Guest post: Jessie Lane, author of The Burning Star

Hello my avid followers! I have this surprise guest post for you today! Author Jessie Lane (The Burning Star) has decided to share the truth behind her name! Read on to learn the story!

Dearest readers, I'm so glad I let Vanya talk me into doing this guest post! It's so exciting, retelling my story.

Jessie Lane is the pseudo name for the writing team that constitues me (Crystal Leo) and Melissa Pahl. This is a very quick story on how ‘Jessie Lane’ came to be. The two of us met when I met Melissa’s older brother Michael and fell madly in love with him. Over time Melissa and I realized that we had a scary amount of things in common such as hobbies involving creativity and books. However, personality wise we are quite different. Melissa is the kind of person who walks into a room, owns it and instantly becomes everyone’s friend. I would much rather find the quiet corner of the room and start people-watching everyone I don't know. Based on that, I think that if the government ever let us, we could be a kick ass spy team. Who’s ready to recruit us?

Needless to say we became thick as thieves.

So one night I went to sleep and had one of my infamous crazy dreams. It was such a vibrant and weird dream that I woke up, found paper and pen and started to write it all down. My husband Michael then woke up, looked at me like I was nuts and went back to sleep. Thus began my long frustrating journey of struggling to write a book on my own.

           After I told my beloved in-laws that I was writing a book, my much adored sister-in-law Melissa and brother-in-law Matthew realized that they too should follow their dreams and started working away at their own books. The three of us often chit chatted about how our books were going.

Finally, after two years of writing a book, declaring it was finished, to decide ten minutes later I really didn’t like a certain paragraph anymore, I broke down in desperation and called Melissa. I’d had this little voice in the back of my head telling me that my sister-in-law was the missing piece. Melissa picked up her phone on the opposite side of the country, listened to my rant and rave for half an hour, before I finally blurted out “I can’t do this anymore. Would you please write with me?”

Melissa’s response was “I was just waiting for you to ask”.

My next thought was relief, closely followed by a desperate need to strangle Melissa for making me figure all of this out on my own neurotic timetable instead of suggesting we write together in the first place. (Just a side note, Melissa gets her sage I-am-going-to-nod-my-head-and-listen-to-you-rant-till-you-figure-it-out-on-your-own wisdom from her mother Patty who likes to torture me with the same sage tactics as well).

So anyways, the next day Melissa started to go over my book fixing all of the things that I said drove me nuts but couldn’t find the right way to fix them. Along the way she smoothed over the story in a way that made me think that Melissa was totally psychic because she seemed to pick up on all the things that I couldn’t possibly find a way to explain in my chaotic thoughts. After two or three weeks Melissa sent the book back to me and said, “Let me know what you think.”

A few days later, when I was finally done re-reading The Burning Star I sat in my chair and cried happy tears of relief. After over two years in progress the book was finally done and I knew that I never wanted to write another book unless Melissa wrote it with me. In a funny way I decided that Melissa was like the other half of my writing soul. Someone who completely understood what I was trying to say or do without the need to explain in my awkwardness what I was trying to write.

This is how ‘Jessie Lane’ came to be.

Since Melissa is hard at work and I'm at home writing this by myself rest assured that as the politicians would say at election time: “This is a Melissa approved message”.

And here's a little something about our book, "The Burning Star":

 Can she reach her destiny before tragedy strikes?

The doctors have told Kay that she will die before she reaches her eighteenth birthday. Her mother’s determination to save her life leads them to a move outside of Asheville, NC to a new set of cancer specialists in the hopes to help her. But it’s not what Kay and her Mom find in the doctor’s offices in Asheville that lead them on the journey to save her before time runs out. It’s what Kay finds in the woods outside of Asheville, and an inhumanly gorgeous guy named Ryan, instead.

Myths and fairy tales come to life before Kay’s eyes, bringing her closer to the ultimate cure if she can stay alive long enough to get there. And if the cancer doesn’t kill her before she finds the cure the secrets her mother has hidden from her may be the beginning of the end.