Emmy Laybourne - Sky on Fire

Thanks to my agent, Susanna Einstein, for her support and excellent advice. I also feel lucky to have Stephen Moore, Kim Stenton, and Sandy Hodgman on my team.

Rich Deas, you have a great vision for the art of this series.Thank you. And thanks to KB, April, and Katie, for designing the jackets and interior elements of the books. Karen Frangipane and Ksenia Winicki, thank you for helping to keep Monument 14 at play in the digital realm.

The series owes much of its success to the efforts of Angus Killick, Elizabeth Fithian, Alison Verost, Kate Lied, Kathryn Little, and the rest of the excellent Macmillan Children’s Group marketing and publicity departments. I have to say that touring with Allison, Kate, Elizabeth Mason, and Courtney Griffin was so outrageously fun, it’s hard to believe it was legal. Was it all legal? I’m not entirely sure. That stuff in Pensacola was pretty dodgy.

I’d like to thank composer Paul Libman for writing music for the songs ‘Get Up’ and ‘Leave Me Be,’ both of which you can hear at emmylaybourne.com. Thanks to Ava Anderson for rocking the vocals and to Uri Djemal at MadPan studios for recording and engineering these songs so beautifully.

Mother/son critical feedback team Kristin and Andrew Bair worked their magic on Sky on Fire . Thank you both. I owe Elizabeth Harriman big-time for her help with the scene where Batiste and his mother are reunited. And thanks to Rita Arens and Scott Taylor for being excellent beta readers.

To Jen Pattap and Jeanette and Anthony LoPinto of the Threefold café – you guys have fed me, heart and soul, since I started on this series. Thank you.

My gratitude to my parents goes so far beyond what I could ever fit on this page. The same thing goes for how I feel about my husband, Greg, and our two children, Elinor and Rex. A writer should be able to express these things, but I find myself overcome when I think about how fortunate I am to have you fine people to love.

Will Niko and Dean manage to rescue Josie?

Find out in May 2014…

IKEEP TO MYSELF.

The Josie who took care of everyone – that girl’s dead.

She was killed in an Aspen grove off the highway somewhere between Monument and Denver.

She was killed along with a deranged soldier.

I killed her when I killed the solider.

I am a girl with a rage inside that threatens to boil over every minute of the day.

All of us here are O types who were exposed. Some of us have been tipped into madness by the compounds.

It depends on how long you were exposed.

I was out there for more than two days.

I work on self-control every moment of the waking day. I have to be on guard against my own blood.

I see others allow it to take over. Fights erupt. Tempers flare over an unfriendly glance, a stubbed toe, a bad dream.

If someone gets really out of control, the guards lock them in the study rooms at Hawthorn.

If someone really, really loses it, sometimes the guards take them and they don’t come back.

It makes it worse that we’re just a little stronger than we were before. Tougher. The cycle of healing, a bit speeded up. Not so much you notice, but old ladies not using their canes. Pierced ear holes are closing up. More energy in the cells, is what the inmates say.

They call it the O advantage.

It’s our only one.

The Type O Containment camp at Old Mizzou is a prison, not a shelter. The blisterers (Type A), the paranoid freaks (Type AB) and the people who’ve been made sterile (Type B), are at refugee camps where there’s more freedom. More food. Clean clothes. TV.

But all of the people here at Mizzou have Type O blood and were exposed to the compounds. So the authorities decided we are all murderers (probably true – certainly is for me) and penned us in together. Even the little kids.

‘Yes, Mario,’ I say when he starts to grumble about how wrong it all is. ‘It’s unjust. Goes against our rights.’

But every time my fingers itch to bash some idiot’s nose in, I suspect they were right to do it.

I remember my Gram talking about fevers. I remember her sitting on the edge of my bed, putting a clammy washcloth on my forehead.

‘Gram,’ I cried. ‘My head hurts.’

I didn’t say it aloud, but I was begging for Tylenol and she knew it.

‘I could give you something, my baby girl, but then your fever would die, and fever’s what makes you strong.’

I would cry, the tears themselves seemed boiling hot.

‘A fever comes in and burns up your baby fat. It burns up the waste in your tissue. It moves you along in your development. Fevers are very good, darlin’. They make you invincible.’

Did I feel stronger afterwards? I did. I felt clean. I felt tough.

Gram made me feel like I was good through and through and I would never do wrong.

I’m glad Gram is long dead. I wouldn’t want her to know me now. Because the O rage comes on like a fever but it burns up your soul. It makes your body strong and lulls your mind to sleep with bloodlust and you can recover from that. But after you kill, your soul buckles. It won’t lie flat; like a warped frying pan, it sits on the burner and rattles, uneven.

You can never breathe the same way again because every breath is one you stole from corpses rotting in the ground, unburied, where you left them to bleed out.

As I understand it, the National Government brought us here, but the State of Missouri is running the camp. The locals don’t want us released, but don’t care to pay for us to be properly cared for either. And the National Government has been slow to provide for us.

The result: not enough guards, not enough food, not enough space, not enough medical care. And they won’t let us out.

There were petitions circulating, when we first arrived. People trying to get the stable Os separated from the criminal ones. But the guards made life hard for the signature-gatherers.

Now we’re all just waiting it out.

Every week a rumour drifts through the camp that we’re to be released.

The hope is dangerous to me. It makes me care.

What inspired you to write the Monument 14 books?

I think the seed of the Monument 14 series comes from two of my great loves: survivalist planning and superstores! I love to wander the aisles of superstores, checking out the goods and seeing how I would set up camp in the store, if I had to. And I’ve always enjoyed ‘worst case scenario’ thinking. It’s the worrier in me, but I’m always thinking of how I will save my kids’ lives if we’re in some terrible crisis…

I put those together and there was the central idea of Monument 14 – fourteen kids stranded in a superstore while civilization collapses.

What would be your dream cast if the Monument 14 books were made into movies?

I can happily, happily name a few names, but remember that within a year or two my suggestions may be irrelevant because young actors age themselves out of roles… With that in mind, here are my dream choices for some of the lead roles:

Dean – Graham Phillips ( The Good Wife – he’s so wonderful in it!)

Astrid – Brigit Mendler ( Good Luck Charlie – she’s ready for her first dramatic role)

Jake – Josh Hutcherson (a little movie we know as The Hunger Games !)

Niko – Jake T. Austin ( The Wizards of Waverly Place – I know, a silly show, but I think Jake has the chops!)