New Kids - multiple authors of Young Adult books at Third Place Books March 14

Authors Megan Bostic – Never Eighteen; Helen Landalf – Flyaway; Kiki Hamilton – The Faerie Ring; Carole Estby Dagg – The Year We Were Famous; Kathy McCullough – Don’t Expect Magic; Kendare Blake – Anna Dressed in Blood and Alexa Martin – Wonder Girl will appear together at Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park on Wednesday, March 14.

Activities will include a speed read, QandA and book signing with food and prizes.

Austin Parker won’t live to see his next birthday.

So what DOES he do in NEVER EIGHTEEN?

Northwest author Megan Bostic’s debut YA novel from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Children’s Book Group.

Tacoma’s Austin Parker isn’t going back for any more chemotherapy (He’s got to tell his mother) and is never going to see his eighteenth birthday. But Austin has a mission for his final weeks - to help those he loves “fix” their lives: 

“They’re standing still while the world passes them by. They have a future. I want for them what I can’t have for myself.” 

Austin doesn’t have a driver’s license so needs his best friend to drive him to his unannounced visits in her prized possession, a red, 1969 Mustang she bought with “money she made working at the Starbucks in the Lakewood Barnes and Noble.” 

In Tacoma author Megan Bostic’s debut novel, Never Eighteen (Jan. 16, 2012), Austin and Kaylee cruise the Pacific Northwest visiting places Austin loves and taking care of unfinished business ‒ including Austin’s first dinner at the Space Needle, and a kiss he has longed for since third grade. 

Bostic draws on her own experience caring for a family member with cancer to create this realistic account of a teen’s last days as he gently works to change the future. As Kaylee asks near the end of Never Eighteen: 

“Did that turn out the way you wanted it to, Austin?”

Megan Bostic

Megan Bostic was moved to write her first novel in 2002 after closing her child care business in order to provide hospice care for her terminally ill mother-in-law. She lives in Tacoma with her two children and thrives on the challenges she faced on her journey to publication. Megan has recorded her struggles in a humorous, personal video series, Chronicles of an Aspiring Writer,

 She is a member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, Pacific Northwest Writers Association, The Apocalypsies, The Class of 2k12, and is an avid blogger.