By Anna Kendall, author of Crossing Over, published now in hardback.
I had not intended to write Crossing Over. I was in fact working on an entirely different book. But all of a sudden this scruffy kid appeared in my mind, dressed in shabby peasant clothing a bit too small for him and complete with his unsettling secret talent, and he clamored, ‘Write me! Write me!’
‘Go away,’ I said to him, but not aloud because although all writers are crazy, I’m not yet quite crazy enough to be talking to people who don’t exist.
Roger Kilbourne did not go away (‘Write me! Write me!’). As weeks passed, he grew stronger and stronger, until eventually I reached the point at which I wanted to write him, and then at which I was eager to do so. Why?
Roger can cross over into the Country of the Dead. He doesn’t want to do this, and in the beginning he does so only when forced to. He doesn’t know where this dubious talent came from, or if anyone else possesses it. When I described Roger to a friend, she said, ‘The Country of the Dead? Is that a suitable place for a YA novel?’
I said, ‘He doesn’t want to go there.’
She said, ‘Even so...’
I think she was wrong. Thoughtful young people do think about death, wonder what might come after this life, are interested in stories about the dead, the undead, and the soon-to-be-dead. That covers everything from Romeo and Juliet to the latest vampire stories. Roger Kilbourne does not find what he expects in the Country of the Dead, and as the book goes on, he discovers just how complicated the links can be among the living, the dead, and the magic that spins webs between them. His talent takes him from country faires to an embattled court to a love he did not anticipate, and finally to decisions he never imagined.
Crossing Over is the first of a trilogy (the Country of the Dead is a big place). Roger acquires friends and enemies; he grows and changes. So do the people caught up in the secret war between two realms. Yet underneath all, Roger is still the same person: orphaned, frightened, brave, underestimated by those who seek to use his talent for their own ends. It’s not really a good idea to underestimate Roger Kilbourne. And I hope those of you who read Crossing Over, Dark Mist Rising, and A Bright and Terrible Sword will be as captured by his story as I was.
‘Write me! Write me!’
You really cannot argue with these people.
