Amie Kaufman: Hi, my name is Amie Kaufman and I am the co-author of The World Between Blinks.

Ryan Graudin: Hi, my name is Ryan Graudin and I am the co-author of The World Between Blinks.

Amie Kaufman: So the moment we had the idea for this story and the moment we decided to write a book together, were actually the same moment. We both share a literary agent and she put up this article online about an island that had appeared off the coast of North Carolina. Just the tides and the sandbars had come together to create this island and there was no one on it, just shark's teeth and whale bones and a couple of very brave plants. The National Park Service said, "It's only going to be there for a little while and then it will be gone again forever."

And then Ryan chimed in and said, "Well, if you think an island that appears and disappears is cool, you're going to love this lighthouse that is just off the coast of South Carolina where I live." And the Morris Island Light, which is on the cover of the book, is a real lighthouse that used to be on the land and, over the many, many years, all the land has eroded away until it now just rises from the sea guarding a lost land that isn't there anymore. When Ryan and I heard that first story and she added that second story I shot her an email straight away. And Ryan, I remember it said, "So we're going to write this, right?" You emailed me straight back, right?

Ryan Graudin: Yeah. It was a one word answer. It was, "YES!" in all caps. We decided, first thing, Amy is much more experienced at co-writing than I was. This is the first book I've ever co-written. And so she went into it saying, "We really need to each have a character and each own this character's point of view." So we started off with our own characters. My character was Marisol and Amy's cousin was Jake. And so we decided that we wanted their dynamic to be cousins who were playing at their grandmother's beach house and who wanted to have an adventure together. We wrote this book. . . . It's a really fun adventure and it's really lighthearted, but there's also an undercurrent of these cousins they're dealing with the loss of their grandmother. They're dealing with grief. And so when they're exploring this world of lost things and trying to find their way back home, they really have to come to terms with what it means to lose something and what it means to process that grief.

Amie Kaufman: I think one of the amazing things about reading books is we get to see that other people are also having that same experience and asking those same questions. So sometimes the books give us the answers and sometimes the books just tell us we're not on our own. And I think both of those things have mattered to me a lot as a reader. So I hope The World Between Blinks helps some reader with that as well.

Ryan Graudin: And now I'd like to introduce you to The World Between Blinks:

The World Between Blinks is always there.

It is everywhere and it is nowhere.

It is in every wreck, every abandoned lot, every city block, every scraggly patch of woods. It's the place you glimpse out of the corner of your eye, reflected in rain puddles and car windows. Blink. There and gone. Shoved just beyond the streetlight's reach.

People see it every day, but they rarely pay attention. The grown-ups are too busy doing grown-up things -- like ordering coffee or picking up dry cleaning -- to stop and look, really look. Most kids are too distracted to examine it for long. They see the boarded windows and the DANGER: KEEP OUT sign posted by the entrance, and they shrug and go on with their lives.

Most kids.

But there are those who pause a little longer. The daydreamers -- kids with burrs on their socks, who name sticks after legendary swords and call out the names of lost cities in their sleep.

They stare into the dark places: blink, blink.

They see.