A.J. Hartley’s Fantasy Thriller “Impervious” Turns a Normal School Day Upside Down

In today’s guest hosted episode 172, with award-winning writer and guest host Cathy Pickens, we visit with A.J. Hartley, best-selling author of “Impervious” a fantasy thriller about a young girl whose normal day at school is upended, propelling her into an unfamiliar world of magic, monsters and danger and forcing her to try to save herself and her friends.

Faith Hunter, NYT and USA Today bestselling Author, says that this is a “story where reality and unreality are braided together until the very last page. It hit me in the gut. Must Read!”

D.B. Jackson, author of Time’s Assassin, call the book, “Searing, powerful – a story every person in this country should read. A.J. Hartley is as skilled a storyteller as I’ve ever encountered. To step into his imagination is to place yourself in the hands of a master.”

Today’s episode is guest hosted by award-winning author Cathy Pickens, author of “Create: Developing Your Own Creative Process,” and mystery and true crime books.

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About the Author:

A.J. Hartley (also writing as Andrew Hart) is the bestselling author of 23 novels for adults and younger readers spanning multiple genres, notably mystery, thriller, fantasy and science fiction.

Recent work includes Impervious, which grew out of his experience of a school shooting, the Steeplejack trilogy (the first of which won ITW’s THRILLER award for 2017 [YA category]), a domestic thriller called The Woman in Our House, Cold Bath Street (a ghost story), and (with Tom DeLonge of Blink 182) Sekret Machines: Chasing Shadows.

As Andrew James Hartley he is also the Robinson Professor of Shakespeare at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, where he specializes in performance theory and practice. His academic books include studies on dramaturgy, political theatre, and the stage history of Julius Caesar, the play which he is currently editing for Arden.

About Guest Host Cathy Pickens

Guest host Cathy Pickens appeared on Charlotte Readers Podcast to read and discuss true crime Here. She has been, under different names, a lawyer, a business professor, a university provost, a clog-dancing coach, a church organist/choir director, and a typist.

The most profound influences on her life have been her family, her faith, Nancy Drew, and Perry Mason. She grew up in a small town and, forced to move to “big cities” to support herself, first as a lawyer and then as a professor, she found the only way to return to the comfortable familiarity of her childhood was by moving Avery Andrews back home and chronicling her exploits.

The first Avery Andrews novel Southern Fried won the 2003 St. Martin’s Press/Malice Domestic Award for Best New Traditional Mystery. Romantic Times Book Club magazine reviewers named it one of the five “Best First Mysteries” for 2004. Her stories are set in South Carolina, in a town similar to the one where Cathy grew up.

Cathy has also written a mystery walking tour of Charleston, South Carolina: Charleston Mysteries (History Press 2007), Charlotte’s True Crime Stories (History Press 2019), and is true crime columnist for Mystery Readers Journal.

Her most recent work is Create: Developing Your Own Creative Process, published by ICSC Press, a six-step guide to developing your individual creativity, a roadmap tested and enthusiastically endorsed by hundreds of workshop participants, from those who already defined themselves as creative to those who didn’t (yet).

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