Blog Tour: THE RISE UP TRILOGY

THE RISE UP TRILOGY

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GENRE:  Young Adult Contemporary

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BLURB:

The Rise up trilogy is a coming-of-age story about Hashim, Alex and Maryam, three best friends on the threshold of adulthood. Before they can find their place in this world, they must come to terms with their past and learn to confide in each other as they are confronted by intolerance, ignorance, and corporate greed that threaten to rob them of their future. Inspirational, harrowing, intense and deeply moving, this trilogy presents a ray of hope amidst terrible hardship, misfortune and loss.

Book One: Catch You if You Fall

High school best friends Hashim, Alex, and Maryam must confront real-life issues that loom for Gen-Z today, including the climate crisis, corrupt politics, and racial and gender equity.

When Hashim turns eighteen, he receives a grant from his Mosque that will send him to an Ivy League in New York. His devout Muslim family couldn’t be more proud. And to support their young son on his journey, they arrange a wife for him. There’s only one problem: Hashim is gay.

Hashim’s best friend Alex is struggling with a difficult home life, a non-present father, and financial issues that prove particularly painful when all his friends are planning to go off to college and leave him behind.

Standing confidently alongside these two boys is Maryam, a headstrong Muslim girl who bucks her traditional roots by becoming a vegan activist.

It doesn’t take long until certain evil forces start to draw these three even closer, as their futures and the wellbeing of their community and the world is threatened. They are called to act.

Book Two:  Merry Farm

In the second installment of the Rise Up Trilogy, best friends Hashi, Alex, and Maryam stumble upon a huge government coverup. When more people get sicker and sicker, and nothing about the outbreak makes news, it becomes clear the corruption goes up high.

As the three attempt to expose and stop a tragedy that could kill thousands, they end up framed as the bioterrorists responsible for this exact crime, and a team of hitmen is dispatched to hunt them down. As they grapple with their own growing pains, Hashi, Alex, and Maryam hurry to outrun the disaster, prove that they are innocent, and do what they feel is right.

Book Three: Collusion

Now a well-known activist, Maryam, along with her two best friends Hashim and Alex, is chosen by the President of the United States to draw up a proposal to help fight climate change, mere weeks before superstorm Roxanne makes landfall in the Northeast.

After the President’s Future Rescue Advisory Board hears their climate proposal to set heavy taxes on meat, dairy and carbon emissions, and someone leaks it to the press, chaos spreads across party lines. A few months since they stopped a deadly virus in its tracks, the three uncover a conspiracy on the highest level of the legislative branch.

While the deadly hurricane wreaks havoc along the eastern seaboard, destroying the U.S. Naval Command in Norfolk, Virginia, and hitting New York City with devastating force, Maryam, Hashim, and Alex grapple with forces beyond their control in the government.

How will their stories unravel? What do their futures hold as they mature into adults in a world that may not accept them? Find out in this last book in the Rise Up Trilogy.

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Excerpt One:

From CATCH YOU IF YOU FALL

“And it’s going to happen tomorrow,” Hashim said as he crouched on the couch. 

Alex drew his brows closer, but soon his forehead smoothed. “Seriously?” he said and studied Hashim’s face. “Wow. We need to get you out of this mess.”

Sharing his predicament with his best friend had calmed Hashim’s nerves. Not that he had told the whole story, like the fact that he was gay. However, that was a piece of information he had only shared with God, though unwillingly, because from Him, you can’t hide a thing. 

Alex’s eyes grew wide. “But you’re just turning eighteen, for God’s sake. Isn’t it a little early to get engaged?” 

Hashim pressed his lips together and winced. You tell me. 

“His mom knows that once Hashim has committed to an engagement, he won’t break it,” Maryam said. She had been following the conversation from the other side of the room, giving the guys some space after she saw how upset Hashim was when he came in. “Without a solid religious reason to back out, that could shame the whole family,” she added. “People won’t greet you anymore or return your calls. You become a nobody.”

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Interview:

Where are you from? Tell us a little about yourself!

When I was a kid in Helsinki, Finland, I loved books about faraway countries. Since I was ten years old, my father would stack books on my desk to read. He probably saw that I loved to read, and I was very curious about the world. Then at the age of twelve I stumbled upon Siddhartha by Herman Hesse. It took place about two thousand five hundred years ago during the time of Siddhartha Gautama, aka Buddha, the namesake of the protagonist. There are a lot of similarities between this fictional character and Buddha, at least enough to get me very interested in Buddhism. This book really changed my life. I became aware of the spiritual world and the need to explore it further, and to do that, I needed to train my self-discipline, which I began by quitting candy and chocolate for year. I have continued this exercise in one form or the other all throughout my life. It also very much affected how I look at the world. I realized that it’s not important how different I am from the other people, but what I have in common with them. This new-born curiosity made me delve into different cultures and religions since my early teens and all the understanding I gained over the years through people I met was the cornerstone of how I became a writer in my thirties.   

Tell us about your book? How did it get started?

Years ago, I published a YA novel in Finland about three best friends at the threshold of adulthood. I wanted to find a publisher abroad but felt that something was missing. Since my early teens I’ve been fascinated by Islam. Sufism, the mystical sect of Islam, played a key role in my own spiritual awakening and spurred me to become a writer. Then one day as I was browsing books in a bookshop in Amsterdam, I came across Sex and the Citadel by Shereen El Feki about Arab sexuality, including the history of homosexuality in the Arab world. During the Golden Age of Islam, homosexual yearnings were very well tolerated, even celebrated among the poets, intellectuals and upper echelons of the society. What happened to this open-mindedness over the centuries really captivated my imagination, especially since I knew from Sufism how forgiving and merciful Islam is. The third big inspiration came from within as I became vegan myself and saw how for our diet, we are not only ruthlessly killing farm animals but also ourselves while destroying our planet in the process. 

What inspires and what got you started in writing?

I never thought I was going to be an author, although my two older brothers, my sister, my father, my grandfather and my great uncle were writers. In my early twenties, I founded an art servicing company, selling contemporary art, and after an initial success, I ventured out to real estate development and market researched. But something was not right. By living the high life, I was neglecting my spiritual needs. I decided to radically downsize and went back to university to study philosophy, because I was obsessed with the question of why it is so hard for us to expand our understanding. 

And when I found the culprit, I became a writer. It was supposed to be an essay on Rhetoric by Aristotle, but only after half an hour of writing, I knew it was going to be a full-length manuscript. End of Restlessness, a philosophical study into my own coming-of-age, was published in 2001. It attracted a lot of attention for its juicy autobiographical narrative but not for its philosophical contemplation. I realized that if I want to pass ideas onto my readers, I need to switch to fiction. 

I wrote several coming-of-age fiction manuscripts about people in their twenties and with two, I was already promised a publishing deals, which were later withdrawn. The publishers got cold feet in fear for a backlash from the critics and the rest of the literary community. I believe in “grand narrative”, a broad, overarching story or metanarrative that attempts to explain the nature of human existence, history, and culture instead of in postmodern literature that controls the publishing world in the west. Also, the publishers were expecting stories about Finnish people in Finland whereas I wrote about diverse people living in a multicultural world outside Finland. During this time, I was working as a volunteer in a Red Cross youth shelter in Helsinki, and I found my interactions with teens very rewarding. I got inspired, and I changed to young adult fiction where writing about spiritual growth was allowed, and I finally I got published.  

I wanted to take my manuscript abroad, but I felt that something was missing. Since my early teens I’ve been fascinated by Islam. Sufism, the mystical sect of Islam, played a key role in my own spiritual awakening. Then one day as I was browsing in a bookshop in Amsterdam, I came across Sex and the Citadel by Shereen El Feki about Arab sexuality, which included the history of homosexuality in the Arab world. During the Golden Age of Islam, homosexual yearnings were very well tolerated, even celebrated among the poets, intellectuals and upper echelons of the society in particular. What happened to this open-mindedness over the centuries really captivated my imagination, especially since I knew from Sufism how forgiving and merciful Islam is. Another big inspiration came from within as I had become vegan myself and saw how for our diet, we are not only ruthlessly killing farm animals but ourselves too, while destroying our planet in the process.

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AUTHOR Bio and Links:

Henrik Wilenius is the author of the Rise Up Trilogy, a young adult coming-of-age story about Hashim, Alex and Maryam confronting real-life issues like climate change, corrupt politics, animal cruelty and racial and gender equity. 

The Rise Up Trilogy is now available also as an audiobook and a weekly serialized audiobook podcast on all the major platforms. 

Previously, Henrik as published two books (an autobiographical coming of age book and a YA novel) by a major publisher (WSOY) in Finland before switching to English and self-publishing. The Rise Up Trilogy was inspired by his fifteen-year stint as a volunteer in a Red Cross Youth Shelter and by his vegan activism.

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BVJ1TNFG

Buzz Sprout: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2264640

Website: http://www.henrikwilenius.com

TikTok: http://www.tiktok.com/henrikwileniusauthor

Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/@henrikwileniusauthor

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GIVEAWAY INFORMATION and RAFFLECOPTER CODE

The author will award the winner’s choice of an audiobook set via Spotify or a digital book set of THE RISE UP TRILOGY.

a Rafflecopter giveaway