17 & Gone Blog Tour: Guest Post by Nova Ren Suma

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GUEST POST BY NOVA REN SUMA

Last year, when I was deep into writing 17 & Gone, I discovered an exciting new distraction and way to collect images that fascinated me: Pinterest. What started off as maybe one more thing to keep me from writing turned into a great source of inspiration, and my 17 & Gone inspiration board was born. I’d often write with the images up on my screen, staring at them in pauses between paragraphs. On each stop on this blog tour I’m highlighting one of the photos that spoke to me and helped me find my way through the darkness of writing this book.

This photograph by Brett Freestone left me feeling very unsettled. I felt like this scene is something my narrator, Lauren, would have caught in a flash, from out the corner of her eye. Then when she’d turn to be sure, the figure of the girl or girls she thought she saw would flicker and be gone.

Abby Sinclair. There at the intersection. I’m not saying she was there in the flesh with her thumb out and her hair wild in the wind and her bare knees purpled from cold—it didn’t start out that way. The first time I saw Abby, it was only a picture: the class photograph reproduced on her Missing poster.

—from 17 & Gone, page 8

In 17 & Gone, Abby Sinclair is the first missing girl my narrator, Lauren, discovers. She’s drawn in by her story and by an unspoken connection to this girl she’s never met, a connection she just can’t shake. My very first images of Abby looked a lot like this: dark and blurred around the edges, and needing to be flooded face-on with light. She’s the reason I started writing the book in the first place, to find out what happened to her.

For spotlights on more images from my 17 & Gone inspiration board on Pinterest, keep following this blog tour!

Blog tour schedule:

Monday, 3/18: Mundie Moms
Tuesday, 3/19: Confessions of a Readaholic
Wednesday, 3/20: The Compulsive Reader
Thursday, 3/21: The Mod Podge Bookshelf
Friday, 3/22: Anna Reads

Monday, 3/25: The Story Siren
Tuesday, 3/26: A Good Addiction
Wednesday, 3/27: Radiant Reads
Thursday, 3/28: Presenting Lenore
Friday, 3/29: Book Chic

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Seventeen-year-old Lauren is having visions of girls who have gone missing. And all these girls have just one thing in common—they are 17 and gone without a trace. As Lauren struggles to shake these waking nightmares, impossible questions demand urgent answers: Why are the girls speaking to Lauren? How can she help them? And . . . is she next? As Lauren searches for clues, everything begins to unravel, and when a brush with death lands her in the hospital, a shocking truth emerges, changing everything.