Christine Bailey, professor of English and director of compositional support at Union, has debuted her young adult fiction novel, “Girl in the Middle.”
Vinspire Publishing launched the book Sept. 30, and it is available for purchase at Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.
In addition to paperback form, the novel is also available on Nook e-readers and will be released as an audiobook in the coming months, Bailey said.
The novel is about three sisters, with the focus on the middle sister as she deals with high-school bullying and wishing for something extraordinary to happen in her life.
“Girl in the Middle” began while Bailey was enrolled in the Masters of Fine Arts program at Murray State University in Murray, Ky., where her emphasis was in young adult fiction.
Bailey was inspired by her own high school experiences, though Skye’s story became unique to the character during the writing process.
In her list of dedications, Bailey included five students who helped edit parts of the novel in her editing class: Gracie Wise, Allison Bucknell, Holly Owens, Jamie Mitchell and Sarah Halbrook.
Bailey realized early on that she was too connected to her own experiences to effectively tell the narrative, and that distancing herself from the characters allowed her to create a more authentic story.
Bailey had originally planned to select a cover from choices presented by students enrolled in a graphic design class at Union.
“I didn’t like faces on books,” Bailey said. “I wanted something more artsy. Those students took my idea of a book cover and ran with it.”
While Bailey was pleased with the students’ work, her publishers advised her to use cover with a picture portraying the main character, Skye, to better appeal to her target audience.
“If you go to Walmart or Target and look at the young adult novels, you see what the trends are,” Bailey said. “I ultimately had to trust that the publishing company knew what they were doing in thinking through those trends.”
While the final cover image was supplied by the publisher, Bailey used the cover design made by Chelsea Wood, senior art major, as a banner on her website, cibailey.com.
Bailey said she wrote the story as a trilogy, and is working on the second book in the series, “Girl Under Water,” about Skye’s sister, Sarah Elizabeth.
