THE RISE UP TRILOGY
Henrik Wilenius
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GENRE: Young Adult Contemporary
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BLURB:
The
Rise up trilogy is a coming-of-age story about Hashim, Alex and Maryam, three
best friends on the threshold of adulthood. Before they can find their place in
this world, they must come to terms with their past and learn to confide in
each other as they are confronted by intolerance, ignorance, and corporate
greed that threaten to rob them of their future. Inspirational, harrowing,
intense and deeply moving, this trilogy presents a ray of hope amidst terrible
hardship, misfortune and loss.
Book One: Catch You if You Fall
High
school best friends Hashim, Alex, and Maryam must confront real-life issues
that loom for Gen-Z today, including the climate crisis, corrupt politics, and
racial and gender equity.
When
Hashim turns eighteen, he receives a grant from his Mosque that will send him
to an Ivy League in New York. His devout Muslim family couldn’t be more proud.
And to support their young son on his journey, they arrange a wife for him.
There’s only one problem: Hashim is gay.
Hashim’s
best friend Alex is struggling with a difficult home life, a non-present
father, and financial issues that prove particularly painful when all his
friends are planning to go off to college and leave him behind.
Standing
confidently alongside these two boys is Maryam, a headstrong Muslim girl who
bucks her traditional roots by becoming a vegan activist.
It
doesn’t take long until certain evil forces start to draw these three even
closer, as their futures and the wellbeing of their community and the world is
threatened. They are called to act.
Book Two: Merry Farm
In
the second installment of the Rise Up Trilogy, best friends Hashi, Alex, and
Maryam stumble upon a huge government coverup. When more people get sicker and
sicker, and nothing about the outbreak makes news, it becomes clear the
corruption goes up high.
As
the three attempt to expose and stop a tragedy that could kill thousands, they
end up framed as the bioterrorists responsible for this exact crime, and a team
of hitmen is dispatched to hunt them down. As they grapple with their own
growing pains, Hashi, Alex, and Maryam hurry to outrun the disaster, prove that
they are innocent, and do what they feel is right.
Book Three: Collusion
Now a well-known activist, Maryam, along with her two best friends Hashim and Alex, is chosen by the President of the United States to draw up a proposal to help fight climate change, mere weeks before superstorm Roxanne makes landfall in the Northeast.
After
the President’s Future Rescue Advisory Board hears their climate proposal to
set heavy taxes on meat, dairy and carbon emissions, and someone leaks it to
the press, chaos spreads across party lines. A few months since they stopped a
deadly virus in its tracks, the three uncover a conspiracy on the highest level
of the legislative branch.
While
the deadly hurricane wreaks havoc along the eastern seaboard, destroying the
U.S. Naval Command in Norfolk, Virginia, and hitting New York City with
devastating force, Maryam, Hashim, and Alex grapple with forces beyond their
control in the government.
How
will their stories unravel? What do their futures hold as they mature into
adults in a world that may not accept them? Find out in this last book in the
Rise Up Trilogy.
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Excerpt
Three:
From COLLUSION
“Yes, let’s talk about protecting the American way,” Maryam
responded to the reporter. “Let’s talk about the Norfolk Naval Station in his
home state of Virginia. We were there only a few days ago. All it takes is some
rain and high tide, and a large part of the base goes underwater. And many of
the piers were out of operation for that reason. Like Norfolk, many other U.S.
navy bases have been built on lowlands by the water, and most of them are
literally sinking into the sea as we speak.”
Hashim bit down a smile from the sidelines. Maryam was going
head on. She had seen how well it worked with the President when Alex did it.
“But Senator Stevenson and his colleagues refuse to talk
about the biggest national security risk of our time, because it’s caused by
climate change. Senator Stevenson with his fellow climate change deniers in the
Senate are blocking all the attempts to fund any initiatives to address the
issue. So I truly wonder what or who is the real threat to the American way?”
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In the Rise Up
Trilogy, high school best friends Hashim, Alex, and Maryam must confront
real-life issues like climate crisis, animal rights, corrupt politics, and
racial and gender equity. Especially the first two are themes very seldom show
up in fiction. In this blog post, I want
to concentrate on one of them, the climate crisis.
The New York Times
best-selling author Jonathan Safran Foer wrote in his groundbreaking book We are the weather: “Climate change is
quite possibly the most boring subject the science world has ever had to
present to the public. It seems fundamentally impossible to pull the
catastrophe from over there in our contemplations to right here in our hearts.”
Blake Snyder, another one of my favorite authors, came up with a rule called
“Watch Out For That Glacier” in his popular Save The Cat! screenwriting book
series. In this rule, Snyder rails against having a
threat that’s looming in the background but isn’t here yet. It’s approaching
very slowly, like a glacier (global warming) that one must watch
out. There’s a lack of urgency that is vital for good drama. Maybe for
these reasons, there are plenty of non-fiction books about climate change but
very few fictional ones.
Every day we can read in the news about the
devastation extreme weather events provoke across the globe. UN
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres spoke at a conference held in the wake of
the devastating floods that left more than 9 million people homeless in
Pakistan in early 2023. According to him, we are on the road to climate ruin.
That same year, The New York Times reported that “Climate Shocks Are Making
Parts of America Uninsurable.” Dana R. Fisher writes in her epic non-fiction
book “Saving Ourselves” (2024) that the only we can save ourselves is with mass
mobilization that is driven by the pain and suffering of climate shocks around
the world. She coined the concept of AnthroShift which is needed to stimulate
it. In other words, something really bad needs to happen before we take action.
And what that bad could be, was what I started to work on in preparation to
writing Collusion, my climate change thriller.
However, it wasn’t enough to come up with natural disasters to make the story plausible. It needed political element too. A systematic change was needed, because it would not be believable that big part of the humanity would turn vegan anytime soon. I dug into the existing political landscape in the US and identified the forces that were against this systematic change. I didn’t have to invent it. It was already there staring at me in the centre of the legislative branch of the US government. All I needed was a bit of imagination and I was able to come up with a credible conspiracy to make my thriller thrilling. Then I made my heroes live through it and grow from the experience, and Collusion was born.
AUTHOR Bio and Links:
Henrik Wilenius is the author of the Rise Up Trilogy, a young
adult coming-of-age story about Hashim, Alex and Maryam confronting real-life
issues like climate change, corrupt politics, animal cruelty and racial and
gender equity.
The Rise Up Trilogy is now available also as an audiobook and a
weekly serialized audiobook podcast on all the major platforms.
Previously, Henrik as published two books (an autobiographical
coming of age book and a YA novel) by a major publisher (WSOY) in Finland
before switching to English and self-publishing. The Rise Up Trilogy was
inspired by his fifteen-year stint as a volunteer in a Red Cross Youth Shelter
and by his vegan activism.
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BVJ1TNFG
Buzz Sprout: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2264640
Website: http://www.henrikwilenius.com
TikTok: http://www.tiktok.com/henrikwileniusauthor
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/@henrikwileniusauthor
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GIVEAWAY
The
author will award the winner's choice of an audiobook set via Spotify or a
digital book set of THE RISE UP TRILOGY.
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