Cover Reveal for The School That Ate Children!
I started writing The School That Ate Children in November 2014 and I have to say, I absolutely love this book. I love its spontaneity. I love the fact that it's about two sisters. I love that it's an adventure. The School That Ate Children was the book I didn't expect to write. It was the book that made me realize I love magic and can't write a book that doesn't have magic in it (thus changing my tag line to "My work is inspired by themes and events in Haudenosaunee history. Most of it has magic in it"). And it's the book that made me realize that without a doubt, I wanted to be an indie publisher.
This book had two very different starting points. My first attempt at it was much more serious. I had started to write it for a contest that was looking for "real" stories - which meant historical fiction or stories that were mildly autobiographical and specifically, stories that did not have anthropomorphic animals or were retellings of legends or myths. And so I drew on some very real and unpleasant personal experiences to get at a "real" story. As a result, a very different draft of this book exists in my computer. But that story - I did not love. It felt forced - like I was writing what someone else wanted written. The whole process of writing it made me ask all kinds of questions about what a "real" story was. I managed to get a first draft down and left it alone for a few weeks but when it was time to go back to it - I rewrote the entire thing entirely new. And this story, the one I fell in love with, broke all of the contest rules. And because I loved it so much, I decided not to change it, that I probably shouldn't change it and that's when I realized I wanted to be an indie publisher. So I could write and share the stories I loved the most which in the end felt more honest and real and authentic than any other approach could be.
For the second version of the story, I simply opened a Word file (this was before I started using Scrivener), wrote The School That Ate Children, at the top of it and off I went. It was not meant to be the actual title of the book. Just a placeholder until I could find something better. But despite having many different titles in mind, none of them seemed to fit and so I wound up sticking with this as well. In a way, the whole book has been one wonderful, happy accident. And I have to say - I really love this cover, which was designed by James T. Egan of Bookfly Design. Amazing work.
The School That Ate Children is a middle grade urban fantasy. Despite the rewrite, it still touches on some rather serious issues. Issues of grief, of loneliness, of bullying. Of losing more when you've already lost a lot. But at its heart, it's a story about siblings and love and the surprising characters in life that help you keep families together.
The School That Ate Children comes out on June 21st, 2016. It is available for pre-order on my website. It will also be going up on Amazon, Kobo and iBooks for pre-order in the next few days. Happy writing!
S.