Book Giveaway: And the Trees Crept In

Master YA horror writer Dawn Kurtagich joins us today with a book giveaway of her new book AND THE TREES CREPT IN published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. It hits book shelves next Tuesday, but can be pre-ordered now.

All you have to do to get in the running is to leave a comment. Reblog, tweet, or talk about it on facebook with a link and you will get additional chances to win. Just let me know the other things you did to share the good news, so I can put in the right amount of tickets in my basket for you. Check back on September 13th to discover the winner.

BOOK DESCRIPTION:

A stunning, terrifying novel about a house the color of blood and the two sisters who are trapped there, by The Dead House author Dawn Kurtagich.

When Silla and Nori arrive at their aunt’s home, it’s immediately clear that the “blood manor” is cursed. The creaking of the house and the stillness of the woods surrounding them would be enough of a sign, but there are secrets too–the questions that Silla can’t ignore: Who is the beautiful boy that’s appeared from the woods? Who is the man that her little sister sees, but no one else? And why does it seem that, ever since they arrived, the trees have been creeping closer?

Filled with just as many twists and turns as The Dead House, and with achingly beautiful, chilling language that delivers haunting scenes, AND THE TREES CREPT IN is the perfect follow-up novel.

AND THE TREES CREPT IN – JOURNEY:

The book is a tree. This is how it grew.

EARTH

The first thing was a secret. A code. Written by a girl that nobody understood. She had appeared in my head a few years ago, before the publication of The Dead House, and (out of curiosity) I had written down what she had to say. The diary entry itself was unremarkable. She was talking about something unimportant—her every day minutia. The words scrawled themselves over the page (diagonally) without much thought or effort.

Except . . . there was more. Every few words one would be scratched in. It was as though every so often, her control would slip and she would go wild and reveal the girl she was trying so hard to hide. Connecting these “scratched” words produced something beyond the mundane words surrounding them. They produced a truth. The secret sentence read:

Most people would tell you that you can’t fall in and out of love at will. But the truth is that nobody can really fall in love. The whole world is going to hell. It’s mad.

You can’t love the mad.

This little seed was the very start of AND THE TREES CREPT IN.

ROOTS

As Silla Daniels began to grow, I was taking notice of the things around me. I was reaching out for emotion and experience. At the time, I was intrigued and perhaps a little obsessed with the movie Insidious. It scared me. But why? I realized that one of the key things that terrified me was the red demon. A creature not quite understood with a tall, lanky appearance. He was shocking.

I spent a lot of time outside, pondering the woods beyond the field. I listened to the bats and their pulsing frequencies as they flew above me after sunset, and I let myself be scared. What would happen if something truly impossible occurred. What would I do if those woods in the distance suddenly looked closer? What if they were just a little bit closer every day? Sure, I would be alarmed, confused, wondering if I was having a stroke . . .

Okay, so weird and alarming. But what if those woods held that red demon? THAT one really had my heart racing. What would Silla do if she saw that? Well, she had referred to herself as mad already. So she’d most likely just accept that her mind had finally gone. So . . . let’s take away that insanity safety net. Now what? Well, she seemed a depressed sort of girl. Or lost. How to address that? Give her something to care about! A sibling? A friend? If she had a friend to rely on, she wouldn’t be alone. Alone is much more scary. A sibling, then. But younger. Someone she felt responsible for.

This process of asking questions and find the answers was the “feeler” part of the writing. I was spreading my roots, looking for fertile soil.

TRUNK

Because And The Trees Crept In was written on proposal, the trunk of the story was fleshed out during the synopsis phase. In this case, very little changed from conception to completion, which is rare in my case! I was simply navigating from where the roots had landed, up towards the branches. There were swirls and blocks and roundabouts on the way, but those little deviations were where the mystery leaked out like thick, gooey sap.

BRANCHES

And The Trees Crept In is a little like a puzzle book. It is full of codes and clues, secrets and signs. The branches are all of the different elements that come together to reveal the story. The “Broken Book” diary entries, the “Whisper Notes”, the “Green Letter”, Nori’s sections—so many elements to reveal the horror behind this one sinister woodland. The shadows that the branches cast may reveal something like a man in the night . . . but not quite.

LEAVES

And now we have the leaves of the book, ready for you to see. I hope you enjoy their

FRUIT

DAWN’S BIO:

Dawn Kurtagich is a writer of creepy, spooky and psychologically sinister YA fiction, where girls may descend into madness, boys may see monsters in men, and grown-ups may have something to hide.

By the time she was eighteen, she had been to fifteen schools across two continents. The daughter of a British globe-trotter and single mother, she grew up all over the place, but her formative years were spent in Africa—on a mission, in the bush, in the city and in the desert.

She has been lucky enough to see an elephant stampede at close range, a giraffe tongue at very close range, and she once witnessed the stealing of her (and her friends’) underwear by very large, angry baboons. (This will most definitely end up in a book . . .) While she has quite a few tales to tell about the jumping African baboon spider, she tends to save these for Halloween!

When she was sixteen, she thought she’d be an astronomer and writer at the same time, and did a month-long internship at Cambridge’s prestigious Cavendish Laboratories.

She is a BookTuber over on WritaholicDK and is a member of the YA Scream Queens. Her novels include: THE DEAD HOUSE and AND THE TREES CREPT IN.

Her life reads like a YA novel.

Don’t miss this opportunity to win this YA novel.

Talk tomorrow,

Kathy