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Thanks so much to Literary Titan for the excellent job on my new Skylar Robbins video! Follow Skylar Robbins, teen detective, and her crew as they navigate a dangerous island, trying to discover the meaning of a mysterious idol. Fierce island natives will stop at nothing to prevent the teens from discovering the truth. Will Skylar’s team survive to return to middle school? Or will this field trip be their last adventure?
Skylar Robbins mysteries have won multiple awards, and more than one have been Amazon #1 Bestsellers in Children’s Detective Books. Accolades include being voted Book-of-the-Month by LASR readers, three 5-star Reader’s Favorite awards, and one was a Top Ten Finalist for an Author Academy Award in the YA/Middle Grade category.
Skylar Robbins: The Mystery of the Island Idol is available now onAmazon, Smashwords, Barnes and Noble, and wherever ebooks are sold.
Skylar Robbins:The Mystery of the Island Idol is due available now on Amazon and wherever ebooks are sold. Here’s a free chapter to let you know what teen sleuth Skylar Robbins has been investigating. Her new adventure put Skylar and her crew in more danger than they ever could have imagined…
Chapter 1
That Crazy Summer
If I had known what was going to happen that crazy summer, I would have thought twice about every decision I’d made. Had I paid closer attention to every clue, I might have realized the risky situation I was putting myself in. Again. But no one could have predicted what would happen to all of us: the brainy group of popular kids, athletes, and misfits with super high IQs who had made it into the Accelerated Courses and Experiments program, ACE. Most importantly, I really should have been better at figuring out who I could—or couldn’t—rely on in case of extreme danger.
Six Weeks Later
“Skylar,” Morgan whispered. “I have to get off this plane. Right now.”
“What?” I turned to look at her. Morgan’s forehead dripped sweat, and she was so pale she looked light green. I touched her hand, which was clenching the armrest. “Are you all right?”
“No. That big jet was bad enough. I feel like we’re going to die in this thing. I really need to get—”
The pilot sat down right in front of Bastiian, and looked at us over his shoulder. “I am your pilot, Phan Ho. Fasten seatbelts, please,” he said, starting the engine. “Seventy-minute flight. Keep belts on at all times. Next stop, Koma Island.” I’d flown before, but never in an airplane so small that the pilot introduced himself and that I could see the back of his head.
“Ready or not, here we go.” Bastiian shook his long hair around and laughed, but I noticed he was gripping the arms of his seat so hard his knuckles were shining.
Morgan unbuckled her seatbelt as the plane started to move. “This whole trip’s a mistake,” she muttered, standing up.
“It’s too late.” I grabbed her arm, pulling her back down. “We’re taking off. Put your seatbelt back on!” I wished so badly that my BFF, Alexa, was in the seat next to me instead of Morgan. I didn’t want to have to take care of anybody else on a strange, remote island. I wasn’t even sure I’d be able to take care of myself.
Devonna looked across the aisle at us as we started to taxi down the runway. “There’s a barf bag in there if you need one,” she told Morgan, pointing at the ripped seat pocket in the back of the seat in front of her.
Ophelia turned around, fixing her pale gray eyes on Devonna. “You’re not going to puke on me, are you?”
“I’m not,” Devonna said, nervously.
Morgan clamped her seatbelt back on, too scared to speak. She grabbed the armrests, her fingers like claws, and screwed her eyes shut. Her lips were moving. I figured she was praying.
The airplane rumbled and shuddered down the runway, picking up speed. The wood block chattered in its metal hoops and I could hear our carry-on items bouncing around in the vibrating compartment. I hoped my detective tools wouldn’t rattle into broken bits before we even got off the ground.
I heard Hannah gasp and Ophelia swear as we all spotted the end of the runway rushing toward us at the same moment. Right when it looked like we were going to run out of airstrip and smash into the trees, the pilot pulled the plane’s nose up off the blacktop.
It felt like we were suspended in midair, pointing at the sky, but just yards off the ground. Climbing too slowly. Like the old plane would fall backward and smash us into the earth at any second. But we kept climbing. Grinding upward. Higher and higher into thick gray clouds.
A spider crawled down the inside of the window next to me. I hoped Morgan wouldn’t notice it. She’d taken the barf bag out of the seat pocket in front of her and was breathing deeply into it. I watched the bag blow up, then shrink together and crinkle. Blow up, shrink together and crinkle. She was trying to get her panic under control. “It’s OK,” I whispered, touching her clammy arm.
She took the bag away from her face. “No. It’s not.”
The ride was getting bumpy. “Apologies,” Phan said. “Bit of turbulence.” The plane started to pass over some mountains and suddenly it took a big dip. “More turbulence coming,” he warned, his voice high and strained. “Tighten seatbelts!”
We hit another giant air pocket and dropped straight down through the atmosphere. I felt my rear end lift right off the seat and the seatbelt press into my stomach. The plane leveled out and flew fairly smoothly over the vast blue ocean, and past the Hawaiian Islands. And then we were turning, the little plane tilting, straightening out, and starting to descend.
Trees, bushes, and rocky cliffs whooshed up to meet us. Phan threaded the plane through and around them, and then a tiny dirt runway rushed toward us. It looked so small I couldn’t imagine landing on it. I was sure we were about to crash. Hannah screamed, Ophelia put her head between her knees, and Morgan threw up into her barf bag.
Seconds later we bounced down and landed with a jarring thud, then skittered down the short runway with the airplane’s brakes screaming. When the plane came to a complete stop, it creaked and popped like it felt fortunate to have survived the flight.
Phan looked over his shoulder at us and smiled thinly. “Welcome to Koma Island.”
Skylar Robbins: The Mystery of the Island Idol will be available for preorder soon. Please leave a comment and you will be entered in my contest to win a free autographed paperback! (U.S. only.)
A hut similar to those Skylar Robbins and her crew will sleep in on the island.
Thirteen-year-old sleuth
Skylar Robbins is about to take on her most dangerous case yet. The challenge: braving
a savage enemy while solving the mystery of a strangely frightening idol.
Skylar’s new high-tech
detective gadgets give her intelligence an extra edge. A canister of Invisi-powder
is vital when she and her assistant detective, Alexa, suddenly need to
disappear. Earbuds and a small high-powered microphone make up a Soundtrap: perfect
for eavesdropping on her crush while he plays My Secret Kiss, or on the boys in
the next hut while they devise a terribly risky plan. Her Supalight, visible
from half a mile away, enables Skylar’s crew to message her during a midnight
attack. Night vision goggles might save her life when she’s chased through a
dark jungle with her brilliant partner, Daniel Gannon.
Fierce island natives will stop at nothing to prevent the teens from discovering the true meaning of the idols. Will Skylar’s team survive to return to middle school? Or will this field trip be their last adventure?
Join Carrie Cross’s mailing list for Skylar Robbins new release information, free chapters, and more!
Calling all Skylar Robbins Secret Agents, mystery lovers, and middle grade readers! Want to contribute to my next Skylar Robbins novel? Use your imagination and decipher a clue to a new mystery that Skylar could have found in one of these rooms. Your idea could be incorporated in my next book! The winner will receive a personally autographed copy of my latest book, Skylar Robbins: The Mystery of the Missing Heiress. Thanks to Pinterest.com for the great photos. Leave a post describing your clue and what it means in the comments.
Gwendolyn’s Revenge: A Skylar Robbins Fantasy Novella was published today! 99 cents on Amazon or FREE in all formats on Smashwords.
Thick fog ballooned over the Malibu sand on Zuma Beach. The slate-gray ocean was deadly still. A mansion that everyone in Shadow Hills thought was haunted perched silently, shrouded in shadow. The back yard contained a magic garden where an eight-grade bully named Gwendolyn plotted revenge.
Gwendolyn opened her witchcraft box and looked at the nest of hair she had stolen from her cousin Skylar Robbins’s brush. She planned to use the teen sleuth’s shiny locks in a nasty spell. Maybe giving Skylar a giant patch of hairy warts. A year of horrendous dog breath. And loud, unstoppable farts whenever Skylar was around a cute boy! Unfortunately, Gwendolyn had skimmed the instructions, and missed one very important step.
The first day of eighth grade was right around the corner. Bullies who had known Gwendolyn since third grade and called her Dumbdolyn and Zitface would be joining her again in a few short days. So, with the help of a friendly wizard and a stolen hank of Skylar’s hair, she performed a beautifying spell on herself before school started. But she ignored the old wizard’s warning: “Don’t let your ego turn you nasty. Or the spell will slowly reverse. Or worse.”
Would Gwendolyn start eighth grade with a new gorgeous face and long, lustrous hair? Or would her mean-spirited actions cause a series of embarrassing middle school disasters that no eight-grader could ever have imagined?
A middle-schooler reads the synopsis of Skylar Robbins: The Mystery of Shadow Hills.
I’m available for live Skylar Robbins appearances and question-and-answer bookings regarding the process of creative writing and storytelling. My target audience is 4th-to-7th-graders in Southern California.
I have done readings and book signings at bookstores and libraries in various states across the U.S., and love to meet and interact with Skylar Robbins fans. I also welcome their input and enjoy incorporating my readers’ creative ideas in future Skylar Robbins plots.
For elementary or middle school appearances, please email me at carrie at skylarrobbins dot com.
13-Year-old sleuth Skylar Robbins is always on the lookout for a new mystery. When faced with a variety of creepy doors to explore, which one would she walk through first, looking for clues to her next case? Leave a comment describing what you think might be hiding behind one of these doors, and you will be in the running for a signed copy of the new Skylar Robbins paperback: The Mystery of the Missing Heiress!
I’ve loved words ever since I first learned to listen. Dr. Seuss’s silly stories enthralled me. Nursery rhymes, riddles, puns, tongue twisters…I savored them all. My parents and I used to make up funny names for people or things. A favorite velour jacket was my “scabaranzer.” When flowers died, they became “frivelly.” And when I got a knot in my yarn? It was a “boogle.” We imagined our new neighbors might be named Barney Bozoich or Rex Shekavondin. When my mom blew me a kiss at night, she said, “Zoot.” (Rhymes with put, not boot.) Zoot was the sound a kiss made, flying through the air. Apple breakfast bake was “applefumph.” Onomatopoeia. Now that’s a fun word to say. But why doesn’t its definition match its sound?
One cannot fall in love with words without falling in love with writing. I started writing “books” at age four. My first was an adventure composed in crayon: Blackie the Little Black Dog and the Flying Washing Machine. In junior high school my BFF and I wrote books, longhand, in our spiral binders. The plots were thin, involving crushes and unrequited, twelve-year-old love. But oh, how I loved to fill up those pages.
The books I cherished the most were those I read during that same time. Judy Blume’s Are You There, God, It’s Me, Margaret, Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s The Changeling and The Velvet Room. Harriet The Spy and Nancy Drew. These novels, devoured by a twelve-year-old only child who loved to read as much as she loved to write, shaped my future. These were the books that inspired me to write the Skylar Robbins series. I remember blissful Friday nights-–after watching the Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family—spent reading in bed. I couldn’t wait to crack open a new book, hold it in my hands, and read those exciting first words: Chapter One. My mom would make homemade molasses candy, each flat square individually wrapped in wax paper. A new Judy Blume book, a few pieces of molasses candy, a cat stretched out next to me, and maybe—a rainstorm? Now that was heaven!
I continued to write throughout high school, although by then my interest had turned more to music. I played guitar and sang, and began to write songs and poetry. By the time college rolled around my love affair with words was in full bloom, and I decided to major in Speech Communication. Linguistics, Journalism, Creative Writing…I can get a degree in this? Really? Sold! By then I was reading everyone from Ayn Rand to Stephen King, and after college I discovered Lee Child, John Grisham, and Robert Crais. I started to work on a rough draft of an adult novel, and analyzed the way they used foreshadowing and unexplained events to create suspense. When I wasn’t tapping out chapters on my computer, I was taking notes longhand on the techniques my favorite authors employed.
When I decided that I really wanted to write for the Middle Grade audience, I thought I’d better see what the current competition was like. Leaving the library giddy with an armload of Sarah Dessen and Deb Caletti novels made me feel like I was back in junior high, gleefully looking forward to a weekend full of glorious escape reading. I couldn’t wait to curl up with the first book, kick off my shoes, and dive in. No tablet or e-reader for me, just a fresh hardcover in my hands, smelling faintly of paper. Alternating between reading a greatly written MG or YA novel, getting a burst of inspiration for putting my own words down on paper, and blasting out a new chapter—that’s a rush I look forward to experiencing whenever I have free time. I might just have to whip up a batch of molasses candy. And I hope it’s going to rain.
Authors: like other creatives, we’re in a unique position. After spending months–maybe years–writing a book, designing a piece of art, or creating a musical score, we publish it for the world to read, see, or hear. And then, to critique on Social Media. Members of the general public (many of whom have never written, designed, or created anything) can mark us with one star, like a quick, red F on a report card. Devastating! Or is it?
When that first negative review comes, it can be crushing. How could this person not appreciate all the time and effort we put into our art? We threw a piece of our soul out there, and someone just stepped on it. A one star review adds an extra grind of the heel. Now it’s time to figure out why. Carefully read that review and look for clues. Remember that everyone was raised differently, with a wide spectrum of disparate beliefs and experiences that help form their opinions. Many of which differ wildly from ours.
One poor review I got was for my first Skylar Robbins novel: The Mystery of Shadow Hills. In this book, Skylar is stuck at her bullying cousin Gwendolyn’s house in Malibu for the summer, and forced to attend summer school where she doesn’t know a soul. In art class, a cool, creative girl named Kat befriends Skylar. Kat claims to be a junior witch, and introduces Skylar to “everything Wiccan.” They sneak down to the beach at midnight hunting for magic seeds, and cast spells together in a forgotten garden, intending to grow gems. By the end of the book, Skylar starts to question not only her friendship with Kat, but her own judgment. She wonders aloud whether everything magic and Wiccan Kat had introduced her was phony, slight of hand, and a series of hoaxes intending to fool Skylar for her own benefit. I inadvertently offended members of the Wiccan community with my portrayal of the witches and wizards in this novel.
Here is an excerpt from that long 2-star review which started out positive: “I did NOT like that the author felt compelled to label the Wiccan faith stereotypically, mainly as old women with rough hands and men who were socially inept, when there was a real opportunity here to be educational and accepting of the faith as much as she was accepting of person with disabilities.” When I took the reviewer’s perspective into account, the 2-star rating made total sense. It also made me revise Skylar’s opinion of “Wiccans” to “this group of Wiccans”. Look for keys to your reviewers’ personalities in their words. You might just find a priceless nugget of constructive criticism hidden there.
Finally, if you are still feeling down about a one or two-star rating, look up the works of some of your favorite authors on Amazon. I’ve been amazed that best-sellers also get poor ratings and reviews. How could everyone not have love that book as much as I did?! I think. Easy. They’re not me.
