Authors from A to Z: X

Authors from A to Z is a posting challenge hosted by

Heather at Proud Book Nerd. The challenge is simple: each day for the month of June (except Sundays) share your favorite authors whose last name corresponds to the letter for that day.  
For more info, click the photo.

How I'm participating in the challenge:

This year I am going to try to highlight just one author each day that I am really taken with. If I can't come up with one, it may be a book, a song, or a surprise!

X = Ten

I got a little tricky on this one since I wanted to do something different from last year and still have it relate to books. It took me a while but I finally realized that a book I am eagerly awaiting, the new book by YA author Gretchen McNeil entitled Ten, was a number and therefore could be represented by the Roman numeral for that number, which happened to be X. How felicitous, yes?

I have been interested in McNeil's debut novel, Possess, since I heard about it, but because the WIP I'm currently writing has elements relating to possession, I didn't want to muddy the waters so I'm still putting it off. But McNeil is a fascinating person with an interesting how-she-got-here story, so I was extremely excited to find out that her next book was going to be a YA thriller/mystery. A premise I love and not relating to possession? Yes please!