Black Ice Backstory

Hi everyone,

I've been getting a lot of questions about my new YA book, Black Ice. I'm so glad you're looking forward to it! This will be my first published book not set in the Hush, Hush world, and while both stories have many similarities, I've enjoyed trying something new and giving these characters, Jude and Britt, a chance to have their story told.

I had the idea to write Black Ice while I was on tour for Crescendo, but I knew it would take time to get to it—I had to finish writing the Hush, Hush series first.

Black Ice is about a girl, Britt, who backpacks the Teton Range over spring break of her senior year of high school, but things go terribly wrong. My own family moved to Pocatello, Idaho my senior year, where it was tradition to go on a big senior trip with friends over spring break. Most of these trips were planned a year in advance. Since I was the new girl, I got stuck planning a spring break vacation to Targhee National Forest with my family. As you can imagine, at eighteen, I was thrilled about this. 

For better or worse, I came down with an illness at the last minute and had to stay home alone, where I watched a marathon of horror movies. One in particular was about a woman who is abducted by a man and taken to a cabin in the woods. Actually, it's worse than that. The woman must seduce her captor to win her freedom--and he's not just any man, he has a part-robotic face, which, as I recall, he acquired after an accident when doctors tried to repair his damaged facial structure. I think I saw the movie on Lifetime, if that sheds any light.  Anyway, the robot-man is is afraid of the water, and in the end, the woman has to fake her own drowning to escape. Yikes! 

As you can imagine, watching this movie while I was home alone was quite terrifying. I've never forgotten it, and still occasionally have nightmares about it. I'm hoping to recapture that creepy, unsettling mood in Black Ice, while also weaving in an intriguing romance. So, yes. There will be one very scary man, and one man who makes our blood race...

Like Hush, Hush, the inspiration behind Black Ice comes from my own experiences during my teen years.

xo
Becca