At the time, she “put a pin in it.”

In the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, AP and IB English Language and Composition teacher Jennifer Blessington read an article about a local high school in Kingwood that had flooded during the storm and was forced to relocate its student body into a neighboring school.

“I remember thinking that [it] would be an interesting story to write,” she said. “It was hanging around in my mind for six years.”

That idea resurfaced in the summer of 2021. Under her author’s persona of Jennifer Mathieu, Blessington wrote the first draft of her seventh young adult novel, a story of two Houston teenagers, Javier and Eliza, who have just lived through Hurricane Harvey and are forced to attend the same school after Eliza’s high school floods.

“Eliza goes to a more affluent, privileged high school and Javier goes to a more working-class high school,” Blessington said. “I wanted to explore what would happen if these two different worlds came together. The two of them become friends, and they start a club at their school to fight climate change and bring awareness to the topic. Spoiler alert, there’s a little romance too.”

After over a year of editing and revising, “Down Came the Rain” was released to the public on Sept. 26. There will be a launch party at Blue Willow Bookshop on Sept. 30 at 5 p.m.

“[The book] is about the different ways climate change and eco-anxiety are affecting young people all over the globe,” Blessington said. “Here in Houston, I think that we’re feeling the effects more intensely because of our extreme weather events.”

Blessington said she chose to center the novel around Hurricane Harvey, a vivid moment for many Houstonians, due to the catastrophic effects it left behind.

“For two years after Harvey, [I remember] getting so anxious when it would rain, and I knew over 20 people whose homes flooded,” she said. “I thought it would be a good thing to write about. It was just such a stressful moment in our city and it’s current enough that young people today in Houston would remember it.”

Seeing how strongly her students felt about the topic, Blessington said she felt excited to tell an interesting story without overtly teaching a lesson to treat young people like full human beings with flaws.

“I was excited, really, to be able to create a book that I hope will validate their concerns, and hopefully provide them [with] a roadmap to managing their feelings about this topic,” Blesington said.

In order to accurately emulate the perspective of teenagers and their emotions, Blessington researched YouTube videos and organizations about climate change run by young people.

“I interviewed a woman with her doctorate in psychology,” Blessington said. “She’s an expert on eco-anxiety and young people and how to help them manage their feelings about the changing climate.”

Although Blessington did not base Javier and Eliza on anyone in her life, she said she tried to transfer her knowledge of everyday life as a teacher over into her writing.

“All the things that teachers do and what the first day of school feels like, I don’t have to make that up because I know exactly what it is,” Blessington said. “A lot of how the school operates, how [a] teacher can get asked to sponsor a club and all of those things, that is all based on my real life and working in a high school.”

As seen in Blessington’s previous books, “Down Came the Rain” is set in Texas, where she found herself falling in love with Houston.

“Texas has this legendary quality,” Blessington said. “I’ve come to love Houston. I came here in my early 20s, and I love the diversity. I love the friendliness. I love the way that we came together after big things like Katrina and Harvey and the freeze. It’s a really special place to me.”

“Down Came the Rain” will be Blessington’s last young adult novel that she has planned for the immediate future.

“I’ve written seven books for teenagers, and I’m ready to try something new,” Blessington said. “[It’s] a little bittersweet but also exciting because as a writer, I feel like I’m heading into a new direction. I’m very proud of the stuff I’ve written for teenagers, so this kind of marks the end of that chapter, at least for now. I’ll never say never.”

Blessington’s first novel for adults, “The Faculty Lounge,” coming out next summer, continues the pattern of having Houston as its setting. She describes the book as “a love letter to teachers and other adults who work in a school.”

“I have not read it, but [Blessington’s] young adult novels have been great,” AP Language and Composition teacher Kelli Tomlinson said. “She makes really strong characters that all connect well at the end and have a good message to share with her readers, so I’m. excited. I’m also going to enjoy [a novel] that I can relate to.”

AP Language and Composition and AP Literature teacher Jeffrey Waller, Blessington’s “shadow editor” for “The Faculty Lounge,” said he is eager for “The Faculty Lounge” to be released and see the reception it gets after reading and editing early drafts of the novel.

“I’m excited for [Blessington] to move on to the next chapter because I know how excited she is about this next book, and I know just how eager she is to write for adults,” he said.

Waller credits Blessington’s novels for his introduction to YA fiction.

“I’d never really read YA fiction until I met her, “Waller said. “I think the book of hers that I liked the most was ‘The Liars of Mariposa Island.’ There’s a particularly powerful passage toward the end, and it legitimately moved me to tears. I thought that she really needs to try her hand at writing books for grown-ups.”

After reading Blessington’s previous books, Waller looks forward to reading her new YA novel.

“I like that she does her research,” he said. “I’m curious to see how realistic the setting is and how much it rings true.”

Feeling relief and pride after completing “Down Came the Rain,” Blessington said her favorite part in the entire writing and production process is when the book “comes out into the world.”

“I just hope that there are readers out there who find the book and connect with it and enjoy a good story,” Blessington said. “Of course, every writer wants their book to sell a million copies or become a movie like what happened with Moxie, but my goal is ultimately to tell a story that makes the reader feel seen and enhances their understanding or thinking about something. [After all,] writers are nothing without an audience.”