A year ago, Blue’s brother, Jack, was involved in a car accident that killed the father of her classmate, Maya Rodriguez. Luckily for Jack, he got out of a manslaughter charge and into a plea bargain thanks to the top-notch lawyer hired by Blue’s wealthy parents.
The fallout is now affecting Blue as Maya returns to school determined to carve out a pound of flesh from the only member of the Mancini family she can reach. On top of that, Blue has a demanding mother, a father who’s never around, a drama-addicted best friend, and a secretive new guy who’s determined to make Blue his own personal cheer-up project. It’s a perfect storm of misery.
When Maya’s social media taunts and in-person digs finally push Blue to retaliate, they find themselves in afterschool detention and forced into a project meant to foster cooperation and civility. As the layers of their tangled drama unravel, Blue learns more about Maya’s life—and her own sense of privilege—when secrets are revealed that cast a new perspective on everything in Blue’s world.
Publication date: October 26th 2021GUEST POST
BLUE was a blend of two real-life things.
First, I had a friend who went through a horrible event. On Christmas Eve, she was driving home from her closing shift at her retail job, it was dark and she was on a rural road. A young man who was intent on ending his own life threw himself in front of her SUV. She couldn’t stop in time, and ended up striking and killing him.
She was physically unhurt but it really messed her up with PTSD. To make things worse, the young man’s family tried to sue her even though the guy had a history of mental illness, left a suicide note, and a security camera at a local business captured the whole thing on video (which she had to watch in court). They were unsuccessful with the lawsuit, but it took a huge toll.
She quit her job, moved back in with her parents, and got good, professional counseling. A year or so later, she decided to go to college and work on a degree, as a new direction for her life. Her first day, first class at a nearby university, she walked in the door, and there was the guy’s sister in her class. Long story short, they eventually ended up friends, despite the horrible thing that tied them together.
I always thought that might make a good story, but as I began writing it, it just never evolved well. I picked that idea up and worked on it a dozen times over the years, but it was just missing something.
Then my daughter became a teenager, and quite out of nowhere, life decided to rain misery on her in her junior year of high school. A confluence of outside forces hit her from a few different people and situations, and despite all the support I could throw at her, the support of her teachers, and the help of a really good therapist, she just seemed “stuck” in her bubble of misery.
I felt so helpless and frustrated – none of these things that were making her miserable were what you’d call permanent things, and I wanted her to realize that all of it would pass, and she just needed to push herself through it. Perspective is a lot easier when you have decades of life experience to draw from, and honestly, in her seventeen years of life these were the worst things to ever happen to her, impermanent as they were. She did push through, and I’m fiercely proud of her for it, but it was heartbreaking for a while there.
I finally realized I wanted to write a book about perspective, and the original story was never going to work for that. So I changed the circumstances of the accident, made Blue an unwilling bystander. I hit her with a few other miseries until she was deluged and wallowing, then connecting, understanding and redefining to a much better place, mentally and emotionally.
BLUE became a journey from hopeless to hopeful, from feeling like everyone was trying to rewrite your story to realizing nobody really knows anyone’s story, entirely. I love how it evolved, and these characters will always have a piece of my heart.
L.E. DeLano comes equipped with a “useless” Theatre degree that has opened doors for her in numerous ways. Though mostly raised in New Mexico, she now lives in Pennsylvania with two adventurous kids and two ridiculous cats. When she’s not writing (which is almost never), she’s binge-watching Netflix and planning road trips.
Her debut novel, TRAVELER was selected as a Keystone To Reading Secondary Book Award finalist for school year 2018-19 by the Keystone State Reading Association (KSRA) and also voted one of The 20 Most Beautiful Books in the World for 2017 by MTV UK.
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