fiction should leave you with questions.  In my day job, I study the psychology of fiction, and some theorists think that fiction basically serves to jump-start your imagination.  So I like ending books in a place where “what if…” and “I wonder…” are all right there at the front of the reader’s mind.  So even if I did come back and write a fourth book someday, when that fourth book ended, there would still be things to wonder about and imagine and questions raised to think about after you were done.

With the Raised By Wolves series, I tried to make every book a game changer.  Bryn is in a different place at the beginning of each book than the end.  Her life has just taken a sudden turn.  So many of your questions—how do the others feel, how do her relationships change—are not questions that would go away with a new book, because there would inevitably be another major change of some kind in her life.  Bryn’s life and her relationships are in flux, and I don’t see them settling down immediately.  She’s seventeen!  Whatever happens to her is going to be the beginning of a new chapter of her life, not an ending.

One thing I hear from a lot of readers is that they really want to see Bryn get romantic closure.  If she [SPOILER WARNING, SHIELD YOUR EYES] doesn’t end up with Chase, who does she end up with?  

I do believe that Bryn would eventually have a happily ever after, but I am not convinced that would happen while she is still a teenager.  Some people settle into romantic relationships as teenagers that last forever, but some people don’t.  At the end of Taken By Storm, Bryn has SO MUCH to deal with in her life that isn’t romance.  Some day, when she least expects it, she’ll be in the right place to find someone.  But if I *did* write a book four, and that book was set a year or so after Taken By Storm, I’m not convinced she’d be in that place yet.  If it was set ten years after Taken By Storm, on the other hand…

And now we’re right back to what if…

Anonymous asked: I'm a huge fan of your book Every Other Day and was saddened to see that you won't be having a sequel. Is there any hope of a short story? Because I really love the world building you have there.

Some day, I would love to do some short stories, revisiting characters from previous books, especially Every Other Day and the Raised By Wolves series. But at the moment, sadly, I do not have time for any additional projects at the moment.  

I am hard at work on THE NATURALS, my new FBI thriller YA series, which comes out in November, as well as the sequel, due out in 2014.  I have two other exciting new projects that are still secret, I’m planning my next book after Naturals 2, and I’m working a more-than-full-time job as a college professor.  So if I ever do short story follow-ups to previous series, they’re going to have to wait until life settles down a bit, though it is something I would very much like to do.

Anonymous asked: How do you pronounce Bryn's middle name?

Bryn’s middle name is Alessia, which I pronounce ah-LESS-ee-uh (or possibly the phonetic version is uh-LESS-ee-a? Phonetics, not my strong suit).  

The emphasis comes out on the second syllable, and the A at the beginning sounds like the beginning of Alyssa, not Alison.

When I was writing the book, my brother had a good friend named Alessio.   I assumed that the female version would be Alessia.  Bryn, as you might have noticed, has this somewhat unusual and fancy sounding name (Bronwyn Alessia) that does not really fit with her personality (hence her choice to go by Bryn).  

That’s in part because she was named by her biological parents, who were killed when she was very young.  So Bryn is who she ended up being, raised by Ali in Callum’s pack, but there was this whole other possibility out there once, because if her parents had lived, she probably would have grown up as a Bronwyn Alessia, raised by people who chose those names and perhaps even lived a somewhat globe-trotting and fancy life.

And, of course, the only person in the pack who is at all aware of what this other Bryn might have been like is Callum, who probably got a glimpse of that other Bronwyn’s future, back in the day.  I like to think that when Callum calls her by her full name, a part of him is thinking of that—all the ways her life has changed because he couldn’t save her parents, and all the changes he sees still to come.

outoffocusryan asked: Say that an inspiring writer were to ask you to give your opinion on a plot line, would it be very difficult for you? or would you be willing to give some constructive criticism?

I am so glad you asked this question in the tumblr, because I get variations of it quite frequently (as I’m sure most published authors do), and I am not able to respond, due to time.  But since you asked this where I can answer for many people, I am happy to take the opportunity to answer it.

My policy is that I do not read unpublished manuscripts or provide feedback on plot lines, characters, etc of any kind.  There are legal reasons for this, but also, I just do not have time. I have multiple careers. What free time I do have is precious and reserved for the relationships and people in my life who I love, and I have to fight very hard to protect that, or I wind up with none at all.  

In general (and this comes with my typical “advice” disclaimer, which is that your mileage may vary, and some author might give different advice), I would recommend against asking any published author for feedback on things like your plot lines unless you know them personally AND they have explicitly volunteered to help you with things like that.  Otherwise, the place to be looking for feedback is not from published authors, but from those rising in the ranks with you, in the form of critique partners.

Many authors are happy to provide general advice on places like their tumblrs.  So if you can make your question general, like “how do you know a plot line is worth pursuing?” or “do you have any tricks for ramping up the conflict and stakes in your books?” then you might have more luck asking.  I advocate asking in venues, like this one, where the answers could be helpful to lots of people, rather than (for instance) sending an author an email asking for writing advice that would benefit just you (I am using “you” in the general sense here, not aimed at the question asker).