What if you could pull back time just enough to make bad things come untrue?
When Rosie Clayton travels to London to be with her dying grandfather, she stumbles on a band of teenage crime-fighters who are striving to do exactly that. Her mysterious new friend Albert, his sister Casey, and their pals Isaac and Dan are Servatores, a secret society founded 2,000 years ago to fight against forces of evil. Servatores are gifted with the ability to Pull. They can shift time backwards around them for a few brief minutes: hopefully just long enough to give them a chance to intervene for good, with no one the wiser. But through every twist and turn of history, the Servatores have been hunted down by their nemeses, the Mortiferi. Now–for reasons Rosie can only guess–the Mortiferi are hunting her down…and her family too.
Anne Riley’s YA fantasy PULL gripped me right from the start. It’s one of those books that you crack open for “just a sec” and look up from half an hour later, feeling that no time at all has gone by…and you can’t wait to dive in again. Because of the intense interactions with the Mortiferi and other crime sequences, I’d recommend PULL as true YA. For both teen and adult readers, the witty dialogue, fast pace, mysterious villains and quirky heroes are a sure draw.
I’ve wanted to do an author interview with Anne Riley on this one for awhile, and I’m excited to share it with you here!
What drew you to London as the setting for PULL?
I spent quite a lot of time in London between the spring of 2002 and the fall of 2003. (Let’s just get it out there: My frequent visits were because of a boy, and because I was living in Madrid for several months during this time, which made flights easy.) My headquarters when I visited London was a tiny village called Blackheath. It always seemed a little magical to me, and so when it came to choosing a setting for PULL, Blackheath was a natural choice.
For another European setting–Venice, Italy–check out this author interview with Kim Cross Teter.
Do you have any favorite time-traveling books or movies?
It would be heresy to not mention Back to the Future here. I grew up watching it, and although it’s a totally different kind of time travel than the type you see in PULL, it did always make me wonder if such a thing was possible! I also read THE TIME TRAVELER’S WIFE but I ended up ugly-crying in the parking lot of a Moe’s Southwest Grill after I finished it, so I wouldn’t say it was my favorite.
PULL has a different riff on turning back time: instead of journeying to another era, the heroes of your tale “pull” back recent events just enough to be able to (hopefully) change the outcome for good. How did you hit on this concept, and what challenges did you face as you laid out the “rules” for this type of time-interaction?
Mostly, I just wanted to do something unexpected with time travel. Like you said, it’s not the typical time travel you see in other stories, where the character moves through time. I wanted my characters to make time move around them.
I’ve often wondered what might happen if we could rewind just a few minutes and change something we said or something we did—how would that affect the world? But the characters in PULL aren’t using their skills for trivial things like conversations, of course; they’re making changes that have far more of an impact, but the world (for the most part) never knows what they did.
I imagine this is kind of how people in the CIA feel. They’re always working to protect us, but if they do their job right, we don’t realize they’re doing their job at all. The characters in PULL are similar to that. Most people have no idea what they can do, and they have no idea what they have been saved from after someone has rewound an event and changed the outcome.
Who is your favorite secondary character in PULL, and why?
I love Casey! She’s Albert’s sister and she’s a total wildcard. I didn’t expect her to be quite as reckless as she turned out to be, but her daring attitude did come in handy during that one scene with the prison.
I love your idea of secret vaults and tunnels beneath the Greenwich Library. If Albert and Rosie were to discover a secret Servator hideout in America, what do you think would be a prime location?
I had originally toyed with writing a sequel to PULL, and it would have been set in Nashville. I like to think the Parthenon there would be a good place to hide the entrance to a secret lair. 🙂
Do you have any other novels in the works?
I have written a southern cozy murder mystery with an Alice in Wonderland twist! It is on submission to editors now. (note from Emma: I’ve been able to take a sneak peek at this manuscript, and it’s FABULOUS!) Other than that, I am doing a lot of freelance work and trying to tame the book ideas that constantly pop into my head!
Learn more about Anne Riley’s work at her website, annerileybooks.com. PULL, published by Spencer Hill Press, is available here from Amazon, and wherever books are sold.
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