Chapter 21 - Video Transcript

I recently recorded a video clip for a television website about my books.  Here's the transcript:

Hi.  My name is Amalie Jahn and I’m so glad to have this opportunity to speak to you about my young adult time travel trilogy The Clay Lion series.

The first book in the series, The Clay Lion, is about a teenage girl, Brooke, whose brother dies of pulmonary fibrosis.  She lives in an age when time travel has already been invented, and despite laws against it, she decides to break the cardinal rule of time travel… which is of course, never change the past, in order to try and save her brother’s life.  Along the way she uncovers truths about love, loss, second chances, and ultimately the power each of us have in shaping our destinies.

The idea for writing a novel about time travel came to me in a dream, as have many of my best ideas over the years!  My sister and I were superheros, capes and all, and we were traveling back and forth in time to prevent people from dying.  When I woke up, I wrote down as much of the dream as I could remember and while I was jotting down notes, I started thinking about Lauren, a little girl in my daughter’s class, battling leukemia.  I got to thinking how it would be for her sister Hailey if she should die and the seed for The Clay Lion was planted.

It gives me so much joy knowing that readers feel a sense of connection to Brooke’s journey.  I think all of us have loved and lost, in our own lives, in our own ways.  I’ve received many messages from people over the years sharing how the story has touched them in some way.  The power of the written word can be so humbling. 

Television too can be a powerful storytelling medium and I do enjoy watching my favorites in the evening with my family.  We do have a bit of a battle sometimes - my husband enjoys a good hour long drama and I tend to enjoy half hour comedies!

What can I say, I love to laugh!

While I do enjoy The Walking Dead and American Horror Story, my favorites are shows like The Middle, The Goldbergs, and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.  A recent guilty pleasure happened to be Wayward Pines, which was of course adopted from the novels by Blake Crouch:  Pines, Wayward, and The Last Town.

Perhaps one day The Clay Lion series will be adapted into film or screen.  Until then readers can enjoy the novels in print or in audio, as the fabulous Lorelei King has recently recorded The Clay Lion for the world.