The following is a guest post from Helen Ellis, author of THE TURNING: What Curiosity Kills.

Attention Teenage Girls! Your Mamas Remember

I am not a teenage girl, but I pretend to be in The Turning: What Curiosity Kills.  Because I remember.  Everyday, I have a not-so-fleeting sixteen year-old moment.  I worry that what I pull out of my closet is going to make me look like a dweeb.  I realize that nobody uses the word dweeb anymore.   When the wine store clerk waves off my i.d., I get the sinking feeling I no longer look underage.   But I sure feel that way sometimes.  Here’s a dirty little secret: you never outgrow your awkward phase.

The “turning” is the ultimate awkward phase.  Up until the affliction strikes her, Mary Richards is a normal teenage girl trying to get by unnoticed at the elite Manhattan Purser-Lilley Academy.  Her worst problem is shyness.  Then over the course of a day, she falls asleep in gym, licks milk off her kitchen floor, and opens her apartment window at three in the morning to a cat prowling her fire escape.   She opens her heart to brooding Nick Martin, who swears he understands what she’s going through.  She hunts with older, bad-boy Yoon.  To protect her sister, Ocatvia, when threatened, Mary grows fangs and claws.  Literally.

The “turning” heightens Mary’s curiosity.  And curiosity kills teenage angst and fear.  Being sixteen should be about being brave.  Not bungee-jumping brave, but having the courage to speak your mind, to kiss someone, to follow a dream—even if that dream is to be an accountant when none of the other kids at school think it’s cool.

Learn this.  Live this.  Remind your mothers of this.  They will be grateful to be reminded. The sooner you become brave, the easier it is to stay brave and not fall to peer pressure when you’re older. 

My personal brave feats: writing The Turning: What Curiosity Kills without any assurance that it would be published; and if published, that anyone besides my mother would read it.  And sticking to my Luddite guns.  My name is Helen Ellis and I refuse to own a cell phone.

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