Hi everyone! Today we’re interrupting our regularly scheduled series of Her Story posts this month as Pop! Goes The Reader hosts the exclusive cover reveal of The Pioneer by 2019 debut author, Bridget Tyler! Coming to a bookstore and library near you March 5th 2019 from HarperTeen, The Pioneer tells the story of Joanna ‘Jo’ Watson, a cadet pilot in the International Space Agency who has left Earth with her family in order to establish a new world on the planet of Tau Ceti E with devastating, surprising and rewarding results. The cover of The Pioneer was designed by Jenna Stempel-Lobell and the accompanying jacket photograph was taken by Jalese Ayana. In addition to today’s cover reveal, Bridget has been kind enough to allow me to share a few other exciting exclusives with you, including an author’s note, except from the novel, and an opportunity for one lucky reader to win an advance reader copy of The Pioneer! Please read on to learn more!
About Bridget Tyler
Bridget Tyler grew up in Berkeley, California and went to school in New York and London before coming home to California to begin a career as a storyteller in the film and television business. She lived and worked in Los Angeles for over a decade. After starting her writing career on Burn Notice she produced her first original pilot, Horizon, for Universal Television and USA Network with Gale Anne Hurd, Producer of The Terminator and The Walking Dead. She has since developed pilots for USA, FOX, AMC, WBTV, and BBC-AMERICA. She lives in Oregon with her husband, a Robotics Professor at Oregon State University, and her daughter, a toddler who loves to sing.
When I went to visit the Space Shuttle Endeavor at the California Science Center I walked into the hanger, looked up…and burst into awestruck tears. Like Joanna Watson, the damaged hero at the center of this book, I’ve dreamed of the stars for as long as I can remember. But it was the shadows of distant planets captured by the Kepler Space Telescope that inspired this book. We don’t know much about them, but even the tiniest spark can build a fire…or a new world.
The Pioneer takes place on Tau Ceti e, a real planet in orbit of a real star called Tau Ceti that’s a little less than twelve lightyears away. We know very little about it, except that it has the potential to support life. Building my version of Tau is the product of several trips to National Parks, hours of research, and a lot of weird questions asked of people who do really cool stuff for a living. I enjoyed every second of it, but this book isn’t about Tau. It’s about a young woman coming to terms with her family, and with herself. Jo Watson’s daily life is more exciting than mine, or yours. (Unless you’re reading this from a distant, uncharted planet in which case…AWESOME, please tell me everything and I want pictures) But Jo’s adventurous lifestyle doesn’t change the fact that she’s an ordinary girl with ordinary issues. She’s struggling to understand her overwhelming mother and live with her prickly, judgmental sister. She’s trying to figure out what she’s going to do when she grows up. She’s falling in love at a totally inconvenient time. She’s facing an uncertain future that she doesn’t feel prepared for…and learning that the truth about her world and her society is far more complicated than she knew.
I’m a screenwriter, so getting to tell a story from inside a character’s head has been such an exciting and deeply emotional experience. I can’t wait to share Jo, and her world, with all of you. And I’m thrilled that I FINALLY have the all-clear to show off our amazing cover art, designed by Jenna Stempel-Lobell and photographed by Jalese Ayana.
I’d love to hear what you all think! You can find me at my website or on Twitter or Instagram.
I grab Beth’s hand and tug her along as I follow Mom to the airlock. Dad comes to stand beside us as Mom pulls up the lock screen, then turns to face the crowd.
“My friends! We have come to the edge of humanity’s newest frontier.” She unseals the airlock doors behind her. “I can think of only one thing to say.”
Brilliant sunshine floods in as the airlock swings open and the landing ramp unfolds, smacking down into chunky, silver-brown soil. I expect Mom to start walking down the ramp. Instead, she looks to me and makes a go ahead gesture.
She wants me to go first.
Adrenaline surges over me. This is the moment. The moment we’ve been working toward my whole life. The moment Teddy died for. The moment we truly become pioneers.
Miguel nudges me. “Dude. You’re killing the mood.”
I walk through the airlock and step out into the sunlight. My heart is pounding so hard it’s overwhelming my pacers. I can hear the blood thudding against my eardrums, and hot white sparks are dancing in the corners of my vision.
I reach the bottom of the ramp.
Mom calls out, “This is one small step for a young woman…”
My sneaker presses into the soft soil of Tau Ceti e.
“And one giant leap for humankind!”
I can hear the roar of cheers behind me. But I don’t look back.
I turn my face up to the cloud-speckled sunlight and breathe in air that smells like salt and pine sap and something I don’t have a name for yet. I am standing on a new world. Our world. And just for this moment, nothing else matters.
We’re finally here.
Title The Pioneer
Author Bridget Tyler
Pages N/A
Intended Target Audience Young Adult
Genre Science Fiction
To Be Published March 5th 2019 by HarperTeen
Find It On Goodreads
When Jo steps onto Tau Ceti E, it should be the happiest moment of her life. After all, she’s been training for as long as she can remember to be a cadet pilot in the International Space Agency. She’s dreamed of the day she and her family would leave Earth forever and begin life as pioneers on a new planet.
But now she can’t stop thinking of everything that has gone wrong on their mission: the terrible accident that nearly destroyed their craft, that set their voyage back years, that killed her brother, that left her unable to fly…
As Jo struggles to live with her grief and figure out who she’s going to be now, she falls in love with her new world. It isn’t hard. Jo’s team is camped out by a pristine, tumbling river at the base of a mountain range that looks like huge prisms buried in the prairie. The soring crystal peaks transform every sunset into rainbows full of colors human eyes have never seen before. And that’s just the beginning. Tau offers Jo and her family a lifetime of beauty and adventure.
Jo throws herself into helping her team, lead by her commander mother, establish their community on this amazing new world. But just when she starts to feel like her old self again, she uncovers a devastating secret her mother has been keeping from her people. A secret that could destroy her family’s pioneering dreams…if they survive that long.
With the fate of the pioneers in her hands, Jo must decide how far she’s willing to go to expose the truth — before the truth destroys them all.
As an extra, exciting bonus, Bridget has been kind enough to offer one lucky reader the opportunity to win an advance reader copy of The Pioneer! One winner will be chosen at random at the conclusion of the giveaway and the prize will be distributed by Bridget when ARCs become available. This contest is open to residents of the US and Canada. Please fill out the Rafflecopter form below to enter!
