If you are looking for a thrilling novel to shake off those winter blues, have we got something for you! From Brittney Morris, the bestselling author of ‘SLAY’ and one of the writers behind the recent video game hit Spider-Man 2, comes an action-packed novel sure to jump-start your senses. ‘The Jump’, out February 27, is an exciting YA novel that follows a team of working-class teens as they compete in a dangerous scavenger hunt with high stakes.
Jax, Yas, Spider, and Han make up Team Jericho, the best scavenger hunting team in Seattle. Each member has their own specialty – Jax does the puzzles, Yas does parkour, Spider is the hacker, and Han is the team cartographer. But with an oil refinery being built in their neighborhood, they’re all having their own problems as their families are at risk for losing their jobs, communities, and homes.
When The Order, a mysterious vigilante organization, takes over the scavenger hunting forum and puts forth their own puzzle with its reward being a promise of influence, Team Jericho jumps at the opportunity. But Team Jericho isn’t the only one competing, and it won’t be easy to beat their rivals.
It is the perfect book to get kids reading and a great pick for Black History Month. In case you are not yet familiar with Brittney’s work, she is an acclaimed author and video game writer. Her bestselling work includes ‘The Cost of Knowing’, and Marvel’s ‘Spider-Man: Miles Morales – Wings of Fury’. In the video games world, Brittney has contributed to projects such as The Lost Legends of Redwall, Subnautica: Below Zero, Spider-Man 2 for PS5, and Wolverine for PS5. Brittney is an NAACP Image Award nominee, an ALA Black Caucus Youth Literary Award winner, and an Ignite Award Finalist.
An avid reader and gamer, we had the chance to catch up with Brittney before the release of ‘The Jump’, to get familiar with her writing, her process writing for games vs books, and why diverse representation in her characters is important to her.
Where did your writing journey begin, and what books or piece of literature made you fall in love with this medium?
I fell in love with writing when I was 9 years old. My 4th grade teacher gave us a simple journal assignment: write a single page about your life. Since I was abused at home and bullied at school, there was no WAY I was spending time recalling any of that, so I made up characters and turned in 7 pages of fiction instead. I’ve been writing for fun, eventually for work, and for escapism, ever since.
I didn’t fall in love with books until post college, but early on, I fell in love with stories from other mediums like Avatar the Last Airbender, Super Mario Sunshine, and Teen Titans. I loved watching the characters develop and getting so lost in the world they lived in.
Your new novel is a YA story called ‘The Jump’. How did the idea for this come about, and what excited you to write it?
I first came up with the concept for The Jump when I saw a mini documentary about a real-life cryptology scavenger hunt called the Cicada 3301 puzzle. Launched under mysterious circumstances with a mysterious leader behind it, I realized how much I wanted a story about teens taking on such circumstances, and so was born the story of The Jump!
What is your writing process usually like – Can you walk us through how your stories and characters are formed and how you bring it all together?
My story ideas can come from anywhere! Sometimes they start as a question, like SLAY did. “What would happen if a teenager created a Wakanda-inspired all-Black virtual reality gaming space?” which naturally led to the question, “Who would have a problem with that?” And it turns out those kinds of questions can have 50,000-word answers. Other times, my stories come from half an idea or an image or character I can’t get out of my head. Once I have a basic concept fleshed out, I draft a 1-page outline in 24 hours, and then race to finish the first draft as fast as I can before my inner editor can get ahold of the story.
There’s a strong theme of youth empowerment, going up against a proverbial “goliath” in ‘The Jump’. What do you want to inspire in readers, especially youth, through this book?
I never create anything with a hope of inspiring my readers, only to show them a new perspective, offer new outlooks and new questions, pull them out of what they’re used to. And I hope with everything I write, including The Jump, readers see themselves in my characters and find the strength to fight for what they believe in. We need more compassionate people doing that.
Along with your books, you are also a video game writer. Can you tell us a bit more about what this involves, and how different the process is from books?
The process of video game writing varies by game! I wrote a choose-your-own adventure game with Soma Games called The Lost Legends of Redwall: The Corsair’s Last Treasure, which wasn’t unlike writing a 25k-word novella with dialogue trees. We were also a team of two, so it was a matter of drafting and addressing notes between us for a few months.
Writing Subnautica: Below Zero was a slightly larger team rewriting an original draft, with an open world and a golden path story throughout. Working with Insomniac has been my first experience writing on a large team with over a dozen writers all critiquing each other’s work, and my first time writing in screenplay format!
The main difference I’ve found between writing books vs. video games is this: in video games, the player is also a storyteller. With books, readers encounter content linearly – from page 1 to the end. In a video game, especially open world ones, every player accumulates information at a different pace, in a different order, with different amounts of backstory and knowledge of game mechanics, and game writers account for all of them as we craft our stories!
Your books feature protagonists who are young people of color predominantly, in worlds that are not necessarily built for them to survive, yet they find ways to thrive. Can you talk about representation and what it means to you personally?
Frankly, the real world isn’t built for young people of color to survive. But they do anyway, every single day, and they need to know they’re not alone. That’s one of the big reasons why representation is important. The other is for the kids who don’t see themselves in stories about marginalized people. If we don’t show our children new perspectives and experiences, we are miseducating them by omission.
You can pre-order a copy of ‘The Jump’ HERE, and follow Brittney Morris on Instagram.
