Happy 2026 YAOTL'ers!

 

I hope you’ll welcome me back to YA Outside the Lines following a long hiatus. Not that I haven’t kept busy. While I’ve been gone, I’ve adopted a second pen name, published 4 new books, and released my entire Beryl Blue, Time Cop time travel adventure series in audio, including the prequel short story, The Titanic Time Heist.

Now, let me assure you, this impressive output is not due to me being an overarching Energizer Bunny. My busy-busy-busy busyness has been fueled by the new perspective a cancer diagnosis nearly 3 years ago has given me. I’ve put aside the “will get around to it someday” attitude in favor of “no time like the present” to get stuff done.

 

I’d been writing seriously for publication for over 20 years when I heard that C-word. In that time, I’d built up a spectacularly wordy pile of completed, half-done, and slightly more than an idea manuscripts, spanning an array of genres. I decided that rather than let those stories languish, collecting cyber dust as I tried to land a new agent or waited for The Call from one of the major publishers, I was going to publish them myself.

  

The result became my most personal book, My Bicentennial. Loosely based on my senior year in high school, the story revolves around Massachusetts high school senior Deidre Daly, who’s always been told “thin is in” and she is out. As the Bicentennial year 1976 begins, she decides she’s had enough and sets out to change how she looks. Surely “getting skinny” will land her a date to the prom and she’ll finally fit in with the popular crowd whose lives are as perfect and problem-free as hers is a disaster.

 

Writing My Bicentennial gave me a chance to time travel back to the far-out ’70s, revisiting events like Jimmy Carter on the campaign trail, the trial of poor-little-rich-girl-turned-revolutionary Patty Hearst, and the energy crisis that raised gas prices to a steep 59-cents a gallon. I rewatched 1976 movies like Taxi Driver and All the President’s Men, danced that hot new dance, The Hustle, and listened to Top 40 hits like “Afternoon Delight” and “Jive Talking” (though I drew the line at the Bay City Rollers oeuvre – been there, done that).

 

And I had fun with the styles of the time – platform shoes as tall as the sky, hip-hugger jeans and body suits (a garment suspiciously similar to a toddler’s “onesie,” snaps and all), and bright, bold colors and ridiculous patterns that defy description.

Daisies, trellises, and rhododendrons, oh my!

And, of course, the Bicentennial.

 

Celebrations of America’s 200^th birthday were everywhere. Flags and floats, parades and puzzles and a slew of products slathered in red, white, and blue and on sale at the local Woolworths. TV’s “Bicentennial Minute,” gave us 60-seconds of Revolutionary War history broadcast during episodes of The Waltons, Hawaii 5-0, and that new sitcom, Laverne & Shirley.

There were reenactments too. Most memorable for me was when my whole family trucked up to Lincoln Plaza on a frigid January day to watch a crew of reenactors pretending to be Henry Knox and his men march by, transporting British cannons captured at Fort Ticonderoga to Boston. 

 

My sister and me, January 1976,
the best dressed dames at the reenactment

I weave a lot of the above into My Bicentennial to give Deidre’s world texture, authenticity, and a historical twist, but I never bog down the narrative with the details. I keep the story focused on Deidre and her journey, the tale of a girl who believes she can fix her problems and find happiness simply by changing how she looks. A theme relevant to any high school kid, in any time period.

 

One thing I discovered during my long, strange trip to the 1970s – I like writing young adult characters. I like crafting stories of teens struggling to understand themselves and their world and even fighting to fix it. Their fight to make their voices heard is the driving force behind my next book, The Nascent Bloom: Book 1 Caught, a YA sci-fi suspense that kicks off a new series.

 

I’ll have more on The Nascent Bloom next month, but I’ll leave you now with a health update: nearly 3 years after my cancer diagnosis, I’m doing well. I’ve heard the debate over saying I have cancer or I had cancer when talking about that bastard of a disease. I prefer the term living with cancer. As in, I’m not letting it stop me or even slow me down.

I’m living. And creating. Writing amazing worlds, whether past, present, or in a galaxy far, far away. Writing action scenes and quiet moments and feisty gals battling bad guys and bantering with good guys as they grow and learn and finally figure out who they are.

 

I hope you’ll join me on this adventure.

Evie Kelley scribbles angsty Young Adult Sci-Fi and stories set in the era of mood rings, platform shoes and the eternal debate of who’s cuter, Starsky or Hutch. She also writes WWII-set historical suspense and romantic time travel adventures as Janet Raye Stevens. Find Evie Kelley's Books