Get to know Gillian

Hi, my name is Gillian. My co-creaters, D. Jean Quarles and Austine Etcheverry have asked me to share a little about my life in order for you to get to know me better.  After thinking and thinking about the topic I have chosen to describe to you how awful it is to move to a new place in high school.

When my parents told me we would be leaving the sunny Arizona desert to go to a town in Wyoming, I thought I was going to lose my marbles.  In fact, I asked my parents if it was a joke.  Here I was a sophomore in High School and they wanted me to leave my friends, my debate team. Actually they were telling me to leave my whole life behind and instead buy a winter parka.  My mom said I would love the hiking and skiing, the fishing and the backpacking.  All I could feel were the wet socks and the disaster coming my way.  I had no desire to live with cows or attend a rodeo.  I thought my future was going to end.

When I first arrived there it was actually worse then I had imagined.  People drove through town as if they had nowhere to be.  Kids wore cowboy hats and the biggest belt buckles I'd ever seen.  They talked with an accent I struggled to understand.  And then, it got even worse.  I joined the debate team.  It was a team of twenty students who all did multiple events.  I only ever competed in one event. At my first meet, people greeted each other as if they had known each other all their life, which I quickly found out was true.  These kids had been attending volleyball, soccer, debate meets and other sporting events together since they were probably in diapers.  It was quickly explained to me that there were only so many students therefore; a lot of them participated in multiple events. 

 The hardest part of moving to Wyoming, though, wasn’t the sports, or the way people spoke there, or even making new friends. The hardest part of moving was when I realized my clothes and shoes were obsolete.  I had never been one to necessarily spend time shopping or fussing over my outfits, but I sure didn’t think snow boots were a fashion statement I'd enjoyed making. And the winter coats that were pretty, were not near warm enough when that first cold day in Jackson hit.   I instantly knew on that day, that warm would drop style any day.

Read more about Gillian's life in Flight From the Water Planet, Book 1 of the Exodus Series.