Between Wild and Ruin
by Jennifer G. Edelson
Genre: YA Paranormal Romance
Truth, like love, isn't always obvious.
Seventeen-year-old Ruby Brooks has never had a boyfriend. After moving to small-town La Luna, New Mexico following her mother’s untimely death, boys aren’t even on her radar. Ruby just wants to forget the last horrible year and blend in. But when she discovers an ancient pueblo ruin in the forest behind her house, and meets Ezra, a bitter recluse whose once-perfect face was destroyed in an accident he won’t talk about; Angel, La Luna’s handsome sheriff’s deputy, and Leo, a stranger who only appears near the ruin, Ruby finds herself teetering between love, mystery, and other worlds. What happened to Ezra’s face? And why is she so attracted to the one boy in town everyone despises? As Ruby unravels her own connections to both Ezra and the pueblo ruin, she’ll learn surfaces are deceiving. Especially in the heart of New Mexico, where spirits and legends aren’t always just campfire stories.
Set against a Northern New Mexico backdrop, Between Wild and Ruin is a young adult coming of age story that captures the wild and whimsical pulse of New Mexico through the eyes of teens Ruby Brooks, Angel Ruiz, and Ezra Lucero. The first book in the Wild and Ruin series, Between Wild and Ruin explores the time-tested credo ‘never judge a book by its cover’ through a paranormal lens, weaving Puebloan and Hispanic folklore and Southwest cultural narratives into tightly written, high-concept fiction ‘brimming with mystery, intrigue,’ and as Kirkus Reviews puts it, an “intriguing historical drama and an over-the top quadrangle romance.”
Book Excerpts:
After walking
through dense stands of pine trees, I follow the remnants of what may have been
a trail toward the top of the mountain. Higher up, the pines and junipers
dappling the mountainside grow taller, but there aren’t as many. As they thin,
small gusts of wind whistle through the forest, echoing through the trees.
Otherwise, the forest is completely silent.
Closer to the
top of the mountain, the rocky ground levels off and the land spreads across a
plateau below the mountain’s peak. Unlike the forest, the plateau is more like
a jungle, marked by thick hanging moss and clusters of tall, unidentifiable
conifers. Trees stand like sentries several rows deep. Beyond them, fallen logs
lie scattered among overgrown shrubs and boulders in circular bands like rings
on a tree. I walk through it all, making my way past thick brush into a
clearing.
Fresh sap and
damp earth assault my nose. Under bright sunlight, large, rough-cut slabs of
glittery rock blanket the otherwise bare field. Some lie stacked on top of each
other like the crumbling remains of a building. Awestruck, I circle the
structure, running my fingers over what looks like a ruin.
“Incredible, isn’t it?”
A voice behind me sends my heart
racing toward my throat. I jump, whipping around to find a young man leaning
casually against a pine near the clearing’s perimeter, looking off to his left
as though listening for something.
Even in the shade, his face glows.
He smiles, showing off teeth that gleam like snowflakes between perfect lips.
Hair as dark as Liddy’s French roast coffee falls around his face in unruly
waves. His features are angular but refined, and his high, rounded cheeks
soften the striking juxtaposition.
I blink, then blink again. Ruby.
I rub my eyes. You’re hallucinating. But he’s still there, staring at
me.
While I gawk, he pushes himself off
the tree. “Not many people make it up here.” He smiles broadly.
A soft, purple-hued halo circles his
golden irises, catching fire in the sunlight. They settle on me, and my heart
stops, completely paralyzed by his faultless storybook features.
I exhale, trying to swallow
inconspicuously. “It’s definitely a hike.”
“Who are you?”
“Who am I?” I sputter. “Who are
you?”
“Leo.” He grins.
“I’m Ruby.”
“Ruby.” My name rolls off his tongue
with a smooth “R” and a musical lilt. Somehow, he even manages to make it sound
appealing. “First time up?”
“Yes. We just moved to La Luna.”
“La Luna,” he repeats. “Welcome.”
“Thanks,” I mumble. Earth to Ruby, I mentally smack myself. Since when has any boy made you senseless?
“You okay?” He smiles like he knows
I’m not. Like he knows why I’m not. “Do you want to sit down? The
altitude can be a bitch if you’re not used to it.”
“No. I mean, yes, I’m fine. No, I
don’t want to sit down. You just really startled me. You should announce
yourself next time.”
“Next time?”
“Next time you sneak up on
somebody.”
Leo raises a perfect dark eyebrow.
“But then it wouldn’t be sneaking, would it?”
My cheeks flush, and I suddenly want
to drop through a hole in the ground. I choke out, “Ummm,” and something incoherent and then stare at my toes like
they hold the keys to my future.
My head hums as I stand up, brushing
pine needles and dirt from my jeans. Scratching at my ears, I toss my stumpy
charcoals into my backpack, wishing Mother Nature had it in her to grant me
just one more hour to sketch the ruin. Pre-twilight transforms the plateau into
a fairyland. I want to draw the ruin in shadows, but I’m afraid of looking more
like mountain lion meat than Ruby Brooks once twilight sets in.
Sunset turns the mountainside
golden, igniting the dried flora covering the forest floor. As I lean over to
collect an escapee drawing, a patch of crimson pine needles catches my
attention. The needles spread out in a piecemeal path that leads me toward a
maroon mess near the center of the ruin, to the rock Leo claimed was once an
altar. Against the drab ground, the patch looks like dried blood. I pick up a
pine needle, scratching at it, watching curiously as a crusty substance flakes
off its root, like rust crumbling between my fingers.
A faint metallic scent fills the
air, popping my imagination into overdrive. Turning in circles on the empty plateau,
I suddenly feel exposed, and maybe a little afraid of being something’s
dinner.
As I stare at the rock, the humming
grows louder, vibrating between the ruin’s crumbling walls. I paw at my ears,
then rub my eyes, waiting for my head to explode as my vision turns the forest
into blurry chunks of light and outlines. Off to the side, between the trees,
something moves. Startled, I whip around, squinting to see better.
In the shadows between two tall pines, I see my mother.
Already unnerved, I close my eyes,
trying to forget Daisy’s haunted forest stories. My mother died ten months ago.
It’s got to be the altitude. There’s no way she’s standing there like an
ephemeral stump near the ruins. Still, my mind takes off running, moving from ghosts, to
demons, to being sure I’m about to face down another mountain lion.
Shaky and suddenly mindful of Leo’s
story about Ottomundo, not to mention just about every news report about
mysterious animal attacks I’ve ever seen, I rush to my backpack. Quickly
gathering all my art materials, I turn toward the sloping hillside, refusing to
look back before running at breakneck speed down the mountain to the creek.
Writing Success?
Now that Between
Wild and Ruin is out in the world, I receive a lot of different questions
about my writing and the writing business in general. One of the most common questions I hear in
interview type settings is, “What do you think a successful writing career
looks like?” As in, what do I think makes a writer successful. And of all the
questions I’ve encountered, this one is probably the hardest for me to answer
on a personal level.
Every writer has their own ideas of what a successful
writing career looks like, so I definitely don’t think there’s a
one-size-fits-all model. But to complicate the issue, for me personally, it’s
gotten a lot more confusing, not less, as I’ve progressed in my writing career.
I’m not sure I even know how to define ‘success’ or what it looks like anymore.
Maybe because I never really thought of writing as a job to begin with. In my
mind, writing has always been more of a driving need or passion. Something I
have to do if I want to breathe. Not that I didn’t want a career in writing, or
never thought about publishing — because there’s nothing I’d love more than to
write, get paid, and survive on those proceeds alone — just that, that’s not
the part of writing that mattered the most to me.
I write because I love everything about the process. I
can’t not write. And for the longest time I thought that was enough to sustain
me. But after writing just for myself
for a long time, I also started to wonder whether I was actually a legit writer
if I wasn’t publishing. Once I got the ‘I can actually write’ part down,
success started feeling more like it was supposed to equal some kind of
recognition. At that point I sort of shifted from writing solely because I love
it, to writing because I love it and hoped other people would love it too. But
now that I’ve actually published and won awards, and still feel like a poser half the time, I’m back to reevaluating
what success means to me.
I’d like to continue to publish, and yes, I’d love to win
more awards and garner bigger name recognition. And I’d be lying if I said I
wouldn’t love if my writing flooded the coffers. But I’ve also discovered that
those aren’t the things that make me feel like a successful writer. The more I
write and ‘succeed’ visa vie any traditional barometer, the further away I
sometimes feel from my passion for it. Which makes it harder to just write,
which then affects the quality and honesty of my writing. It’s like an existential vicious circle.
So it’s complicated question that for me lacks a cut and
dry answer. And I think it’s also very individual. I can only speak for myself,
but since I haven’t figured it out yet, want I really want to tell people when
they ask is, “I have no freaking clue” and also “check back in a few
years.” Truthfully, I wish people would
just stop asking. I may never figure it out. But I’m not sure I need to; at a
fundamental level, my gut says I’m successful as long as I never stop writing.
Jennifer G. Edelson is a writer, trained artist, former attorney, pizza lover, and hard-core Bollywood fan. She has a BFA in Sculpture and a J.D. in law and has taught both creative writing and legal research and writing at several fine institutions, including the University of Minnesota. Originally a California native, she currently resides in Santa Fe, New Mexico with her husband, kids, and dog, Hubble after surviving twenty-plus years in the Minnesota tundra (but still considers Los Angeles, the Twin Cities, and Santa Fe all home). Other than writing, Jennifer loves hiking, traveling, Albert Camus, Dr. Seuss, dark chocolate, drinking copious amounts of coffee, exploring mysterious places, and meeting new people—if you’re human (or otherwise), odds are she’ll probably love you.
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