Diane’s Book Blog: THE SEVENTH by S.D. Wasley: Charater Profile & Giveaway

THE SEVENTH

S.D. Wasley

YA Paranormal Romance. Suspense

Released Jan. 23^rd / Evernight Teen / 69.5k

~Editor's Pick~

Sixteen year old Mimi Alston has company. No less than three ghosts follow her around, and only she can see them. At her last school, she was known as the girl with imaginary friends. Now Mimi’s starting fresh in a new town, where she’s determined to make some real friends and fit in for once. She’s ready for a normal life...except Mimi never counted on her fascination with troubled goth-boy, Drew.

When she’s invited to join the elite Gifted Program, Mimi discovers she’s not the only one at the school with an unusual talent. Maybe being normal isn’t even an option anymore.

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Excerpt

“Mimi, would you mind telling us about yourself now?”

I swallowed again. How did she expect me to make a coherent sentence after what I’d just heard? If there was another Mimi, a logical one that could step outside of my own body and look at the situation objectively, she would say: Get a grip, Miette. This is bullshit. These people are either lunatics … or they are playing the cruellest prank in history. But the problem was, logical Mimi had gone AWOL. I believed these kids. Deep in my heart, I knew without a shadow of a doubt they were telling the truth and––whether what they were describing was real or not––they believed in their gifts as fact. Doctor Mayer would have a field day with them.

I heard myself launch into speech and marvelled at how unlike myself I sounded. I heard a Mimi I hadn’t heard in years: excited, happy and relieved. “I’m Mimi Alston. I come from Perry Ridge. I have one brother, who’s much older. He lives in Canada with his wife. I love drawing, especially portraits. I had a nickname at my old school. Mimi-and-her-imaginary-friends.” I couldn’t believe I was telling them this secret … a secret I had been so determined to keep that I’d actually been prepared to fake my whole personality, day in and day out, at this new school.

“It’s because I have company with me, pretty much all the time. Meet my ghosts, Hannah, Albert and Marvin.” I pointed at the chairs beside me and the other kids stared. Even Drew raised his head to look at me in amazement. “Hannah joined me when I was thirteen. She was a kitchen maid. She was nineteen, and she was pregnant with her boss’s child. She died having the baby. Albert joined me when I was fourteen. He was a soldier in World War II. He died on the stretcher after getting a serious shrapnel injury. And Marvin only joined me earlier this year. He was homeless after losing his house because of his gambling debts. He died of hypothermia during a cold snap.”

Patience’s eyes looked like horrified saucers as she stared at the empty chairs beside me. After a moment, Mona let out a shuddering breath and even contemptuous Cassie looked impressed. Gabe sat watching me curiously, as if he didn’t expect quite what he was seeing or hearing.

“You’re a Necromancer,” nodded Ms Deering.

“Necro … doesn’t that mean dead?” asked Mona.

“And mancy is magic, or conjuring,” affirmed Ms Deering. “Mimi calls the dead.”

“I call them?” I couldn’t help exclaiming. “I never called them! I don’t want them around!”

Ms Deering just smiled ruefully. “I don’t think you can help it. I didn’t mean you actively call them––I meant you bring them … attract them. You invite their spirits to make contact.”

“Why?” I asked.

“The million-dollar question,” Mona laughed shortly, dragging her eyes off the empty chairs beside me. “Why do any of us have these gifts?”

“Can you hear them?” Patience asked me, her face still terrified. Great. She was freaked out. Oh, well … at least she didn’t think I was crazy.

“Yes,” I said. “That’s how I know what happened to them.” My mind drifted towards some of the other things they’d said to me and I hastily changed my train of thought. “They used to talk more, but I started trying to ignore them so they stopped being so … chatty.”

Mona cackled at that. I decided I wouldn’t mention the medication I had been taking to help me “ignore” my ghosts. I could feel Drew still watching me, so I looked back at him. I badly wanted to ask him why he looked so stunned. I also wanted to ask him what his gift was. But I couldn’t form a sentence because his face was so painfully beautiful in that moment that I forgot to breathe and just stared.

“Drew,” Ms Deering said in a firm tone. “Please tell us about you.”

Drew snapped out of our little two-way staring contest and cast an angry look at Ms Deering before getting up and shouldering his satchel.

Author Bio

S.D. Wasley was born and raised in Perth, Western Australia.

She has been composing literary works since before she could write – at five years of age she announced her first poem in the kitchen, improv-style. Today, she lives in the Swan Valley wine region with her two daughters, surrounded by dogs, cats and chickens.

The Seventh is S.D. Wasley’s debut novel.

Character Introduction

Mimi – before she comes to Etherall Valley Prep

Miette Alston, known as Mimi, is sixteen years old. She lives with her mum and dad, and has a much older brother, who is married and living in Canada with his wife.

Mimi is slender and a little jealous of her best friend Mona’s curves! She has beautiful, long dark hair – her best feature, in her own opinion. Mimi is pale-skinned with grey eyes. Her nose is angular but not unpleasantly sharp and she has full lips that are naturally red, giving her the unusual appearance of a colour-touched black and white photo. She is naturally pretty, but beautiful when she smiles. She wears grey and black shirts with jeans because she doesn’t like to stick out.

Mimi is shy, but she wasn’t always like that. She was open and friendly all through her early years, with a love of art and talent for drawing. When she hit thirteen, Mimi’s bright, cheerful disposition changed dramatically. Mimi became withdrawn and jumpy. She developed claustrophobia, and became vague and abstracted. She often appeared to be staring at nothing or listening for sounds that weren’t there. Her parents took her to a psychiatrist and he diagnosed schizophrenia, prescribing daily medication. The meds help with her jumpiness but her previously good grades have suffered and Mimi seems to have lost her passion for art. Her creativity has ebbed.

Mimi hasn’t shown much interest in boys so far. She had some close friends in middle school but they drifted away as she changed, and she found herself all but friendless by the time she was fourteen. Some of the cattier kids at her school targeted her with low-level bullying – some name-calling and social snubbing. She was caught whispering to herself a few times and that prompted one of her former friends to nickname her Mimi-and-her-imaginary-friends.

Her lack of friends has given her plenty of opportunity to observe human behaviour, and she has a mature understanding of people, especially adolescents. Her grades have stabilised and she tries hard, but she still doesn’t achieve what came so naturally to her in the earlier years. Mimi doesn’t hate the kids who reject her. She wishes she wasn’t so lonely but she can accept that she is strange and others can’t handle that about her.

Mimi’s psychiatrist has recommended to her parents that she attend a small private school in the southern part of the county. After much discussion, and with the added incentive of an unpleasant job upheaval for Mr Alston, they have made the decision to move to Etherall Valley, where the new school is located. Although this is a big change for the Alstons, they are hopeful the new school will help Mimi’s confidence and that she might even make some friends. They are thrilled when, after just a week at the school, they are informed Mimi has been offered a place in the school’s gifted program. Could the bright, happy daughter they remember be returning?

Things are about to radically change for Mimi!