OCHS grad is three books into YA series

Upper Township native wrote first book in senior year, put it aside

By DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff

OCEAN CITY – Kelly Brady Channick, a former Ocean City High School basketball player who loved to amuse her teammates with stories on bus rides back from away games, has published three young-adult books this year.

They are part of a planned seven-book, cozy mystery series about four young friends set in a fictionalized resort like Ocean City.

Channick, a 2009 OCHS graduate who grew up in Upper Township, has had the writing bug since first grade. She wrote in her journal every day through high school and finished the first book in the series while still a senior, then put it away for a handful of years because she was too busy.

“I wrote it completely my senior year of high school,” Channick said. “I did it on the side. It wasn’t for school. I was always telling stories to my friends and they would joke, ‘You should write this down.’”

After playing basketball for the Red Raiders, then in college at Holy Family, where she majored in elementary special education, Channick became a teacher and got married. She and husband Ryan had their first child about 18 months ago. Ryan urged her to get back to writing. She dusted off the book she wrote in high school and began revising it.

“I didn’t touch (my book) for four or five years. My boyfriend at the time, who is now my husband, must have gotten tired of me talking about it over and over again, said, ‘Why don’t you just write it out and see what happens?’ When I went back to reread it, I realized how much work it needed and everything I needed to fix. I said, ‘Why not just sit down now and outline the whole series. I pictured it being seven books from their first year (in high school) to the summers in-between.”

While she was outlining, she realized she could put tidbits into one book that would figure in a later book and that readers would pick up on that as they went through the series.

The series is based on Ocean City, but it is fiction, Channick said. “It’s a small seaside town with a boardwalk and a beach. Because I wrote (the first book) as a senior I named it Asbury because my favorite bookstores were on Asbury Avenue.” 

She spent time working on the first three books, editing and revising them and having others look them over. The first one came out in February of this year, just before the quarantines went into effect. 

The characters

The books revolve around four friends. The first one is set when they’re just starting high school. Two of them, Maddie and Cornelious, are star athletes, Channick explained, Carly is a competitive cheerleader and socialite who loves to gossip (but not in a mean way) and knows how to get information. Pilot is a computer whiz and tech genius who can hack anything. 

They’re so busy in the first book – “Asbury High and the Thief’s Gamble” – they don’t have time for each other, but after a string of thefts happen in Asbury they use that as an excuse to get together. After one of their family members gets arrested for the crime, they decide to take it more seriously and try to solve it, but find it’s not as easy as it seems on TV.

As Channick writes in a blurb, they’re constantly sidestepping policemen, outsmarting a local bully and his gang and dealing with Cornelious’ billionaire father who doesn’t like his son’s choice of friends.

“There are lots of twists and turns and adventures,” Channick assures readers. She said fans of Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys and Scooby Doo will will enjoy these books.

The second book starts in the summer after freshman year and goes quicker, Channick said, because the characters have been introduced. In “Asbury High and the Parcels of Poison,” the four teens wonder if their favorite hangout, Brady’s, is to blame for a spate of food poisonings or is something more sinister to blame?

The third book, which came out in September – “Asbury High and the MisTaken Identities” – has the quartet going back to school for their sophomore year but enmeshed in another mystery when many residents of the town find their bank accounts depleted with no hint of foul play. Channick said with “possible new relationships blooming, dating and unrealized jealousies coming to the surface, the teenage sleuths find themselves more distracted than ever.”

Early writing and influences

“I have this aunt who ever since I can remember in first grade would give me a journal and say, ‘You should write every day.’ My friends think it’s amazing that I’ve written in a journal since first grade and that I had written every single day in high school. And now I still keep a daily journal.”

That first journal is from 1998. “I actually still have it. It’s a ‘Rugrats’ journal,” she said. The first entry is about her first baby cousin being born. “I spelled everything wrong. I was just so excited,” she laughed. “Now he’s 23 and it’s kind of funny to look (back) at that.”

 She said in high school she and her teammates would be serious on bus rides to away games as they focused on what was ahead, but because the Red Raiders teams would frequently win, the mood was much lighter on the way back.

“I would make up a story about someone we saw in the audience” or about something else. It was a way to pass the time “because you’re on the bus for like an hour.”

Channick said when she started the first book, the “Twilight” movies featuring sparkling vampires and werewolves were popular, but she missed “good old-fashioned mysteries where you can believe what happened and you kind of grow up with the characters.”

Growing up she loved Scooby Doo, Nancy Drew and Encyclopedia Brown. Those were her inspirations and she enjoys when readers tell her that her books remind them of that. She also loves the Harry Potter series because of the way the characters mature.

She said unlike many young adult books in which the characters are 16 or 17 years old, she wanted to start hers at 14. Through the series, she said, she is able to show how the characters change and that change really isn’t bad. 

With her college degree, she taught four years in Pennsylvania and when her husband got a job in Egg Harbor Township, she was happy to move back to the area where she grew up and where members of her family still live. She taught for a year locally then got pregnant with her son, Declan, (“my big little guy”) who is now 18 months and growing fast.

“Ryan said, ‘You should use this time to write and do what you want to do,’” she said. “So I’m blessed that I’ve been able to do this.”

The couple’s second son, Patrick, is due in February or March, right about the time last year that her first book came out. 

As she noted, she is fortunate – “especially in this crazy COVID world – that with her husband working she is able to take care of her son and write. “I’ve always wanted to be an author. … If my career could be just writing, I would love that.” She said she has received help on her career from people, including good advice from Ocean City author Jennifer Shirk. 

Channick said she has notebooks full of ideas and is constantly writing. 

She lives in Egg Harbor Township now but the family’s goal is to move to Upper Township to raise their children where she grew up.

Over the next year she hopes to get another book published. It won’t be part of the series. It will be an adult crime novel. 

The books are available for a Kindle Reader on amazon.com – or get connected by going through her website at kbchannick.com – or can be ordered by a local bookstore, such as her favorite growing up, Sun Rose Words & Music at 756 Asbury Ave. in the actual town of Ocean City. (Call 609-399-9190.)

 Channick can also be found on Instagram –  @kellybradychannick  – and on Facebook @kellybradychannick.