by Laura Tisdall
-Cyber Thriller, YA
Release date: September 8, 2015
Amazon | Goodreads
“There is truth to be shared. Let us begin…”
Volatile mathematical genius Mallory Park is living two lives. In one, she is balancing senior year with looking after her little brother and troubled ex-Marine father; in the other, she spends her nights glued to her laptop, breaking into some of the world’s most secure systems as the hacker Echo Six.
As part of a corruption-exposing cyber network called the Forum, Mallory is far more at ease among the codes and hidden identities of her online world than she has ever been in the real one, but when other hackers start to go missing, she finds herself caught up in a web of secrets that could have repercussions far beyond both.
When anyone can be a name on a screen, how do you know who to trust?
by Laura Tisdall
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An introduction to Mallory Park
Mallory Park is the main character in my new book Echoes. She’s a sixteen year old high school senior (she skipped second grade) from Watertown, Connecticut, who lives with and cares for her depressed ex-Marine dad and little brother. She’s also a mathematical genius and spends most of her free time hacking into different computer systems as part of an elite, online whistle-blowing network.
I’m not fully sure what inspired her creation, only that it wasn’t an entirely conscious thing. When I started writing Echoes, I knew my protagonist was a female, teenage computer hacker and I had a vague idea of where the book’s story arc was going to go, but I’d originally planned for Mallory to have this almost slick, spy-like persona, to be cool and smart and immediately likeable… Then I started typing the first scene. In it, Mallory is mid-way through a complex hack – lots of opportunity for slick, spy-like behaviour! The thing was that, as I was writing, trying to get myself into the scene, into the emotion of it, a rather different character voice kept coming into my head. Instead of cool and easily likeable, it was prickly and uncompromising. It was alarmingly intelligent and brutally observant to the point of obsessiveness. It also had a deep, underlying vulnerability that all that prickliness and intelligence was trying to hide and protect. That voice was the actual voice of Mallory Park and it would not be ignored. As I continued to write the rest of the first draft of Echoes, I knew what she would say and think and feel more clearly than I think I have for any other character I’ve written before. Previously, I’ve read interviews where authors have said how certain characters seemed to walk into their heads fully formed. In some ways, I suppose it seems a strange concept… but I’m fairly sure that’s just what happened with Mallory.
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Guest post created by Laura Tisdall, author of Echoes
© 2015. All rights reserved.
About the author:
She has written two musicals. The most recent is fantasy story The In-Between, the concept album for which featured performances by nine leading West End stars. Since it's release, it has been played on BBC Radio 2, performed at West End Live and received hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube (here) and Facebook (here).
Find out more about this book and author:
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by Laura Tisdall
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