Danielle Stinson Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Danielle Stinson is a young adult fiction author from Virginia best known for her debut novel “Before I Disappear.” As a child, she grew up loving stories maybe because she spent a lot of time moving around the country with her family. Given that she came from a military family, she had to live in many locales and countries in North America and abroad, which meant that she never had the time to make friends. As such, she spent much of her time unpacking her boxes and reading her literary books before her father announced the next move. As a seventeen-year-old, she was just like the lead protagonist in her novel living in a military base in Germany. Her family also meant the world to her though unlike Rose her lead, the constant traveling had increased her yearning for adventure and she wanted to see what the world had to offer. During this time, she loved soccer, music, and books though she was much more of a listener/watcher rather than a creative that sought out the spotlight. Confident as could be and very mature thanks to all the pressure and having to change locales every few years, she was well prepared for the rough and tumble of publishing. “Before I Disappear” her first novel was published in 2019. She currently lives with her family in Virginia from where she writes her bestselling fiction for young adults.

While Stinson has been writing ever since she was a little girl, she was never interested in becoming a published author until she became a mother. When she got her first child, she was filled with emotion and passion and found it the transformative even that provided the inspiration she needed to jumpstart her writing career. Nonetheless, as a mom, she has a lot of challenges that include guilt and a lack of time which makes creativity very difficult. Since Stinson has four children, she often does not have much time to dedicate to writing. On the other hand, she also does not want to waste the precious moments she could spend with her children living on her computer and stressed out about a perfect manuscript. However, creativity calls for a lot of investment in time though the payoff can be huge when one is successful. To mitigate the disconnect between the two, she often dedicates a few hours in her schedule to just work on her novels and spends much of her time with her husband and children. While it is not a perfect system, she religiously adheres to it and this is what has made it possible for her to pursue a career as a professional author.

Danielle describes her novel “Before I Disappear” as an action-packed work of fiction with a science fiction twist yet set in the real world. The lead is a woman that risks everything to find her little brother and her mother after their small town disappeared. The spark for the novel came to her when she heard the lead protagonists Charlie and Ros talking to each other. She then dreamt of a city that disappeared under mysterious circumstances and combined the two into a manuscript for her debut. While much of the novel came from her dreams, she has found inspiration from other sources. She fell in love with storytelling from reading Doris Buchanan Smith’s “A Taste of Blackberries,” Ellen Raskin’s “The Westing Game,” Lois Lowry’s “Number the Stars,” John Steinbeck’s “East of Eden,” and Charles Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities.” She also loved everything by Cath Crowley and Melina Marchetta. These are just some of the novels that shaped her perspective on how to write novels and many of the concepts in these works are in “Before I Disappear.” Most of these novelists write mind-bending fiction and tell of truths stranger than fiction just like Stinson does.

Danielle has said that she writes science fiction since she loves doing it. It is her favorite thing in the world as she gets to imagine mind-bending twists in a contemporary world. Since she is a voracious reader, she knows how it is to flip through the pages feeling the mysterious pull of the unknown mysteries therein. When she got down to the writing of her debut novel, her only objective was to pen a story that would make the heart of her readers pound. As such, she wrote a story about a hamlet that goes missing leaving behind a girl desperately looking for it since her mother and little brother had been in it. At its heart, it is a novel about bonds that can never be broken but still has twists, mystery, and atmosphere in plenty.

Danielle Stinson’s novel “Before I Disappear” is the story of Rose who together with her brother Charlie and their mother moves from one city to another. They are looking for a safe place to live since they are running from a vicious enemy. When they arrive in Fort Glory, Rose tells their mother that it would make the perfect place for a new home. She gets a job at Rusty and works with journalists and several prominent people investigating the scientific organization named DARC. Rose tries her best to try to become a member of the community in their new home and wants her family to try too though it would be difficult for her brother who is very different from his peers. He hears sounds that no one else can hear and spends much of his time in an alternate reality inside his own mind. Recently he has been hearing about coming darkness and has told his sister about it, hoping she will do something about it. But Rose does not take him seriously since she believes that is just his usual bizarre way of putting things across. But she is forced to reckon with the reality of his dire warning when she leaves to go find some information in another city and comes back to find the city she called home is gone, together with her mother and brother. She now has to find a way to locate the city and bring back her family. It is a unique story of unbreakable love, science, and paranormal happening.