My YA Writing Heroes - Part 1

Just a few of the treasures I've unearthed at thrift stores.

I was browsing through the YA section at my local library not long ago when I came across the book Thirst by Christopher Pike. The first thing I thought was, "Wow, he's still writing!" And the second thing I remembered was how much I absolutely LOVED his books as a teenager.

I discovered Christopher Pike's books sometime in the early 1990s, and I was instantly hooked. It wasn't until recently that I learned his books are often labeled "pulp horror," which is kind of fitting, as I was usually reading Stephen King and Christopher Pike novels simultaneously while in high school. I'm also pretty sure it was my stack of CP books that got me through the Blizzard of 1993 that hit North Carolina during my junior year of high school. You can imagine how boring and frustrating it got living at least three or four days without power, but I was fortunate enough to be able to read Pike by candlelight.

One of the first books I ever picked up by this author was Chain Letter, then I moved onto Scavenger Hunt, Fall into Darkness (which later became a Lifetime movie!), Remember Me (one of my all-time faves) and Last Act (probably number two on my favorite list). I can't tell you how many times I read his books over, and over, and over. Somewhere along the way during my many moves during college, I parted with most of my paperbacks. I now sincerely regret that. I have such great memories of these books, especially as I now work on writing for this age group myself.

You can imagine how thrilled I was when I came across one of the original CP paperbacks in the Habitat for Humanity ReStore last year, and then proceeded to find two more in my next two visits. Whoever is cleaning out their old collection of paperbacks from the late 1980s and early 1990s, please continue dropping them at my local ReStore. I almost feel like someone is leaving them there just for me to find, but that would be silly, wouldn't it? Here's the log line for Last Act, which I am now searching for on Amazon, Ebay, and the thrift stores:

When the gunshot murder of a Care High actress takes place during an opening night performance, Melanie becomes determined to find the killer, before murder makes an encore appearance.

Now, I need to check out some of Pike's more recent novels. Off to Goodreads!