About the Book:
Bestselling YA author Melinda Salisbury exposes the dark underbelly of new technologies in this gripping thriller.
When keen gamer Ivy Finch is sent to the Ash Tree Foundation after an online encounter turns dangerous, all she can think about is getting through the internet-safety course her parents have signed her up for and going back to her life. Until she meets Conrad O’Connell, famous influencer and nephew of the Ash Tree Foundation’s founder Dagmar Nilsson.
Conrad showers Ivy with attention and she soon finds herself drawn into his world and his work with his aunt. But Conrad isn’t telling Ivy the whole truth about the Foundation’s purpose, and Ivy is exactly what he, and the Foundation, have been looking for…
Blurb taken from Goodreads. Add to your shelves here. Read Sifa’s review here. Find this book on Bookshop.org (affiliate link).
About the Author:
Melinda Salisbury is the four-time Carnegie nominated and bestselling author of multiple teen and young adult novels, including the Sin Eater’s Daughter series, Hold Back the Tide, and Her Dark Wings, a Guardian Children’s Book of the Year 2022 and a Reading Agency Book of the Year 2022 pick. Her debut teen novel, EchoStar, a tech thriller aimed at 12–14-year-olds, was published in March 2024 by Barrington Stoke, with AdelAIDE following in August 2024 and The Foundation publishing in January 2025.
When not writing, Melinda works as a writing mentor and development editor, and volunteers at a local independent cinema on the East Sussex Coast. Her agents are Claire Wilson at Rogers, Coleridge and White Literary Agency, London, and Pete Knapp at Park and Fine Literary and Media, New York.
Interview:
THE FOUNDATION is your third techno-thriller about teenagers and new technologies. What made you decide to write about the promise – and dangers – of technology? How did you approach balancing the positives and potential pitfalls of technology?
I tried to be honest. I like tech a lot – in many ways it does make life easier and more fun on a day-to-day basis and we’re at a point now where trying to live without it, or even minimise it, is really challenging. But I’m also becoming more and more aware of what I might have lost because I think most tech operates best in a bubble created by and for an individual; even our self-developed social media is more focused on broadcasting something the poster wants to focus on, rather than creating something collaborative and communal. Mostly, I wanted to explore what we we’re losing when we give ourselves over to tech without asking what it’s getting from us in return from it. This was always the central theme of all the books – what are you giving up to get this shiny, amazing thing you thought you needed? What is costing you? And, knowing the cost and what you’ve lost, is it still worth it?
When writing this series, were there any pieces of emerging or new technology that you considered including but didn’t? And if so, why?
Unfortunately I’m not going to answer this as I might want to write about it in the future and don’t want to spoil anyone! But suffice to say every time I think I’ve dreamed up the worst possible case scenario that emerging or new tech could follow, it turns out that a tech company is already working on it. It seems I can’t imagine horrors fast or novel enough to keep up with reality.
THE FOUNDATION is a bit of an “Avengers Assemble” book in that it brings together the heroines from ECHOSTAR and ADELAIDE as well as an all new main character Ivy. Was it difficult to balance returning characters with the story’s focus on a new narrator?
Not at all! I knew when I pitched the books I wanted them to be intertwined, and that Ruby and Freya’s parts in Ivy’s story would be supporting cast only – it was always going to be Ivy’s story. My main concern was making sure you could read any of the three books without needing to have read the others, especially THE FOUNDATION because of the way it brings some elements together, but you could read THE FOUNDATION without reading ECHOSTAR or ADELAIDE—though you’ll get a richer experience if you read all three!
THE FOUNDATION explores virtual reality, a long-standing idea in science fiction and as such many authors have taken the concept down different paths. What made you choose the route you have in this book around long periods of immersion?
Because I think it’s where we’re heading. Social media companies and websites are designed to make sure you spend as much time as possible engaging with them, that you are motivated to stay on them, to keep clicking and watching and liking and replying. They use algorithms to present you with an endless stream of customised content – a little world, just for you, full of the things you like best – designed to keep you there, consuming it almost unconsciously. And even if you do manage to close the app, the urge to return is often immediate and overwhelming; partly through fear of missing something if you don’t, but also because the real world doesn’t cater to you as directly as the online world does. It’s comforting to be in your own special world.
I feel that, for most people, modern reality simply isn’t as validating or entertaining as an app or website is, and people, it turns out, love to be validated and entertained. I worry it’s only a matter of time before prolonged immersion that excludes the real world completely is coming soon – that, like Ivy in the book, a world completely of her own making is much more appealing that reality. It’s the natural next step in growing the attention economy, as far as I can see.
As teen thrillers, ECHOSTAR, ADELAIDE, and THE FOUNDATION are in a different space to your previous books (YA fantasy). What particularly drew you to write this new space and were there any challenges associated with the change?
I’ve wanted to write for Barrington Stoke for so long because I think the world of what they do (see below for more fawning), but I couldn’t think of any ideas that were strong enough in the right way to work with their requirements – for me, the biggest obstacle being wordcount; as you’ll see from these answers, brevity and succinctness are not my strong points when I have something to say!
I had the base ideas for these books while reading a lot around how rapidly and uncontrollably technology is advancing and developing, wildly outpacing legislation and even understanding at times, and I knew I finally had something I could make work for Barrington Stoke – something relevant and exciting and interesting. I wanted to write in the teen area especially, partly because they’re the first generation to live in a world with this much constant and pervasive tech – they’ve never known lives without the internet, this is their world, this is what they know. They never got to live lives that were just theirs.
But also because I’d seen so many parents and teachers and librarians complain that their 11 to 15-year-olds were being abandoned by the publishing industry as it focused on the more marketable MG and YA areas – teen, like new adult, seems to occupy this liminal space no one quite knows how to navigate, even though those readers are crying out for books that speak to them. And I knew from reading Barrington Stoke books that, even aside from the work they do for dyslexic and reluctant readers, they do a lot of work in the teen space, and so it was the obvious and only choice for these books. If they’d have me!
THE FOUNDATION is your third book with Barrington Stoke (the UK’s specialist publisher in accessible books for children and teens.) What was it like working with them and was the writing process any different because of crafting a tale with accessibility in mind?
Honestly, it’s been my favourite publishing experience so far. Everything about the way Barrington Stoke curates its books—from choosing the authors and stories they publish, to the editing process, to the font and paper used in the physical product— is chosen to make reading as easy and pleasurable as possible, especially for children and teenagers for whom reading books isn’t always natural or easy. Publishing often can often feel quite cynical, with its focus on blurbs and comp titles and marketing budgets and sales figures and all the shiny, noisy things that come with it—sometimes you can forget it’s actually about a book, about a story—but that’s not the case working with Barrington Stoke. As an experience it feels more artisanal and cultivated – they exist to get books directly into reader’s hands and help them find joy in reading and I love that so much. I’m so proud to say I’m a Barrington Stoke author.
And for me, the crafting is no different. My job is always and only to write a thought-provoking, complex and dynamic story, so I write for Barrington Stoke the way I write everything. Even the editing process is the largely same – all my editors ever want to do is help me tell my story as clearly and cleanly as possible, so my audience can get maximum benefit from it; the only difference is the audience Barrington Stoke caters to has different needs to other readers, so my Barrington Stoke editors help me develop my story with that in mind.
These thrillers really make readers think about the use of technology in our lives. Are there any changes you think we need in regard to technology and publishing?
I think as professionals we need our unions to start fighting very hard yesterday for better protections for both authors and readers about how, where and why tech, especially AI-based tech, is used in the creation of books. I’m scared about what the future holds for publishing and for readers if we start to rely on it too much. For me, the art of telling stories is fundamentally human, if we end up divorced or distanced from that then we’re going to lose ourselves in the process. We’re already so disconnected from each other and disenfranchised from our own lives. We can’t afford to lose our ability to tell and receive stories.
Please can you recommend a UKYA book for readers?
Patrice Lawrence’s PEOPLE LIKE STARS is a wonderful, authentic and funny mystery about secrets and family and how we learn to deal with the past and move on from it. I adored it.
Thank you so much for talking to us!
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