The Rise Up Trilogy by Henrik Wilenius, #ContemporaryYoungAdult #AnimalRights #ClimateChange #LGBTQ+ #Giveaway (3-Book Set in Audio or Kindle format) @GoddessFish @henrikwileniusauthor

A book blog tour from Goddess Fish Promotions.

Thank you to the author, publisher, and Marianne & Judy at Goddess Fish for providing me with the information for this tour.

Book Details

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 profoundly moving, this trilogy presents a ray of hope amidst terrible hardship, misfortune, and loss.

Catch You If You Fall by Henrik Wilenius
Series: The Rise Up Trilogy book 1
Published by Independent Author on February 11, 2023
Genres: Contemporary Fiction, Young Adult
Format: Audiobook, eBook, Paperback
Pages: 225

A thrilling, coming-of-age story with a queer protagonist about the power of friendship, overcoming harmful stereotypes, growing up in the shadow of family expectations, and discovering your true self.

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.

The first book in the Rise Up Trilogy, Catch You If You Fall is a page-turning and suspenseful story as well as a deeply moving ray of hope amidst the hardship and deep loss our youngest generation must face in order to find their place in this world.

Check out Merry Farm next in the series.

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Merry Farm: A standalone YA animal rights action thriller by Henrik Wilenius
Series: The Rise Up Trilogy #2
Published by Independent Author on March 15, 2023
Genres: Contemporary Fiction, Young Adult
Format: Audiobook, eBook, Paperback
Pages: 240

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.

The Rise Up Trilogy is a coming-of-age story about 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, as they are confronted by intolerance, ignorance, and corporate greed that threaten to rob them all of their future. Suspenseful, fast-paced, and heart-wrenching, this book is a call-to-action for all us.

Check out Collusion next in the series.

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Collusion: A YA climate change thriller by Henrik Wilenius
Series: The Rise Up Trilogy #3
Published by Independent Author on April 12, 2023
Genres: Contemporary Fiction, Young Adult
Format: Audiobook, eBook, Paperback
Pages: 212

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 from The Rise Up Trilogy

From COLLUSION

“Yes, let’s talk about protecting the American way,” Maryam responded to the reporter. “Let’s talk about the Norfolk Naval Station in his home state of Virginia. We were there only a few days ago. All it takes is some rain and high tide, and a large part of the base goes underwater. And many of the piers were out of operation for that reason. Like Norfolk, many other U.S. navy bases have been built on lowlands by the water, and most of them are literally sinking into the sea as we speak.”

Hashim bit down a smile from the sidelines. Maryam was going head on. She had seen how well it worked with the President when Alex did it.

“But Senator Stevenson and his colleagues refuse to talk about the biggest national security risk of our time, because it’s caused by climate change. Senator Stevenson with his fellow climate change deniers in the Senate are blocking all the attempts to fund any initiatives to address the issue. So I truly wonder what or who is the real threat to the American way?”

Excerpt provided by the author/publisher for use in this post.

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Purchase Links for The Rise Up Trilogy

The Rise Up Trilogy

Amazon Kindle Edition
Wilenius, Henrik (Author)
English (Publication Language)

The Rise Up Trilogy is also available in Paperback and Audiobook formats.

If the above links do not take you to your country’s Amazon page for The Rise Up Trilogy, please let me know, and I’ll gladly get you a link.

Using my link does not change the price you pay. Amazon pays me a minimal amount from their share, and every penny helps to support this blog.

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I love my Amazon Kindle Unlimited Subscription. So many books, so little time!

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About Henrik Wilenius

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.

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Guest Post by Henrik Wilenius, Author of The Rise Up Trilogy

Discuss the world you’ve created for the Rise Up Trilogy.

Each book of the Rise Up Trilogy has its own special setting where the story takes place. Unifying force in the series are three best friends and their character arc, but in this blog post, I would like to concentrate on just one world I created and that’s the meat industry and anything related to it, which is the theme of Merry Farm, my animal rights action thriller.

As I was querying Catch You If You Fall (book one) to literary agents in the United States, an idea started forming in my head to continue to write about Hashim, Maryam and Alex by extending their story into a trilogy, and by making one of three main characters starring in each book. As Hashim was the protagonist in Catch You If You Fall, on the next one, it would be Alex. I wasn’t yet ready for Maryam. I needed to get to know her better through my writing process.

At the time, I had been vegan for a few years, and I was reading a lot about animal cruelty, activism and the food industry. Besides reading, I loved to watch videos on YouTube. And then one day I came a across a black and white clip about German activists who broke into an egg farm. As I saw them walking along down a dark, long tunnel surrounded by crowded cages full of hens, an idea popped into my head. What would happen if those had been infected with bird flu? And I knew right away that I had found my story.

It took me only a day or two to come up with an outline for Merry Farm. I already knew my characters well enough to be able to imagine how they would react to a wide range of different situations. Using the skills I had learned in screenwriting, I was able to plot my story following a strict three-act structure I had picked up from Save the Cat! By Blake Snyder, the best screenwriting book series there is. Then I would draft it into a screenplay and after several rewrites, I would send it to different script doctors for feedback.

This back and forth would take several months and when I had done all that I could at that stage, I wrote it out into a novel form. This process was very liberating as I could now add the inner voice of my characters and elaborate the story line.

During this process, I was still reading a lot about animal rights, filling the book pages with my notes. It was very satisfying to be able implement these ideas I had found in them in my own writing. In the end of each book I read, I would always make a summarized list of my notes that I could always fall back on, when I needed more background information on any given story line or plot point.

Although it was a very rewarding time, it was also very exhausting as I would hear my characters’ voices in my head and feel with my whole body the emotions they were going through. I don’t think I could have made it through without following my strict writing discipline, but that’s a subject for another blog post.

My animal rights action thriller is probably the only YA fiction book out there where the principal action takes place on an egg farm, but I was not thinking about it when I was writing it. It all just came to me so naturally and the creative process was so intensive that I never thought how rare my choice of the location was. Because writing for me is a form of activism, it was an obvious choice, and in hindsight, very fitting too, as egg farms are the breeding grounds for fourteen out of the sixteen most potentially deadly virus epidemics threatening humankind.