YOU GUYS. I recently read a debut novel by A.N. Willis called The Corridor. (Read my 5 Star review here) I then immediately and ridiculously fell in love with the story and was desperate for the sequel to come out. And guess what?
Today is RELEASE DAY of Book #2, The Thirteenth World!
To celebrate, I’ve asked A.N. Willis to write a guest post giving us more insight on her inspirations for the book. Read her post below and then stick around for my review!
Thank you so much Cheyanne for inviting me to write a guest post! I’m very excited to celebrate the release of THE THIRTEENTH WORLD, the sequel to THE CORRIDOR and the completion of Stel Alaster’s story.
In this YA science fiction series, Stel has the power to travel between twelve parallel universes. She also has a mysterious tie to the Corridor, a portal that threatens to destroy Stel’s multiverse. There are lots of big reveals in THE THIRTEENTH WORLD about Stel’s origins and her connection to the Corridor. In that vein, I thought I’d reveal some behind-the-scenes secrets about where I got the idea for this series in the first place!
I love that, as a writer, ideas can come from anywhere or anything. Sometimes it’s inspiration from a favorite book or TV series that you enjoyed growing up. For THE CORRIDOR, some of my big influences were Stephen King’s DARK TOWER series and his book THE TALISMAN, all of which deal with parallel universes (and are incredible reads!) Other sources of inspiration were the 1990s TV shows Sliders, Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Love my Star Trek.
The real spark for the Corridor series, though, was a dream that I had. In my dream, a girl uses her secret ability to travel between universes to escape from her everyday life. But one day she’s caught—gasp!—by a woman running from the police who forces the girl to help her get away. When I woke up, I immediately came up with the characters of Stel and Ana, and the idea for a portal called the Corridor that links two Earths. But I had no idea how it would all fit together. I spent that entire day fleshing out a rough outline with all my ideas, but didn’t come back to it for about six months (while I worked on some other writing projects). When I finally started the first draft, the story kept evolving. It took lots of revisions (over years!) both with writer friends’ help and with Alloy Entertainment’s fantastic editors, to bring the whole story to where it is now.
There are some other awesome YA parallel universe stories out there (PARALLEL and THOUSAND PIECES OF YOU are a couple of my faves), so I have to think I’m not alone with my multiverse pop-culture obsession!
It’s hard to believe that Stel’s story is now finished and out in the world for you to read. I hope you enjoy it!
About the Author
A.N. Willis writes YA–sometimes sci-fi, sometimes supernatural, always with heavy doses of action and romance. Her first novel, THE CORRIDOR, was inspired by her love of sci-fi TV shows growing up. She spent too many late nights in high school watching reruns, resulting in a possibly unhealthy obsession with yellow-eyed androids, renegade FBI agents, and wormholes to distant galaxies. When she’s not writing, she’s reading the latest from Stephen King, John Green, Donna Tartt–or anything YA. She feels at home wherever she can see the mountains.
About the Books
Stel Alaster has never known life without the Corridor. It appeared suddenly seventeen years ago, the only portal to a parallel version of our world—Second Earth. Everyone on First Earth fears Mods, the genetically modified Second Earthers who built the Corridor. They are too smart, too strong, and have powers that can’t be controlled. Any Mod found on First Earth is branded, then detained in the Corridor’s research labs.
Only Stel has a dangerous secret. She has a power, too: She can open a portal to Second Earth . . . and several other parallel universes she’s discovered. If anyone ever finds out, she’ll be imprisoned, no better than a Mod or common lab rat.
But when the Corridor starts to fail, emitting erratic bursts of energy that could destroy First Earth, Stel must risk everything to save the people and world she loves. With the help of an escaped Mod and an infuriatingly arrogant boy from a third universe, Stel sets out to unravel the mysteries of the Corridor and stabilize it before it’s too late. The fate of every world lies in the balance. . . .
Time is running out for Stel Alaster. The Corridor, the only portal between First and Second Earth, is failing and the barriers between all twelve worlds are thinning. Using her unique ability to travel through the multiverse, Stel sets out to save the Corridor . . . and ends up discovering a mysterious new world.
In the sequel to The Corridor, will the thirteenth world hold the key to the Corridor’s secrets? Or will the portal implode and take every last universe down with it?
by Hugh Howey
and was excited for this new series. Sand is about a life in the future, where the world we know it is covered in nothing but sand. Sand divers don special suits and dive into the sand, pulling up relics and artifacts from the old world below. Life is hard and rough and awful. My favorite part of the entire book was when Palmer dove down to a skyscraper of an old city and got to walk around inside. I really wish the rest of the story dealt with them exploring the old world, but alas, Hugh Howey had another plan.