LAUREN DESTEFANO

When I was 11 or 12, I was really bored with everything on my summer reading list. It was all happy, middle-grade kinds of books. I was getting frustrated, because I liked to read. My mother went to the library and got me a copy of 'The Other Side of Midnight' by Sidney Sheldon. It was my first adult book.

I realized how wonderful YA is and how I really wanted to write something that created that level of intrigue.

Every generation has a macabre notion that wars, government prohibition, natural disasters or mankind itself could be the downfall of society and the world as a whole.

When I am writing anything in general, I just want to tell the story that exists in my head; I don't try to write a parable or make a point.

'Dystopian,' by definition, promises a darker story.

Most dystopian, classic and contemporary, paints a future world that puts a twist on present society - a future world that could plausibly happen.

It was my fifth grade teacher who introduced the idea that writing could be more than a hobby for me.

When I was growing up, there actually wasn't a lot of YA literature as it exists today. Most of the YA that I read was from the '60s and '70s, older than me.

There's a hazy smile on her lips that won't go away, and her hair is a mess. It's like a brushfire filled with casualties.

The thing about hope is that it doesn't go away even when it serves no purpose.

Fall has always been my favorite season. The time when everything bursts with its last beauty, as if nature had been saving up all year for the grand finale.

In another time, in another place, I wonder who they might have been.

There's a world out there that nobody has bothered to promise her.

I start trying to stay unconscious. The problem with this is that no amount of willpower can change the reality.

There are so many of us, so many girls. The world wants us for our wombs or our bodies, or it doesn't want us at all.

There is a dark place calling to me, but I will not go just yet. I know I can't return from it.

Vaughn is talking about the heat, and his voice is so excited that it breaks into whispers at times. He loves his madness the way a bird loves the sky.

I nod like I'm not at all unnerved by this new cold side to him. Not cruel like his father. Not warm like the husband who sought me out on quiet nights. Something in between. This Linden has never woven his fingers through mine, never chosen me from a line of weary Gathered girls, never said he loved me in a myriad of coloured lights. We are nothing to each other.

Do you know what my father used to say?" I ask her. "He used to say that songs had a heart. A crescendo that can make all your blood rush from your head to your toes.

Don't you miss it?" I say. "Being free." He laughs.

There's a sort of dead passion in him. A spark that, had he more years to live, would be a wildfire.

I never wanted to live forever," she says. "I just wanted enough time.

Momentum,' She repeats. 'You can't just stand there if you want something to fly. You have to run.

We can change so many times in our lives. We're born into a family, and it's the only life we can imagine, but it changes. Buildings collapse. Fires burn. And the next second we're someplace else entirely, going through different motions and trying to keep up with this new person we've become.

I liked just being with you. I liked the way you breathed when you were asleep. I liked when you took the champagne glass from my hand. I liked how your fingers were always too long for your gloves.