Blog Tour: Guest Post by Rachel M. Wilson, author of DON'T TOUCH

Welcome to my stop on the DON'T TOUCH blog tour!

Don't Touch by Rachel M. Wilson
Publisher: HarperTeen
Released: 2nd September 2014
Genre: Young Adult Contemporary

A powerful story of a girl who is afraid to touch another person’s skin, until the boy auditioning for Hamlet opposite her Ophelia gives her a reason to overcome her fears.

Step on a crack, break your mother’s back. Touch another person’s skin, and Dad’s gone for good.

Caddie can’t stop thinking that if she keeps from touching another person’s skin, her parents might get back together... which is why she wears full-length gloves to school and covers every inch of her skin.

It seems harmless at first, but Caddie’s obsession soon threatens her ambitions as an actress. She desperately wants to play Ophelia in her school’s production of Hamlet. But that would mean touching Peter, who’s auditioning for the title role—and kissing him. Part of Caddie would love nothing more than to kiss Peter—but the other part isn't sure she's brave enough to let herself fall.

Perfect for fans of Laurie Halse Anderson, this debut novel from Rachel M. Wilson is a moving story of a talented girl who's fighting an increasingly severe anxiety disorder, and the friends and family who stand by her.

Today, author Rachel M. Wilson will be sharing four things the book world doesn't know about her (until now). Don't forget to enter the giveaway below after reading the post!

GUEST POST
4 THINGS THE BOOK WORLD DOESN'T KNOW ABOUT ME (UNTIL NOW)

by Rachel M. Wilson, author of Don't Touch

1. I was born on a farm—well, not exactly on the farm, but my parents were living on a family farm near the Alabama River when I was born. It’s an ancient house with a peaked roof and a wide porch—if any place is haunted, this place is haunted. Now the farmland is mostly leased out to other farmers, but when my Dad ran it, it was a feeder pig farm. Not so coincidentally, my parents were vegetarians at the time.

The farmhouse where Rachel was born (left) and the barn (right)

2. I’m a Francophile. I don’t speak French as well as I used to, but I belonged to the French club in high school and always competed in the French Convention. I used to be completely fluent. My granddad was a paratrooper on D-Day, and I was lucky enough to accompany him and other surviving members of the 82nd Airborne on a trip to France for a monument dedication. As the only person on our bus who spoke French, I got a lot of practice translating. Lots of small villages in Normandy put out tables full of calvados and cheese and pastries for the veterans, and I almost cried when an older gentleman asked if he could give my grandfather a kiss on the cheek. He obliged, and it was one of the sweetest things I’ve ever seen.

3. I spent several Halloween seasons working in the haunted house at Chicago’s Navy Pier. This meant dressing up in elaborate costumes to play a real estate agent with a knife through her head or a frightened librarian ghost or a crazed French chef . . . on repeat. The house was a kind of limbo—a Disneyesque production with tons of
special effects, all timed to a track. So we’d go through a 90 second scene for a crowd of people, usher them to the next room and then perform the same scene again . . . for hours! At one point, I was so exhausted that when a kid offered my French chef his plastic spider ring, saying, “Cook it! Cook my spi-dow!” I stuffed the thing in my mouth. Instant. Regret.

4. I love camping! I love it so much that when I drove cross-country between Chicago and LA, I pulled up to campsites all along the road with a giant U-Haul. Unfortunately, I wasn’t prepared for the winds on the plains or the storms in the Badlands knocking the tent flat. The ensuing exhaustion required an emergency stop at Wall Drug, SD, for tent stakes and ties.

Rachel's dog Remy as a puppy figuring out how to use tent stakes

BLOG TOUR GIVEAWAY

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rachel M. Wilson is the author of the contemporary YA, DON'T TOUCH, forthcoming from HarperTeen, Sep. 2, 2014.

She graduated from Northwestern University and holds an MFA in Writing for Children & Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Rachel grew up in Birmingham, AL, and she currently writes, acts, and teaches in Chicago, IL.

Get your copy of Don't Touch!

Amazon US | Amazon UK | Barnes & Noble

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