Meet Author Rebecca Phelps
Rebecca Phelps is the Watty-Award-winning author of the Down World trilogy (Down World, Yesterworld, and Everworld.) Her books explore themes of lost family, first love, processing grief, the healing nature of time… and sometimes witches and portals to the multiverse.
About the Down World trilogy
Down World started with a simple idea: What if you could erase the worst thing that ever happened to you? Marina’s journey through the portals beneath her high school allowed her to undo the train accident that took her brother’s life. But at what cost?
For me, this YA sci-fi trilogy was the beginning of my own journey as an author. Available in bookstores around the world, Down World was a Once Upon a Book Club book of the month in 2021, and Yesterworld was an Epic Reads Most Anticipated Book of 2022. Everworld hit bookshelves in 2024 to complete Marina’s story. The books are currently in development as a TV show with Wattpad/Webtoon Studios.
My Story
I moved to Los Angeles after college to pursue my lifelong dream of being an actress. While shooting an indie film at a desert oasis at the age of 23, I learned that silent-film star Clara Bow had used the small getaway as a safe haven to escape the pressures of Tinsel Town. Something awoke within me, and I knew I had to tell her story.
When I got back to LA, I dove headfirst into a new obsession: screenwriting. I meticulously researched Clara’s life, writing my first feature script about her rise and fall in Hollywood. But I didn’t stop there. Over the next decade, I would go on to write a dozen more scripts. And while many of them did well in contests and even got optioned, none made it to the multiplex.
A few years went by and I started to itch for new adventures. I hopped off to Spain for a while, moved to New York, moved back to LA. Got a dog and a studio apartment. Met the man of my dreams in a writing group. Got married and had two amazing kids.
And all the while, stories and memories, novels and dreams filled my head.
One day, I was thinking about my brother, and how we’d been estranged when we were teenagers. Adam and I had always had a tough relationship. One day, he went off to a boarding school and I didn’t see him for two years.
It was a strange sensation. He was there one minute, in his bedroom, sad and unreachable. The next he was gone.
By that point in my life, I’d seen a lot of people come and go. Some for good. And in some cases, I knew I was the one who had disappeared.
A vision popped into my head of a doorway, buried deep beneath a building. And when you open that door, a purple light fills your vision. Beyond the purple haze, the road not traveled.
The people left behind.
Down World was born.
I started writing that novel when my kids were in diapers. Now they’re winning dance competitions and earning black belts in taekwondo. Life moves fast like that. But I’m still telling stories.
Thank you for taking the time to read my story and, hopefully, becoming part of it.
XO, Rebecca
Rebecca Phelps 