A-to-Z Challenge: “N” is for “Nature”

For the A-to-Z Challenge 2016, I am blogging info on my current work-in-progress, a YA fantasy/adventure mini-series tentatively titled “The Other World”.

Nature is at the forefront of The Other World. When the story begins our protagonist could be described as a “city girl”. Though she doesn’t live in a big city like New York or LA, she is absolutely a child of the digital age. She is used to the little comforts of every day life in the first world: cars, cellphones, television. She is the kind of teenager who would struggle to recognize half the animals at the zoo and would be lucky to be able to name three or four different types of flowers.

But when the events of the story begin, she is thrust into a world that is significantly more natural than man-made. One of her first experiences is with a herd of horses, which she’s never actually been in close contact with before in her life, and they scare her half to death. The next thing she knows she’s set the task of riding one to the next village over, which she’s shocked to find is a two-day ride through the woods. This is her first impression of the world that she’s been thrust into; a natural landscape devoid of the things she’s taken for granted, and full of things she’s never experienced and doesn’t understand.

It only gets better from there, as she’s set the task of taking a journey – one that is likely to last for months – through a varying landscape nothing like anything she’s ever seen before in her sheltered city life. She hasn’t a clue how she’s going to go about surviving such a thing, and she regularly gets herself into predicaments as a result of her inexperience, but at least a small part of her does, in fact, enjoy the experience. There really is something to be said for getting in touch with nature, especially when you’ve been so sheltered from it for most of your life.

I hope you’re enjoying the A-to-Z Challenge and my little snippets of ‘The Other World’! If you’re interested in what else I’ve written, please be sure to check out ‘Nowhere to Hide‘, available on Amazon in both hard copy and e-book versions!