Nafiza Azad: Hi, my name is Nafiza Azad and I am the author of The Wild Ones. I have had a love and hate relationship with Peter Pan and the Lost Boys. And I always wanted to write something inspired by that. So that's how the idea came. It veered off. It took a turn and became its own thing.

But the first idea for the book came from Peter Pan. That's why the main character is called Paheli. And the other main character is called that Taraana, so Tinkerbell. So that was my way. And the Wild Ones were inspired by the Lost Boys. I felt that there needed to be a sisterhood. There are many examples of brotherhood in the literature, but for some reason there's a dearth of sisterhood. This is my attempt to change that.

The Wild Ones has many characters, especially where the girls are concerned. And they're all very different people. What I wanted to show was that you don't necessarily always need to get along to be friends. Sometimes you might not get along. Sometimes you might disagree with each other, but that doesn't mean you hate each other. It just means you disagree. And I wanted to put that notion forward that when you are friends, conflicts are a natural progression of friendship. It's how you resolve those conflicts that determine your friendship and deepen your friendship.

For The Wild Ones in particular, the one thing that I hope that readers will take away from the book is that self care. That no matter how many bad things happen to you, you have the right to live a good life. That is the one thing that I am promoting through this book. If there's one thing to take away, I hope they take this message.

I'm going to share an excerpt from The Wild Ones. And this excerpt is titled An Introduction: Hold On to Your Hats.

We are The Wild Ones. We are made of whimsy and lemon.

We have the temerity to be not just women, but women of color. Women with melanin in our skin and voices in our throats. Voices that will not be vanquished. Not now, not ever. We will not be silenced.

Just in case it needs to be said, all you need to be a girl, to be a woman, is to decide you are one. Your gender is your decision.

There have been many of us over time and between times. We write glimpses of our stories and the lives we led before we became wild, in a Book of Memories. We share some of our stories, some of its pages, interspersed within Paheli's story.

Our lingua franca? Why, darlings, we speak all dialects of pain.

Paheli's story is our story. We will give it shape, allow it reason, fashion it wings, and watch it fly.

Now, are you ready? Take a deep breath. Let's be wild.