Always there - North Carolina

Raven Rock State Park

I moved to North Carolina in my twenties, not long after I graduated from college. I've lived here since, and I completely love my adopted state. (Well, okay, maybe I don't like our state government so much.)

Anyway, I enjoy the people, the beaches, the mountains, the history, the weather, etc. There is just so much about North Carolina that I find interesting. This state bristles with stories waiting to be told, which is why I've set all of my stories here.

• The Whisper Falls series takes place in and near Raleigh/Wake County, both 18th- and 21st-centuries.
• The I Wish series is set in Magnolia Springs, a fictional town patterned after the real town of Elon. Magnolia Springs lies midway between Raleigh and Wilmington.
• For The Possibility of Somewhere, I dreamed up Bayville, a town near the Crystal Coast beaches.
• Fade To Us (releasing in Feb 2018) will take place in the heart of North Carolina, not far from Raleigh and Raven Rock State Park.

Occasionally, my characters will travel to other exciting places, but they will always call North Carolina home.

Always there - no violence

I rarely read books with violence in them. Mystery novels are about the only ones. Even then, I prefer books where the violence or murder happens before the book begins, and I want justice by the end.

As an author, I don't like to write violence, but I have on a few occasions, when I felt like I had no choice in order to tell the story. I guess this post would be better titled "Almost never there - graphic violence."

Whisper Falls has instances of physical abuse during the series. The 18th-century half of the first book shows the plight of female indentured servants. I couldn't have given a true account without letting the reader see the brutality that haunted their lives. Our hero has been the victim of bullying. It's hard for either of those plot points to be authentic without alluding to some violence. In book 3, the villain is again the cause of abuse to both the hero and heroine, although less is visible on the page. The reader knows it's happened, but the details are not graphic.  In this series, justice prevails.

In The Possibility of Somewhere (writing as Julia Day), the realities of the heroine's life are fairly harsh. Physical abuse lurks constantly as a possibility. The heroine, Eden, is prepared to take care of herself, though. "The Mundys of the world believed in a sunshiny legal system... [but] I knew better. The Edens of the world grew up in trailer parks, and they had different rules. Justice changed depending on where we lived."

So, perhaps instead of pledging to never write violence, I'll promise instead to limit it to the minimum needed to serve the story, to describe what's happening without gratuitous details, and to see that the criminals (perpetrators) reap punishment for what they've done.

Whisper Falls question - Why 2016?

Why did you set the book in 2016?


In the Whisper Falls series, the waterfall requires that the calendar date must be the same in either century. When Mark and Susanna meet, it is May 30th in Susanna's world and in Mark's world. Over the course of the series, Whisper Falls allows the year to change in the past, but the date must always be the same.

The day of the week is also important, especially in Susanna's world. Her weekly schedule was fairly rigid. Wednesday is baking day. Sunday is the Sabbath. As I wrote the first book, I had to stay aware of the weekday, for Susanna's sake.


Because I had to remain conscious of dates and weekdays, I decided it would just be easier if Mark had the same calendar as Susanna. I looked in wikipedia for a modern year whose calendar matched 1796.

As it turns out, 1796 was a leap-year that started on a Friday. That leap-year part narrowed the options dramatically. For the 21st century, my choices were 2016 or 2044. So, 2016 won!

Setting the modern-year of the book ahead did require some additional care as I wrote. Technology is changing constantly. Would we still have "smart-phones" in 2016? Would the NC legislature make new laws for how schools operated? Might a fire or catastrophic weather event alter Raleigh or Umstead Park?

I was willing to take those risks.

Now that I've written the other two books, I'm really glad I made the decision to have a matched calendar for book one.  For the later two books, I had many years to juggle. Book 2 is still in 2016, but the past includes 1796 through 1801. Book 3 takes place in 2017 while the past includes 1801 through 1805. It was difficult to keep up with multiple sets of weekdays/calendars for Books 2 & 3.

For instance, in book three, I had to rewrite a large portion of the middle of the book when I realized that I'd set Mark's prom on a major religious holiday in 2017--all because I was paying attention to the weekday in the past and not the weekday in the present.

So there you go. The simple answer is: it made book one easier to write.

[I often get questions about the Whisper Falls series.  I'll answer each of the most commonly asked questions in a separate blog post. You can navigate to them in the faq on my website too.]

Whisper Falls Question - How does the waterfall work?

How does the waterfall work? What are the time travel rules?

The simple explanation: The waterfall serves as an express elevator between years.

I based "time travel" in this series on an ancient theory of time known as spiral time.  In this theory, time is not linear. It does not move in a straight line (linear). It spirals--like a coil, spring, or "slinky."

Another way to model time in the Whisper Falls series is to view it like a round building. Each floor represents one year. (Or--each floor is 365 days in circumference.) In the first book, there are 220 floors stacked on top of each other. The bottom floor is 1796. The top floor is 2016. 

There are 6 rules that the waterfall follows to allow Mark and Susanna to travel through time.

1. Travel always occurs on the same day between centuries. If it's July 4th in 1796, then it is July 4th in 2016. You can think of it as an "express elevator" in the round building metaphor. If you get on the December 9th elevator in the 19th century, then you get off on December 9th in the 21st century. 
2. Time progresses at the same pace between centuries.  If Mark visits 1796 and stays for 24 hours, then 2016 has moved forward 24 hours as well. For instance, if Mark traveled to the past on June 2nd and stayed one full day, then he'll need to ride the June 3rd "express elevator" back up to 2016.
3. Present-day is always the destination of any travel to the future. Susanna cannot choose to travel to a future year other than Mark's world. In the round building metaphor, Mark's life always awaits them on the top floor. For books 1 and 2, that is 2016. For book 3, it's 2017. The express elevator only travels up to the 21st century.
4. The waterfall allows Susanna to suggest a year in the past that she wants to travel to. Susanna can ask the waterfall to change the "bottom floor" to years later than 1796.  For instance, if she asked to go to 1800, Whisper Falls could take her there.
5. The waterfall can refuse to take Susanna somewhere if it deems that too dangerous. If she wanted to visit the American Civil War, for example, the waterfall would've refused.
6. Once Susanna has visited a date in the past, she can't go further back.  She can only ask for dates  that are moving forward.  For instance, if she visits October 1, 1800, she may never again travel to a time that is earlier than October 1, 1800.

[I often get questions about the Whisper Falls series.  I'll answer each of the most commonly asked questions in a separate blog post. You can navigate to them in the FAQ on my website too.]

Whisper Falls question - Why is Mark so nice?

Why is Mark so nice[, boring, immature, ordinary]?

Many reviewers have noted in their reviews that Mark is not a typical YA hero. He's not a super-hero, a super-jock, a super-geek, a super-bad-boy, or a super-star.

Mark is a nice, ordinary teen guy. He'll change, of course. Over the three book series, he'll mature, particularly toward the end of the final book. But I had to create him as average because that is exactly what Susanna needed.

A super-anything guy wouldn't have been interested in Susanna, and she would've been put off by him. She needed someone who was kind, polite, and curious. She had to be paired with someone who, when the situation called for it, was able to draw upon his reserves of strength and become more than he could've possibly imagined. Mark fits that description.

Here are some things to keep in mind about the hero of  the Whisper Falls series.

1. It isn't fair to compare Mark to Susanna. I doubt there are many teens in contemporary America who could ever be as mature as Susanna. She was forced into servitude at ten. She's been a working adult for 8 years. No modern teens biking through Umstead Park USA could approach her maturity.  If you must compare Mark, compare him to other guys his age.
2. Susanna is a good judge of character. She sees into the core of Mark's being and recognizes his innate decency. Sure, he makes mistakes. He regresses when he gets back to school and starts hanging out with his classmates. But he's still just a genuinely good guy waiting for the right catalyst to draw the greatness out of him. Susanna will be that catalyst--eventually.
3. Mark's growth is slow and steady. He's a late bloomer. Until he met Susanna, he had little reason to be amazing. Although he did live through bullying in middle school, he's had no real opportunities to excel at anything that matters...until Susanna. Over the length of the trilogy, Mark will mature. He'll cycle through periods of setbacks and growth. Yet, by the end of the series, he will be so much more than when the story began.

I wrote Mark because teens should know that it's fine to be (so-called) average. They don't have to be the best at any of the things that society (or high school) deems important. All they have to be is good people; the rest will follow. I hope they see themselves in Mark, a character who demonstrates that ordinary people are capable of extraordinary things.


[I often get questions about the Whisper Falls series.  I'll answer each of the most commonly asked questions in a separate blog post. You can navigate to them in the FAQ on my website too.]

Whisper Falls Question - What subgenre do you write?

What subgenre do you write?What subgenre is the Whisper Falls series? 

The Whisper Falls series is magical realism.  In the magical realism subgenre, the main story is realistic in every way except one. There is always one magical element.

For instance, a story could be contemporary in every way except the hero can read minds. A historical novel can be completely immersed in 19th century South America, only the heroine can see glimpses of the future in Europe.

The point of magical realism is not the supernatural element. It is about how the characters react to, live with, or hide that extraordinary circumstance.

In the Whisper Falls series, the magical element is the ability to travel between present-day and a different year in the past. Mark and Susanna (the main characters of Whisper Falls) encounter a waterfall who permits them to travel between Mark's life (in 2016) and Susanna's life (in 1796). Otherwise, their stories are realistic for the time in which they ordinarily live.

Some readers might assume that this supernatural element makes this a time-travel book. I think it is better to consider this series to be magical realism with time-travel elements.

The point of Whisper Falls is not the time-travel, it is how Mark and Susanna react to and deal with the fact that the distance between their homes is measured in years, not miles.

[I often get questions about the Whisper Falls series.  I'll answer each of the most commonly asked questions in a separate blog post. You can navigate to them from my website, too.]

Whisper Falls Question - Is Neuse Academy fact or fiction?

Is Neuse Academy fact or fiction? Did you use a specific private school in the Raleigh area for Mark’s high school?

Neuse Academy, the fictional private high school that Mark attends, is a composite of three local private schools.

There were several attributes that I wanted for Neuse Academy. I couldn’t find one school in the area that had all of those attributes, so I visited the web sites of several local private schools and found 3 that seemed to have the academics, activities, sports, extracurriculars, and atmosphere that I wanted for Mark. He gets the best of the best in his school.



[I often get questions about the Whisper Falls series.  I'll answer each of the most commonly asked questions in a separate blog post. You can navigate to them from my website, too.]