Rochester writer takes teens on a treasure hunt in debut novel
Mackenzie Reed’s new Apple Watch is telling her that she needs sleep, quite a bit more.
No wonder. These days, she’s logging about five hours a night. That’s not enough. Then again, she’s got a lot of reasons to be awake.
Reed, 25, a Rochester native who graduated from Bishop Kearney High School and Nazareth College, has just had her first novel, “The Rosewood Hunt,” published by Harper Teen/Harper Collins.
The book is a thriller aimed at the young adult or YA market, teenagers like the heroes of the novel.
Not really stopping to take a break, Reed is now editing her second YA novel. Plus, she’s busy with her day job as a content specialist for a company that creates websites for luxury real estate agencies. Give her a break, Apple Watch, there’s little time left to sleep.
Catching her breath, Reed does make clear that although she’s a first-time novelist, she’s not really an overnight success.
“I've always been a writer. I've always wanted to be a storyteller,” she says. “From the time I was really little, I loved acting; I loved songwriting. I would write smaller stories. I never quite had the attention span to do a whole book back then.”
Eventually she did start writing books, quite a few, actually. “The Rosewood Hunt” is her sixth novel, the first five not finding publishers.
Reed wrote fantasy novels before switching to young adult novels. “It was a really pivotal moment for me,” she says of the move. “I could include some of the things I loved about fantasy, but it's still rooted in our world, which I loved.”
In “The Rosewood Hunt,” the teen heroine, Lily Rosewood, finds herself on an elaborate high-stakes treasure hunt, her recently deceased and fabulously wealthy grandmother having left a string of mysterious clues.
Lily is joined by a small group of young friends or former friends, each of them different in character.
“I love writing ensemble casts,” Reed says. “And I think it's so fun to have their different personalities. Especially for this group of teens, it was so important to me that they all felt like their own people.”
There aren’t that many adults in the novel, and some of the ones that show up aren’t all that good.
“There's kind of this running joke in YA books that everybody's parents are dead or missing,” Reed says. “And I always used to think that was really silly until I started writing it. And then, I found it can be so difficult sometimes to juggle adults while still keeping the teens at the forefront.”
That doesn’t mean that The Rosewood Hunt won’t appeal to older readers. There’s suspense and surprise throughout. And the strengths and weaknesses of the teens, their obsessions, and their anxieties, are like those of old adult characters in OA (old adult) novels.
OK. I’m not sure OA is a sanctioned acronym, but you know what I mean. Start with a dead body; enter a cop with a rocky love life; make sure the weather (Scotland, Iceland, the moon) is gloomy throughout. That’s OA with a vengeance.
Let’s get back to Mackenzie Reed. Her next novel is another thriller, but not a sequel to “The Rosewood Hunt.” Though, there could be a sequel down the road, she says. Lily Rosewood is still young. Bad things could happen. Good things, too.
Put that on hold. Reed has a tight deadline to finish the second draft of the new book.
“I usually end up editing at night,” she says. “I try to close it up by, like midnight, or one, but it just depends how the chapter is fighting me.”
But there will be some time to rest when her next novel is off to her publisher. Then Reed can catch a breath and maybe even sleep. She’ll be happy. Her Apple Watch will be happy. All will be well.
From his home in Geneseo, Livingston County, retired senior editor Jim Memmott, writes Remarkable Rochester, who we were, who we are. He can be reached at jmemmott@gannett.com or write Box 274, Geneseo, NY 14454
This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Mackenzie Reed, Rochester native, publishes first novel
