Author Guest Post - Pamela Beason

Please welcome the author of the exciting Sam Westin Mystery series that I have reviewed each and every book thus far (click here.)  Pamela Beason is sharing her YA thriller trilogy, Run For Your Life with us today.  So grab a drink (coffee, wine, or water), sit back, and enjoy this brief introduction to this young adult series.  I think you'll want to buy the first book right away like I do.

Finding Inspiration in Gutsy Young Women

Did you like The Hunger Games trilogy? I absolutely fell in love with Katniss Everdeen, the amazing young heroine, and I think Jennifer Lawrence played her character perfectly in the movies. Katniss is athletic and skillful, selfless, smart and brave, everything we all want to be. But she’s not fearless, and that’s what makes her so courageous, because the definition of courage is not to fear nothing, but to do the right thing when you’re absolutely terrified. I am also inspired by all the bold young female athletes that compete in every sport nowadays. Did you see Chloe Kim in the Olympics? OMG! Talk about giving it your all! So when I set out to write my young adult Run for Your Life series, I wanted to create a character as wonderful as Katniss, and as inspirational as all those real female athletes.

I created Tanzania Grey, a champion runner who competes in ultramarathons around the world. These incredible contests do exist, and many of them are multi-day events where competitors must cross deserts, climb mountains, slog through jungles, swim rivers, pick off leeches, you name it. A few are team events, so all teammates have to cross the finish line. What better way to add a lot of adventure to a novel than to have your characters race through exotic locales? So I made Tanzania an amazing cross- country running athlete.

But, like Katniss, Tanzania (Tana for short) needed to be independent and she needed a dramatic backstory. She was born Amelia Robinson, but while she was out breaking her curfew one evening at the age of 14, her parents were murdered. She arrived back at her house just in time to see the masked killers drag her 9-year- old brother out of his bedroom. The murderers saw Amelia and gave chase, but she managed to elude them. When she returned the next day, she found that her home had been emptied, and everyone was told the Robinsons moved to Zimbabwe, the birthplace of Amelia’s brilliant biochemist mother. Amelia’s whole past had been erased. She was on her own at 14, with killers searching for her. She had to reinvent herself and find a way to live under the radar. So, with the assistance of a kind Hispanic family, she became Tanzania Grey, got her GED, gained some sponsors, and made a name for herself in the world of extreme sports.

I’ve had a lot of fun living vicariously in this world of extreme sports. Anything can happen when you’re running through the jungle and sliding down volcanoes (Race with Danger), doing multiple sports in one race (Race to Truth, which contains an extreme version of a race dear to my heart, the Ski to Sea Relay in Bellingham, WA, where I live, and running across Zimbabwe, where the wildlife includes a lot of dangerous humans (Race for Justice). In each book, Tana is plagued by spy drones and scary strangers trying to figure out just who she really is, and in each book she gets a few more clues about who murdered her parents. And they get a few more clues about her. It was a fun, scary trilogy to write. And it’s my salute to all those gutsy young women out there. May they ever be strong and outspoken and brave!

Each book of the The Run for Your Life trilogy is available in both print and ebook form, and the Run for Your Life trilogy is available in ebook form in a box set at a reduced price (click here.)

My website is PamelaBeason.com (you can always find out what I’m up to there) plus Goodreads page and Facebook.

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THANK You Pamela.
I am getting my copy pronto.  It sounds like a great trilogy and an exciting run!