January 7, 2021
Collision Post Four
Welcome to Collision Day Four!
Week 1, Day 4 – Collision
Genre: New Adult Mystery/Romance
Release Date: April 28, 2014 AND June 10, 2014
Cover Design: Etopia Press AND Kate L. Mary
Formats: ebook, audiobook, and paperback
Amazon US
Amazon UK
Amazon Universal
Audible
Goodreads
UK Audiobook Listeners: Grab a code for a FREE audiobook of Collision
Some secrets are better left untold…
When eighteen-year-old Kara Jones gets into a car accident on the way home from college, she’s left with more than a few bruised ribs, a busted cell phone, and a totaled car. After a slip-up at the hospital, she’s shaken to discover that her family isn’t all it seems. And now her mother’s strange behavior and willingness to do anything to protect her secrets—including pulling Kara out of school—have Kara floundering in the dark.
Enter Derek Miller, a former classmate who’s dealing with family issues of his own. His nerdy charm is too much for Kara to resist, and she’s even more amazed when he agrees to help her dig into her mother’s past. Together they investigate her mother’s old friends and boyfriends, hoping to discover who Kara really is. Instead, they find disturbing connections to the dark history of Kent State University, and an ever expanding maze of mystery surrounding Kara’s birth.
As Kara and Derek chase secrets, she realizes he’s the only person she can trust. But as they get closer to the truth, the disturbing answers reveal a web of evil far darker and further reaching than they’d imagined, leaving Kara to wish she’d never asked the questions in the first place.
What can you tell us about the setting and characters in Collision?
Like I already said, I wrote this book while I was living California, but I’m from Ohio. Until my husband joined the Air Force, I had lived most of my life in the same small town of West Milton, Ohio and went to the same school from kindergarten to when I graduated in 1998, so it made sense to me to set Collision in the area I grew up in. I didn’t set it in West Milton because it just didn’t make sense for the characters I’d created. Kara and Derek were supposed to have graduated together, but when they met, she didn’t remember him. That just wouldn’t have made sense in my hometown where the graduating classes were small (I graduated in a class of 123), so I set it one town over in Englewood. I never mention the school by name, but it is actually the school my husband graduated from: Northmont. There are other things sprinkled throughout the story that might be fun for people who grew up in the Dayton, Ohio area, such as where Kara and Derek have their first date: Marion’s Piazza. There are 9 locations throughout the Dayton area, including one in the town I now live in, and it is delicious! I highly recommend checking this place out if you’re ever in the area. (As you can tell, my family loves it.)
Often when writing a character I add details to their backstory that are inspired by real life, and Collision is no exception. In the book, we learn that Derek’s entire family was killed his senior year of high school when their van was hit by a train. I wrote this because I actually knew a girl when I was in high school who was killed, along with her entire family, when their van was struck by a train. It was the most gut-wrenching funeral I’ve ever been to, and for whatever reason, the memory of that event popped into my head when I was trying to figure out a reason Derek might want to recreate himself and start a whole new life.
The characters in this book weren’t exactly inspired by anyone, but I did pepper some of my husband’s personality in as I was writing Derek – and I absolutely added his love of sci-fi because I’m such a huge fan. I did borrow names from a few people I knew at the time – such as the last name Ceccoli – but other than that, the characters are 100% fictional.
