Blog Tour: The White Forest by Adam McOmber (Guest Post as character Jane)

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About the book!

Young Jane Silverlake lives with her father at a crumbling family estate on the edge of Hampstead Heath. Jane has a secret—an unexplainable gift that allows her to see the souls of manmade objects—and this talent isolates her from the outside world. Her greatest joy is wandering the wild heath with her neighbors, Madeline and Nathan. But as the friends come of age, their idyll is shattered by the feelings both girls develop for Nathan, and by Nathan’s interest in a cult led by Ariston Day, a charismatic mystic popular with London's elite. Day encourages his followers to explore dream manipulation, with the goal of discovering a new virtual reality, a place he calls the Empyrean.     
A year later, Nathan has vanished, and the famed Inspector Vidocq arrives in London to untangle the events that led up to Nathan’s disappearance. As a sinister truth emerges, Jane realizes she must discover the origins of her talent and use it to find Nathan herself, before it’s too late.    
Adam McOmber, whose short story collection This New and Poisonous Air earned glowing praise for its evocative prose, here reveals a gift for fantastical twists and dark turns that literary fans will relish

GUEST POST by author Adam McOmber 

 In the voice of character Jane Silverlake

I didn’t mean for it to turn out this way. 

Even my dearest friends might now claim that I am a monster—that I ruined the lives of everyone close to me.  But please allow me to speak for myself. 

I fell in love.  That much is true.  Nathan Ashe, the charming and handsome son of Lord William Ashe, came unexpectedly into my life and I could not help myself.  He allowed me to imagine, for a moment, that I was some blushing girl at a cotillion in London.  I could picture Nathan standing across a crowded ballroom, looking sharp and polished in his red uniform, telling stories of the Crimean War.  I wanted desperately to be a girl who could find herself with a man like him.  But I should have known—I’m not exactly average.  Some would claim I’m not even human at all.  I’ll leave that up to you to decide.

For now, simply imagine me locked in the shadows of my father’s house at the edge of Hampstead Heath.  My mother died when I was very young.  I felt so alone after that, like some ghost who roamed the darkened halls.  I was cared for only by the maids.  I won’t even tell you how cruel they were to me.  They were afraid, you know.  Afraid of how I could make the house seem to come to life around them.  I could make the very walls sing.  Nathan Ashe would later call this my “talent.”  It’s one of the things that drew him to me.  In fact, maybe it was the only thing that drew him to me.  He wanted me to be an experiment.  He was going to bring me to the cult in Southwark that he had joined after coming back from the war.  That’s why I became so angry with him.  You understand that, don’t you?  I had every reason to be angry.

My dearest friend, Madeline Lee, would argue that I am an irrational creature.  She’s sorry that she rescued me from the isolation of my father’s house.  Sorry that she brought me out into the world.   Maddy says I belong in the shadows.  I am the sort of creature who should be hidden away. 

I understand her unhappiness, of course.  She was in love with Nathan Ashe too.  He began to court us both.  That’s when the trouble really started.  I don’t want to say much more.  It all turned out so badly.  But you see, the three of us discovered that there is something out there beyond simple human desire and envy—something invisible but shining bright.  A white forest, unseen by the common human eye.  That’s where the three of us discovered the truth.  And it was a frightening truth, to be sure.

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About the author:
Adam McOmber’s novel, The White Forest, will be published by Touchstone, an imprint of Simon and Schuster, in September 2012. He is also the author of a book of short stories, This New & Poisonous Air (BOA Editions, 2011). His work has appeared in Conjunctions, StoryQuarterly, The Fairy Tale Review, Third Coast, Quarterly West, The Greensboro Review and Arts and Letters. He has been nominated for two 2012 Pushcart Awards and received an AWP Intro Award. He lives in Chicago and teaches at Columbia College where he is also the associate editor of the literary magazine Hotel Amerika.