Panic

Dear Reader,

By the time you read this, it will have been almost four years since the publication of my first novel, Before I Fall. A lot has changed for me since 2010. In the past four years, I’ve been blessed with the opportunity to travel the country, speaking with young and avid—even obsessive—readers. I’ve met the teachers and librarians who move the engines of these young minds, or who at least keep them well oiled. I’ve met with booksellers who have soldiered through years of economic uncertainty in order to continue serving their communities; with sixteen-year-old bloggers who function as the twenty-first-century equivalent of the ever-feared and much-revered cultural critic; with fans who have foisted my books on unsuspecting family members and friends. I’ve participated in animated conversations with people halfway around the world about what’s on our TBR piles, and I’ve discovered that reading communities are much the same in the Philippines as in Philadelphia, in London as in London, Ohio.

I’ve been humbled, inspired, and grateful.

I’ve been writing—a lot. After my first novel came the Delirium trilogy and an accompanying collection of novellas, plus two fantasy books for middle-grade readers, Liesl & Po and The Spindlers, the first of which was inspired by a devastating personal experience, the second by a Maurice Sendak book I loved as a child. With Panic—the book you’re holding in your hands, about a small, struggling town and the consequences of a dangerous game the teens play over the summer—I returned to realism. Later this year, I’ll publish my first book with Ecco, an adult division of HarperCollins.

The subjects, protagonists, settings, and even genres of my books are diverse—probably a reflection of the variety of places I’ve been and people I’ve met in the past several years. And yet, in all of my books—including this one, my latest and possibly my favorite—there is a common theme: the desire, the need, to become whole, to be a part of something bigger, to find fulfillment in friendship and in shared community.

So this is simply a letter to all of my readers, past and future, new and old: Thank you for sharing your community with me. Thank you for letting me do what I love. Thank you, above all, for helping me become whole.

With best regards,

Lauren Oliver