Rysa Walker

Rysa Walker
Born	December 18 Pensacola, Florida
Occupation	Author
Period	2012-present
Literary movement	Young-Adult Fiction / Time Travel
Notable awards	Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award (2013)
Website
www.rysa.com

Rysa Walker is the winner of the 2013 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award and author of Young Adult novels Timebound, Time's Edge, and a novella entitled Time's Echo. After winning the Amazon Breakthrough award in June 2013, Walker received a publishing contract with Skyscape Publishing for the rest of the Chronos Files series, which are the only published novels she has currently written.

Early life

Rysa Walker was born in Pensacola, Florida. She lived in several different cities and towns in Florida before finally settling in Wewahitchka, Florida when she was 10 years old. When discussing where her passion for writing came from in an interview in 2014, Walker said, "I've been writing since I was a little kid." "(Also), most of the jobs I've held have involved some sort of writing, as well." Walker moved away from Florida when she was 17.

For graduate school, Walker attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and received a PhD in Political Science.

Career

On October 1, 2012, Walker published her first ever novel entitled Time's Twisted Arrow, which was a self-published, 351-page novel that was published with the help of Kindle Direct Publishing.

In January 2013, Walker decided to enter Time's Twisted Arrow into the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest for 2013, a book contest pitting 10,000 self-published and unpublished novels with a grand prize of $50,000 and a publishing contract being given to the winner of the contest, and a prize of $15,000 and a publishing contract being given to the four other finalists. Amazon.com had changed up a lot of the prizes and awards from previous years, as previously the grand prize winner would receive only $15,000.

On May 21, 2013, it was announced that Time's Twisted Arrow was a finalist for the 2013 award and that now due to Amazon's official rights over portions of the book, it would be called Timebound instead of Time's Twisted Arrow. Also, a new cover was officially released for Timebound. On June 15, 2013, it was announced that Timebound had won the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, and that Walker would receive the grand prize award, along with a contract with Skyscape Publishing, which was another changeup in the award, as previously the grand prize winner would receive a contract with Penguin Books USA.

After she won the award, Walker quit her day-job working as a professor for the University Of Maryland University College so that she could focus full-time on writing.

Timebound, the first novel in the Chronos Files series, was released on December 1, 2013 for Kindle users with the use of the Kindle First program, and was officially released in print on January 1, 2014. The book rose nearly instantly in the Amazon Kindle charts, at one point reaching #2 and remaining steadily in the Top Ten for all Kindle books for the first one to two weeks after its publishing. The sales began to die down a little bit after that, but it still remained in the Top 100 for the next few months on Kindle lists.

Timebound is a Young-Adult, fictional novel that resides heavily in the "Time Travel" genre for books, as the book's plot revolves around that common theme.

In the novel, 17-year-old Kate has to deal with sudden time shifts that cause members of her family to vanish. She figures out that she is the only one who can save half the population from an evil religious group called the Cyrists, led by a man named Saul, who is the genetic grandfather of Kate.

With the initial success of Timebound, Walker released a novella on April 25, 2014 called Time's Echo to provide some background information on some of the events that occurred behind the storyline of Timebound.

On October 21, 2014, Walker released Time's Edge, the second novel in the Chronos Files series, which depicts Kate's quest to save the Earth from Cyrist conquest.

On October 20, 2015, Walker released Time's Divide, which is the third novel in the Chronos Files series.

For each of Walker's novels and her novella, audiobooks have been released on Audible.com. Timebound's audio book was released on January 1, 2014, the same day as its official publication, and was narrated by Kate Rudd. The audio book for Time's Edge was released on October 21, 2014 and was also narrated by Rudd. Time's Echo's audio book was released on June 12, 2014, and was narrated by Nick Podehl.

Personal life

Rysa Walker is a pen name used for her novels. She uses it as a pen name because it is an easier name for readers to remember than her actual name. Walker currently lives in Cary, North Carolina with her husband, her two sons, and a golden retriever named Lucy. She was an online professor at many online university courses before becoming a full-time writer in 2013, and she also had interest in multimedia web development at one point.