Unsure if the new Indestructibles spinoff will be for you? Here's a quick Q and A about Echo and the Sea and how ti fits into the Indestructiverse: 

​Q: What sets Echo and the Sea apart from the Indestructibles series?
 
A: Well, while it takes place in the same universe as the Indestructibles – I’ve started calling it the “Indestructiverse,” something a fellow author came up with a few months back that I thought was perfect – Echo’s story is its own arc. Where the Indestructibles is a lot more comic book sci-fi, Echo is more fantasy, with a lot of myth and magic involved in her world.
 
Q: What made you want to break from the Indestructibles?
 
A: First I should mention – I’m definitely continuing the Indestructibles. The fifth book in that series is in the works already! But Echo’s tale is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. I’ve had this particular book plotted out in my mind since not long after my first book came out, but when the Indestructibles kicked off, I had to give those characters my full attention. When Like a Comet came out last year, I saw a window to explore another corner of the Indestructiverse and write about some new characters, themes, and adventures.
 
Q: Is Echo and the Sea the same reading level as the Indestructibles?
 
A: Similar. It has some darker themes and a little bit more violence—for readers of the series, Echo is more similar in tone to the Entropy of Everything than the original book. A bit more mature with some harsher consequences for the characters, but I think readers of the series will find it to be a similar vibe and tone. The characters are a bit older at the start, too.
 
Q: Where does it take place in the Indestructiverse timeline?
 
A: Echo’s story starts right around the time the first Indestructibles book takes place, almost simultaneously.
 
Q: Why take the Indestructiverse to Atlantis?
 
A: The idea actually came out of a game that some of my writer friends and I play—I call it the “if they ever let me write” game, where we throw out script or story treatments for characters we’d love to work on. I’d had a running joke about what I’d do if I got to write someone like Aquaman or Namor, and in the end, what I realized was I wanted to do was something original: an Atlantis on the verge of war with the surface world, a swashbuckling high-seas adventure, and a young woman caught up in a life-changing adventure.
 
Q: You’ve got a lot of mythological references in there.
 
A: I do. I love mythology. I read Edith Hamilton’s Mythology until the cover fell off as a kid, and love stories like Neil Gaiman’s American Gods or Sandman. Echo’s story gave me a chance to delve into those more fantastical elements that I’m not able to work with in the main series.
 

Just a quick update: the Indestructibles spinoff, "Echo and the Sea," a full-length novel, is now live on Kindle, iBook, and Kobo. The paperback is currently in process and should be available in a few days. I'll keep you posted! Here's the full description: 

Echo always knew the ocean was in her blood.

It isn’t until the day tragedy struck, though, that her ordinary life in a New England seaside town is torn apart and she finds out just how much her fate is tied to the sea. Monsters, real monsters, crawl out of the ocean looking for her, and suddenly she’s swept up in a swashbuckling tale of magic, myth, war, and fear.

Joined by her best friend Yuri, the smuggler and magician Barnabas Coy, and Artem, the last son of the Amazons and greatest swordsman on the Seven Seas, Echo will face were-sharks and leviathans, assassins and mermaids, and find out that her ultimate destiny lies at the bottom of the ocean, with the lost city of Atlantis, and the war that city is planning to start with the surface world.

Which side will she choose? What does Atlantis mean to Echo’s past, and for her future? Will she take her place among the other myths and legends of the sea and become the hero she’s meant to be?

Hi, everyone. I'm extremely excited to announce that the first Indestructibles spinoff book, "Echo and the Sea," is launching this week. The Kindle edition is already available for pre-order here, and I'll have more information about the paperback, Nook, and other editions very soon (Kindle, as I've mentioned in the past, always seems to be the first to become available). 

I'm really proud of this book--it's a story I've wanted to tell since the first Indestructibles book, about a group of adventurers who exist in the same shared universe--the "Indestructiverse," as people have been calling it, which I have totally stolen--on a very different kind of epic adventure. 

Join Echo, the daughter of Atlantis, as she learns just how weird, mystical, and dangerous the hidden world of the ocean can be, alongside her best friend Yuri, the smuggler and sea-mage Barnabas Coy, and Artem, the last son of the Amazons and greatest swordsman on the Seven Seas. They'll fight were-sharks, assassins, sea monsters, and even a mermaid or two along the way. 

I've been trying to find the time between Indestructibles books to sit down and tell Echo's story for a few years now--I'm so psyched to see this story finally appear on the page. 

If you're a Kindle reader, the book will be available on Friday (June 16th, 2017). The paperback is coming very soon, just finalizing a few steps, and it'll become available on Nook, iBook, and Kobo shortly after as well. I hope you'll join me on this swashbuckling adventure of magic and myth. 

I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but over the past year or so I've been working with the development team, through the Salem Athenaeum and Salem YMCA, on a project called Stories of Substance. The idea was to craft a stage play using young actors, based on true stories of addiction and recovery, to try to educate young people of the dangers of opioid addiction early. The hope is to intervene and educate early and build a better sense of empathy so more people can avoid addiction if they can, and escape it if they haven't. 

The play was performed Monday night (June 5th) in Salem, a sort of proof of concept so that it can eventually be made available to schools and other programs for their students to perform and watch. The cast was phenomenal. So proud of the work they've done. 

I'm credited as the playwright, but it feels a little strange--I might have put the words down on paper, but it was a collaborative of writers who worked together to generate the concepts we needed and structure we wanted, and almost every line is inspired by true stories told to us by brave young people who were wiling to share their own stories of substance abuse and recovery with us. 

Boston's WBUR's the Artery ran a story on it this morning. Hopefully this will help get the word out to schools who need this sort of programming to reach their students and build better understanding. 

Teachers or other educators: if you're interested in learning more, contact me privately through the Contact link at the top of this page. I can put you in touch with the right people to get more information to you.