Missing in Somerville is about a teenager, Jerry, who decides to take on a case about a missing woman in order to write something good for his school’s newspaper. What Jerry doesn’t know is that there are people who don’t want the case to be solved.

Along with high school social drama, the confusion he experiences regarding his feelings towards Kevin, his childhood friend and neighbor, lies wherever he turns, and having to make sure that he survives solving the case, Jerry has a lot to deal it!

Friendships will be tested and Jerry will realize that solving mysteries isn’t as easy as he thought.

This sounds like a mystery story.
It’s mystery and young adult.

The protagonists are all teenagers. However, the content is enjoyable for an older audience too.

True, anyone who enjoys Agatha Christie novels…
Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, Teen Power Inc., and even Sherlock Holmes.

Those stories all have strong main characters. Tell us about yours.
The main character is a high school student named Jerry Mathews. He likes to write and hopes to be part of the school’s newspaper team. Like every teenager he’s trying to understand the people around him as well as himself. While solving the mystery, he gets to know a lot about himself and his friends. The story is from Jerry’s POV with his friends: Ashley, Kate, Justin, and Nick playing important roles in order to help their friend.

I tried making Jerry, and the rest of the characters as relateable to the readers as possible. Even though he’s the protagonist, he still feels jealous, angry, sad, and sometimes acts selfishly. I feel this enabled me to write him in a more human manner.

Is that cos you’re a bit like that?
I think all of my characters have a piece of me in them, the good, and the bad. Some characters have my good traits, some the bad, and some a mix of both. Jerry is similar to me in the sense that he likes to write, the same as me when I was a teenager, he cares for his friends, though it’s hard for him to show it, and he can be very stubborn when he wants to.

Tell us more about yourself.
I’m currently 23, and have been writing since the age of 15. I completed Missing in Somerville when I was 18 years old, after I had wrote the first two stories in Arousing the Legacy. I like to play video games, watch action films, cartoons, do yoga, and go for long walks thinking about the next thing I want to write.

Arousing the Legacy? What’s that?
Another book that I have written is by the name ‘Arousing the Legacy (a YA Paranormal Awakening). It has a high school female protagonist and the story centers around her and her friends trying to solve paranormal occurrences in their small town.

We’ll check it out.
Do you have a website?
I post about my work as a guest blog writer at http://tempestraven.wordpress.com/

Do you use social media?
@tempest071990

What’s next?
A sequel to Missing in Somerville. A new case for Jerry and his friends to solve, along with the consequences they have to face after the events of the first part.