Modern Ink Society- Featuring Kimberly Derting

August 10, 2016

FEATURING GUEST

Kimberly Derting

Inspiration for The Taking

Welcome to the twenty-eighth session of

THE MODERN INK SOCIETY!

“Imagination is the key to my lyrics. The rest is painted with a little science fiction.”

— Jimi Hendrix

Introducing Kimberly

Bio:

Kimberly Derting is the author of the award-winning THE BODY FINDER series, THE PLEDGE trilogy, and THE TAKING Trilogy.

Her books have been translated into 15 languages, and both THE BODY FINDER and THE PLEDGE were YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults selections.

She lives in the Pacific Northwest, where the gloomy weather is ideal for writing anything dark and creepy. Her three beautiful (and often mouthy) children serve as an endless source of inspiration and frequently find the things they say buried in the pages of their mother’s books, or on Twitter for the world to see

Derting’s Book Series

The Pledge Trilogy

The Body Finder Series

The Taking Trilogy

A little teaser for The Taking. . .

A flash of white light . . . and then . . . nothing.

When sixteen-year-old Kyra Agnew wakes up behind a Dumpster at the Gas ‘n’ Sip, she has no memory of how she got there. With a terrible headache and a major case of déjà vu, she heads home only to discover that five years have passed . . . yet she hasn’t aged a day.

Everything else about Kyra’s old life is different. Her parents are divorced, her boyfriend, Austin, is in college and dating her best friend, and her dad has changed from an uptight neat-freak to a drunken conspiracy theorist who blames her five-year disappearance on little green men.

Confused and lost, Kyra isn’t sure how to move forward unless she uncovers the truth. With Austin gone, she turns to Tyler, Austin’s annoying kid brother, who is now seventeen and who she has a sudden undeniable attraction to. As Tyler and Kyra retrace her steps from the fateful night of her disappearance, they discover strange phenomena that no one can explain, and they begin to wonder if Kyra’s father is not as crazy as he seems. There are others like her who have been taken . . . and returned. Kyra races to find an explanation and reclaim the life she once had, but what if the life she wants back is not her own?

Inspiration for The Taking

Writing is a weird thing. You can get your inspiration from…well, pretty much

anything…at any place and at any given time. I first wrote this letter almost three years ago; when I was trying to sum up where the inspiration for THE TAKING series came from, and why this story was so important to me. So stay with me while I go off on a tangent or two:

Dear Readers,

THE TAKING is a book I’ve probably been formulating in my head from the

moment I first walked into a theater to see Star Wars in the third grade. And yes, I was the girl who collected all the Star Wars trading cards and action figures, and even wished my hair could twist into side buns the way Princess Leia’s did.

But my love of all-things- Sci-Fi runs much deeper than that. It wasn’t just Star Wars; it was Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek, Star Blazers, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Alien, and even ET. Even now, I’m drawn to anything otherworldly.

As a teenager, I remember staring up at the stars for hours and knowing we

couldn’t possibly be alone in the universe. I imagined the societies that must exist out there, and the advanced technologies they possessed. I wondered if they were watching us, or if they’d already visited and decided we were too…uncivilized to contact. I desperately wanted them to notice me.

The idea for THE TAKING wasn’t as much about aliens as it was about

questioning what truly defines us as individuals. Is everything about who we are simply programmed into our DNA? Or do our actions and experiences play a larger role in determining who we become?

In THE TAKING, Kyra Agnew is living the life she always wanted until everything changes in an instant. As a parent, it’s hard not to imagine what it would be like to have a child go missing (under far more real and terrifying circumstances than Kyra’s disappearance), and what it would mean to be reunited with that child after a significant length of time had passed. But instead of examining it from the parents’ point of view, I tried to look at it from the flip side. What would that be like for the teen who has gone missing, to suddenly be reunited? Would it be awkward, or would everything be the same as it was before? How would they have changed? And what if the circumstances of the family they left was different—what would that mean for them?

These are just some of the questions I incorporated into THE TAKING, along

with my fascination with other worlds and alien civilizations. I may not be the girl the aliens noticed, but I finally got the chance to write about her.

I hope you enjoy Kyra’s story, and thanks for reading!

Kimberly Derting

Thanks for the great post Kimberly! I for one have read Derting’s work and LOVE the way she writes and her stories. She has a great voice and I recommend her books to all my friends!

If you’d like to learn more about her and her books, go to kimberlyderting.com.

We are also hosting a giveaway that Kimberly is so graciously providing. One lucky winner will receive an entire set of The Taking Trilogy (US only please).

Simply participate in the giveaway below!

Good luck!

This entry was posted in Contest, Featuring Authors, The Modern Ink Society, Uncategorized.

5 Responses to Modern Ink Society- Featuring Kimberly Derting

Colleen Houck

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Modern Ink Society- Featuring Kimberly Derting

August 10, 2016

“Imagination is the key to my lyrics. The rest is painted with a little science fiction.”

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