Author Lorelei Savaryn, whose debut novel, The Circus of Stolen Dreams, was published in summer 2020, is celebrating the release of her second novel, The Night Train, with a free program at the Southwest Library, 7979 38th Ave.
The book release party will take place on Tuesday, August 20th, from 6:30 p.m. to 8:45 p.m. Admission is free, but to attend you must register in advance at mykpl.info.
“The Night Train” is a middle school novel (ages 9-12) about Maddie Maverick, who must confront her ghosts.
Maddie and her twin sister Nat discover that their grandmother, a ghost hunter, left them an unexpected gift when she died: they can now see ghosts like her.
While Nat is all for helping ghosts find peace, Maddie’s calling just isn’t her thing.
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When a long-ago train accident – and its ghosts – rear their ugly heads, Maddie must summon all her courage to help one ghost in particular if she wants to survive the night train herself.
Blue House Books will be at the library offering copies of Savaryn’s books for sale, which she will sign at the event.
Savaryn, who lives in Gurnee, Illinois, writes what she calls “spooky, magical stories for children.”
Her first novel told the story of a young girl who enters a world where dreams come to life.
For Savaryn, the publication of this book was a dream come true.
A long way
The former Racine Unified School District teacher worked hard to make her dream of becoming a full-time writer a reality.
Her contract with Penguin Random House for two books came about after “many rejections,” she said.
Savaryn finds time to write alongside homeschooling her four children and attributes this to her “flexibility” and “learning to write really well in short chunks of time.”
“I’ve worked really hard to make it a priority,” she told the Kenosha News. “I write on the weekends and in the evenings when the kids are in bed, and sometimes I hire a babysitter for a few hours. I’m not one of those writers who has a special room in their house where they can retreat and write in peace.”
Although this had long been her dream, Savaryn was “afraid to try. I was afraid of failing.”
After the birth of her third child, she said, “My husband, John Paul, told me to just try it. He saw how much I wanted to do it.”
They moved from the Kenosha area to northern Illinois, closer to his employer, AbbVie, to shorten his commute and give her more opportunity to write.
Your genre
Savaryn’s novels reflect “the kind of stories I read as a child,” she said. “I loved being a little scared.”
The idea for “The Circus of Stolen Dreams” comes from, among other things, the adult novel “The Night Circus” from 2011 and the film “The Greatest Showman”.
“I find the circus really fascinating,” she said, “and I knew I would like to write a circus story for younger children.”
When her daughter told her about a story she had read in which a dream enters a character’s real life, Savaryn developed her plot.
“My stories start with a sense of place, and then I build in a character,” she said. “I came up with a story where my main character finds a flyer for a circus called Reverie in the woods behind her house and thinks this is the perfect place to escape from her problems.”
This circus has “tent after tent where visitors enter popular dreams,” Savaryn said, including everyone’s favorite: the dream where you can fly. But as the main character – a young girl named Andrea – walks through the tents, the dreams turn into nightmares.
She describes her second novel as “my version of ‘The Secret Garden’, with a few ghosts and a bit of horror.”
“When I write,” she said, “I feel like I could do this forever. I hope I can.”
For more information about Savaryn and her novels, visit her website loreleisavaryn.com.
