The Seventh by S.D. Wasley - Guest Post & Giveaway

The Seventh

S.D. Wasley

YA Paranormal Romance/Suspense
Evernight Teen
January 23, 2015

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Sixteen year old Mimi Alston has company. No less than three ghosts follow her around, and only she can see them. At her last school, she was known as the girl with imaginary friends. Now Mimi’s starting fresh in a new town, where she’s determined to make some real friends and fit in for once. She’s ready for a normal life...except Mimi never counted on her fascination with troubled goth-boy, Drew.

When she’s invited to join the elite Gifted Program, Mimi discovers she’s not the only one at the school with an unusual talent. Maybe being normal isn’t even an option anymore.

Excerpt

“Mimi, would you mind telling us about yourself now?”

I swallowed again. How did she expect me to make a coherent sentence after what I’d just heard? If there was another Mimi, a logical one that could step outside of my own body and look at the situation objectively, she would say: Get a grip, Miette. This is bullshit. These people are either lunatics … or they are playing the cruellest prank in history. But the problem was, logical Mimi had gone AWOL. I believed these kids. Deep in my heart, I knew without a shadow of a doubt they were telling the truth and––whether what they were describing was real or not––they believed in their gifts as fact. Doctor Mayer would have a field day with them.

I heard myself launch into speech and marvelled at how unlike myself I sounded. I heard a Mimi I hadn’t heard in years: excited, happy and relieved. “I’m Mimi Alston. I come from Perry Ridge. I have one brother, who’s much older. He lives in Canada with his wife. I love drawing, especially portraits. I had a nickname at my old school. Mimi-and-her-imaginary-friends.” I couldn’t believe I was telling them this secret … a secret I had been so determined to keep that I’d actually been prepared to fake my whole personality, day in and day out, at this new school.

“It’s because I have company with me, pretty much all the time. Meet my ghosts, Hannah, Albert and Marvin.” I pointed at the chairs beside me and the other kids stared. Even Drew raised his head to look at me in amazement. “Hannah joined me when I was thirteen. She was a kitchen maid. She was nineteen, and she was pregnant with her boss’s child. She died having the baby. Albert joined me when I was fourteen. He was a soldier in World War II. He died on the stretcher after getting a serious shrapnel injury. And Marvin only joined me earlier this year. He was homeless after losing his house because of his gambling debts. He died of hypothermia during a cold snap.”

Patience’s eyes looked like horrified saucers as she stared at the empty chairs beside me. After a moment, Mona let out a shuddering breath and even contemptuous Cassie looked impressed. Gabe sat watching me curiously, as if he didn’t expect quite what he was seeing or hearing.

“You’re a Necromancer,” nodded Ms Deering.

“Necro … doesn’t that mean dead?” asked Mona.

“And mancy is magic, or conjuring,” affirmed Ms Deering. “Mimi calls the dead.”

“I call them?” I couldn’t help exclaiming. “I never called them! I don’t want them around!”

Ms Deering just smiled ruefully. “I don’t think you can help it. I didn’t mean you actively call them––I meant you bring them … attract them. You invite their spirits to make contact.”

“Why?” I asked.

“The million-dollar question,” Mona laughed shortly, dragging her eyes off the empty chairs beside me. “Why do any of us have these gifts?”

“Can you hear them?” Patience asked me, her face still terrified. Great. She was freaked out. Oh, well … at least she didn’t think I was crazy.

“Yes,” I said. “That’s how I know what happened to them.” My mind drifted towards some of the other things they’d said to me and I hastily changed my train of thought. “They used to talk more, but I started trying to ignore them so they stopped being so … chatty.”

Mona cackled at that. I decided I wouldn’t mention the medication I had been taking to help me “ignore” my ghosts. I could feel Drew still watching me, so I looked back at him. I badly wanted to ask him why he looked so stunned. I also wanted to ask him what his gift was. But I couldn’t form a sentence because his face was so painfully beautiful in that moment that I forgot to breathe and just stared.

“Drew,” Ms Deering said in a firm tone. “Please tell us about you.”

Drew snapped out of our little two-way staring contest and cast an angry look at Ms Deering before getting up and shouldering his satchel.

Guest Post ~ All about SD Wasley, author of The Seventh

I was born and raised in Perth, Western Australia where I still live with my partner and two daughters. At five years old, I created my first literary work. I orated a rhyming eight-line poem for my mother. My always-encouraging mother suggested I write it down, but after a couple of laborious attempts, I gave up and went to play. Fortunately my mum wrote the rest of it down for me.

Writing was my ‘thing’ forever after that. I wrote stories, poems and essays. I wrote my first book-length story at about 14 years old and still have it – it’s pretty bad. Very overdramatic and derivative of my favourites around that time (think Anne of Green Gables, Little Women, etc.). I co-wrote some short romance stories with my high school best friend and then got into darker, more angsty type stuff as I hit university. I did some experimental writing and studied literature and social theory. Those were heady days of hating ‘the system’ and trying to break boundaries!

I always wanted to write what’s considered ‘high literature,’ but damn – it’s even harder to get into that field than it is simply to get published! I guess it’s still an aspiration for me. I had two daughters and completed a PhD before starting work as a corporate writer, after a brief stint university lecturing. My writing sort of fell off the radar during this busy reality-check phase of my life.

In the last few years of my life, after the break-up of my marriage and as I approached forty, I started to take my dream of being a writer more seriously again. I met a man who not only made my life fun and full of love; he also honestly and deeply believed I was a good writer and that it was ‘just a matter of time’ until I got published. In this happier place, I got back into writing.

I was so thrilled when I got my first offer of publication from Evernight Teen. I can’t explain how good it felt to see a company willing to take a risk on my book. People don’t tend to talk about the rejection letters (there were plenty) because it’s pretty soul-destroying. The fact is, there will be rejections, but if you are a good writer, there will eventually be an acceptance. And if you’re not yet a good writer, keep working at it until you are because it is something that can be learnt.

Today I am still working towards my dream: to become a full time novelist. I dream this while I run my copywriting business, raise my two girls, love my partner and tend my many pets (dogs, cats, chickens and occasionally tadpoles). I live in a semi-rural area of the Swan Valley wine region and yes, I enjoy a glass of local wine with my writing.

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