VERO BEACH — With two teenage daughters, children’s novelist Patrick Carman has been spending lots of time at high school sports events. He also has been reflecting on his own high school experiences.

“It’s as if our two worlds collided,” said the New York Times best-selling author. “As my daughters got older, I was reminded of my teenage years. It felt like a good time to write something for an older audience.”

The result is “Thirteen Days to Midnight,” a superhero story geared to emergent young-adult readers. Carman will speak about it and sign copies at 4 p.m. Tuesday in the teen loft of the Vero Beach Book Center’s Children’s Store.

The book revolves around a gift bestowed on Jacob Fielding by his foster father with his final words, “You are indestructible.” With his best friends Milo and Ophelia, Jacob tests the boundaries of his new power. He can withstand a beating from the high school bully without a scratch, walk through a burning building without so much as a singed eyebrow and even transfer the power to another person.

When Ophelia suggests that they begin experimenting to save people who are at risk of death, they discover that the power is linked to a curse that even the world’s greatest escape artist could not outrun.

“It’s the first novel in which I’ve drawn on people and places I know well,” Carman said. “The characters are composites of students I knew, and the setting is my old high school, which was taken over by the neighboring community college the year I graduated. One of the challenges was to decide how much I wanted it to be real and based on my experiences and how much should be fiction.

“The greater challenge was to come up with a strong mythology. I wrote about 50 pages, but threw them away when I decided to follow a Houdini-type path.”

Carman, author of the best-selling “The Land of Elyon” and other series, said “Thirteen Days” is a complete and finished story.

“I would like to do another. Jacob’s story could go on,” he said.

I’m already out touring, so this will be short! Here’s the quick rundown:

Thank you for going out and getting the book and spreading the word! You can find it online at www.bn.com or www.amazon.com, or at your local bookstore – if they don’t have it, please ask for it – and early reviews on BN.com or Amazon are always helpful if you have the time!

Watch a video all about the book and why I wrote it. It’s a great overview of the project.

Watch the Book Overview Video

Check out the tour kick off video, shot last week in Washington state! And some early pics from the road….

Watch the Tour Kick Off Video

It’s easy to spread the word on Facebook by sending friends to the Facebook Fan Page or directly to this page. You can also send people to the Thirteen Days ARG at www.13dtm.com

Come out and see me on the road! Find my schedule in printable form by clicking here (PDF) – or click here to see the online version. I’d love to see as many readers as possible and I’m in a lot of places with fun freebies to give away at every stop.

Follow My Twitter Feed for pictures and updates from the road during the entire April / May tour.

My first YA novel, Thirteen Days to Midnight, releases in one week! Check out the beginning stages of the ARG at www.13dtm.com, join the Facebook fan site and spread the word if you can. I really appreciate it! You can also see my touring calendar here – I hope to see you on the long April road.

Below are my answers to thirteen questions about the story – please feel free to repost!

I’ll be Tweeting from the road as usual – Patrick

1. What made you decide to write a YA novel after all your success as a writer for younger readers?
I have two teenage girls, so there are a lot of high-schoolers hanging around the house and I’m spending more time at high-school sporting events. Great place to people watch – the adults are the only ones watching the game. It got me thinking about my own experience in high-school. Those two worlds started to collide and before I knew it I was writing a superhero novel set in my old high-school.

2. How much of your experiences as a teen influenced the story?
I’ve written fifteen books, but Thirteen Days to Midnight was the first time I ever drew on my own experience. So the high school, the key characters, the town, the sort of dreary rain that sets the mood – all that stuff is from my own memory of high-school. And the biggest thing is the narrator, Jacob Fielding – he’s based on how I remember myself, which is a little scary to write. We want to remember ourselves as super nice, super popular, and amazingly handsome. Well, I was none of those things, so it was some work being honest about the guy I was back then.

3. What is your writing process like? Do you listen to music?
I write most mornings for about three hours, and I either listen to movie soundtracks or super loud modern rock – the modern rock, if it’s loud enough, turns into a feeling, not a sound – I don’t even hear the words, I just feel the energy. That kind of thing is great for action scenes, things like Green Day, Linkin Park – but it’s really just for writing and snowboarding, not for kicking around the house.
4. What’s the plot, the basics?
TDTM is about Jacob Fielding, a 15 year old who wakes up one day and finds that he’s indestructible. Nothing can harm him. The mystery behind how he acquired the power is part of the story, but Jacob quickly learns he can also pass the power to others and protect whoever he wants to – but only one person at a time. Who he chooses to protect, and more importantly, not protect, becomes a pivotal theme in the story. And all that death is piling up somewhere, it’s not just disappearing. That becomes a real problem.
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