This week I was invited to do a book reading and signing at Feering Primary School, Colchester, as part of their Book Week. I was bowled over by the children’s imagination, love of reading (we had a shared love for Enid Blyton’s Faraway Tree series) and their confidence and curiosity. They had jack-in-the-box arms, asked fantastic questions and had fantastic (and fantastical!) answers to mine. The book’s Brainticklers appeared to tickle them, and I am delighted to share the drawings of the Ticklers that the students did on the day.
Category Archives: Extras
Midsummer Magic. The Summer Sacrifice is one year old today!
First, I must start with an apology. I have been absent. And you can’t be a little bit absent, absence does not work like that. You’re either present or you’re not. And I have been, well, not.
That’s not to say I haven’t existed these last few months. I am still breathing flesh and built of bone. But I have been digitally absent and for that I’m sorry.
Why have I been absent? For a number of reasons. I’m getting over a loss, I’m touring Shakespeare internationally, I’m writing the second book of the Master Game series. Life is happening, as is life’s want, and I am getting through it pretty well, though I have dropped some balls.
But I aim to pick up the blogging balls I’ve dropped.
So where to begin? Today is an important day in the timeline of The Summer Sacrifice. Today is the Summer Sacrifice’s first birthday. To mark the occasion, the ebooks on Amazon are at a reduced price (for a limited time only).
Alternatively, support your local indie bookshop and ask for The Summer Sacrifice. And if, by any chance, you are based in Colchester, pop into Red Lion Books today and pick up a beautiful paperback!
Meet (some of) the characters!
Jamie Tuff
“I just happen to drop into other people’s bodies now and then, but don’t worry, I can’t control it!”
Seveny Brown
“Symbol my arse. That is a dead and stinking bird, attached to a dead and stinking snake!”
George Button
“If I go to Askerwell I’ll be dragged down to hell! Can I take anyone with me?”
Max Lively
“Did you see me smash it? Blake didn’t know what was coming when I wrestled him to the ground!”
Ella Rose Last
“Transparent means being honest, rule-abiding, nice and good. I’m all those things, aren’t I?”
These portraits were created by the cover artist of The Summer Sacrifice, David Revoy. I love how he’s imagined them!
When the story for The Summer Sacrifice was conceived after a trip to Dancing Ledge, it birthed itself on bits of scrap paper and notebooks lined and plain, emerging in the form of quotes and little doodles. Once the idea had taken a basic shape, I tapped it out on my computer and, armed with an ever-growing cast of characters, began writing my first scene.
This was a conversation between Jamie Tuff, Seveny Brown, Ella Rose Last, Max Lively and George Button, five close friends who I encountered hanging out in Blue Wood. This scene eventually ended up in Chapter 4: Stormy Weather in The Summer Sacrifice.
After these five core characters (who we’ll follow throughout the Master Game Series) had established themselves, the Brainticklers tickled their way into my mind. These bird-faced caring critters had a life of their own. Sam O’ Brady (Head Braintickler and spokesperson for the Ticklers) started speaking and wouldn’t stop. A good chunk of what he told me remains in The Summer Sacrifice, but because he went on and on, his speeches were as much in need of a cut as his bushy ginger beard.
Then came Miss Humfreeze, English teacher extraordinaire, chased into view by a gun-toting Evelyn Crackpot. After that, the rest of the world and its inhabitants arrived thick and fast!
Ebook discount starts July 21st to celebrate The Summer Sacrifice being one month old.
On July the 21st, The Summer Sacrifice will have spent one month out in the world.
To celebrate, I shall be slashing the price of the ebook from $3.99 to $0.99 for seven days. (And from £2.99 to 99 pence.)
If you fancy an “addictive”, “powerfully imagined” and “hard to put down” summer read, now’s the time to buy!
I would love to hear your thoughts on the book. Be in touch on the website, or consider writing a review.
And continue to remember that the Establishment are watching you…
An interview. Questions by Daryl Rothman, answered by me!
In a week that has been filled with teasing teasers and one gorgeous giveaway (am I allowed to say that about my own book?), something else happened that was a little out of the ordinary. I was interviewed by the delightful Daryl Rothman!
Why is Jamie Tuff a thing of nightmares? Who are my writing inspirations? Find out here: http://www.darylrothman.com/2014/06/author-interview-holly-hinton.html
Oh, and whilst you’re there, do take a look around. Daryl has written some very interesting articles on the writing process, and a poetic piece about a dead mouse. I adore “Requiem for a Mouse.” Check it out!
If you have any thoughts about the interview, or want to ask me some questions of your own, leave a comment and I’ll be in touch!
The Summer Sacrifice’s Giveaway!!!
This is a teeny weeny Braintickler-sized post. The Summer Sacrifice’s Teaser Tour is coming to an end, which means the Giveaway is coming to a close.
You have just two days to enter the Giveaway. If you win you’ll receive a signed paperback copy of The Summer Sacrifice, and a bookmark illustrated by David Revoy.
You can enter the Giveaway by clicking on any of the links on the Teaser Tour post.
Good luck!
The Summer Sacrifice’s Teaser Tour
The Summer Sacrifice was released on June the 21st: the day of the Summer Solstice. The teaser tour accompanying the release is now in full flow!
Throughout this week, some fabulous bloggers will be sharing teasing tasters, such as the first chapter of the audiobook, a map of the Island and its chart of ages, and an exclusive introduction to some of the major characters in the book complete with quotes from The Summer Sacrifice and character portraits painted by David Revoy.
I shall be updating this site with the content once release week is over, but until then please visit the sites below!
Bloggers hosting the tour include:
Candace’s Book Blog
CBY Book Club
Deal Sharing Aunt
Random Chalk Talk
Second Run Reviews
Jen’s Round Corner
Ri Reading
Aly’s Miscellany
Vala Kaye
Becoming Books
WS Momma Readers Nook
Forever Young Adult
My Guilty Obsession
My Book Mine
I read it and wept
Maureen’s Books
My Tangled Skeins
Always YA At Heart
Donnie Darko Girl
MAD Hoydenish
BeMiOwn
Carpe Diem
Addicted Readers
Tiffy Fit
The Summer Sacrifice has officially launched!
I’m a Brainball of excitement. I am not grey and lined, but I am light and bouncy. Why? Because the Summer Sacrifice is now out in the world!
It is available to buy in both digital and paperback form from Amazon (.com/.co.uk). It will be available from other retailers in the near future. Here is a link to the Kindle version (DRM free so it can be read on other ebook readers.)
The Summer Sacrifice also has its very own mini-tour to tease you with. It starts today and will last a week. Many generous bloggers will be posting The Summer Sacrifice tidbits. They shall reveal yet to be seen pictures of Jamie Tuff and her friends, quotes from the book, and the first chapter of the audiobook.
There will also be a Giveaway. Enter for the chance to win a signed copy of The Summer Sacrifice, along with a bookmark illustrated by David Revoy! Keep an eye out on my twitter feed and visit the hosting sites!
@HollyHinton1
Chapter 1 of The Summer Sacrifice.
The Summer Sacrifice by Holly Hinton
All rights reserved.Chapter 1
Dancing Ledge
Jamie smelt fish. The tang of decomposing ocean caught her throat, as stars glinted in the night and waves danced in the light of a swollen moon. She flicked her eyes up, down and sideways, but the view didn’t alter. There was nothing before her but the Blanket of Stars and the deep Great Sea.
A rush of noise filled her head. Chatter drowned out the ocean’s whispers, and not the gentle, bubbling kind of chatter but the voluminous, cresting kind, the kind that crawls into your ear and then wriggles and chomps. Jamie felt her head spin, and the sea-view was hurled out of sight and was replaced with another view that revealed her location.
She was standing on a giant tongue of rock which jutted out from limestone cliffs and thrust into the ocean. And she wasn’t alone. Fifty of her schoolmates bustled about her, dizzy with excitement. The moonlit slab was alive with expectation as the juvenites waited to hear from the Great Goddess.
Most of the juvenites had dressed up for the midnight Taking and wore colourful gowns and doublets. A few had dressed with less regard and one or two were even wearing pyjamas. But some way across the Ledge, Jamie spotted a boy who was none too polished or laid back. He had spiky hair and the sweetest smile, and Jamie’s tummy flipped when he waved at her. She’d have waved back if she could.
So I’m back at Dancing Ledge, she thought. But whose body am I in?
Last month she had ended up in a boy who was a dead cert for a Taking. She’d been terrified what would happen to her soul if he died, though thankfully he hadn’t. She wouldn’t relax until she identified her host.
As if heeding her call, legs carried her forwards a hundred yards to the tip of the Ledge and eyes not her own peered into the Great Sea. Through the sea-foam slipping back and forth, Jamie spied mustard pyjamas, dark skin and candyfloss hair. Good friend Charlotte was her host! A conscientious student and Transparent as they came. The Great Goddess would never give her to the Ancient Spectre. She’d never be Taken to the Underworld.
As relief washed over Jamie, a light wind blew out to sea and a tingle crept up Charlotte’s spine and into her heart. Quite suddenly the whole world was beautiful and full of a love so strong you could only stand amazed and soak it up. The wings of the Great Goddess were upon them. Every juvenite thrilled at the bliss of Her embrace.
With the full moon now at its height, the crashing waves made shards of light that exploded into fragments of rainbow delight. The waves splashed and the stars flashed and the crowd cricked their necks to the sky and oohed and aahed.
Then came the Music.
It sank into Charlotte’s skin, the swell of the waves swelling the music, the pulse of the tide becoming the beat. The Music was different for each who heard it; Charlotte’s was lyrical and stringed. And though Jamie received a diluted version, she could hear the joy and heartbreak in it.
Euphoria flooded Dancing Ledge.
The juvenites closed their eyes and began to dance. Jamie enjoyed being rocked inside Charlotte, feeling fluid and free. The juvenites’ dance grew ever more wild, until the Ledge itself seemed to shift in sympathy.
And then,
Splash!
A wave hit Charlotte in the face. She opened her eyes.
Flash!
A blinding orb of light erupted from the sea in front of her. It shot out of the water as fast as lightning and sailed up to the sky, only to dive back from where it came. Then came another and another. Jamie found the arcing of the orbs, heavenward and back, indescribably beautiful yet unbearably sad.
Charlotte took a small step forward and raised her arms in wonder. Her toes now dangled over the rock-edge. Jamie willed her to step back from the brink: only the Great Sea lay before her and its tides were fierce. But it didn’t work that way. Charlotte did, however, turn her head.
Jamie hoped her eyes deceived her. Familiar figures were shuffling towards Charlotte, but these weren’t current school friends but friends of old; juvenites who’d been Taken last month or many months ago, juvenites Jamie had never expected to see again. They looked sad, hopeless—no, worse than that: empty. And as each reached the edge they threw themselves into the Great Sea. Its swirling tides pulled them under, and orbs of light shot out of the water.
Splash! Flash!
The embrace of the Goddess left Charlotte. She stopped dancing.
Pain.
Something dug into Charlotte’s back, turning her spine to jelly. That same something spun her round and pushed her towards land, through the dancing throng. Her school mates’ eyes remained closed. They were still consumed in ecstasy, ignorant of what was happening to her or their old friends.
Then the pressure on Charlotte’s spine lifted, bringing her to a jerking halt.
A lady with hip-skimming ebony hair and a dangerous-looking ruby mouth swept past, drowning Charlotte—and therefore Jamie—in a cloud of musk. Poured into a long silver gown, the lady strode across the Ledge, moonlight reflecting off her contours. She was a thing of breathtaking beauty. Could it be the Great Goddess Herself?
No, thought Jamie. She didn’t have wings. And something about her was decidedly ungoddesslike. In fact, there was more of the Serpent than the Eagle about her.
The lady approached the boy with spiky hair. He too had spotted the flying orbs of light and was staring out to sea. His sweet smile was gone. The lady whispered in the boy’s ear and lodged a scarlet talon in his back. The fear left his face and was replaced by an awful blank stare.
Billy! Jamie wanted to scream and shout and cry and kill something. Charlotte was re-stabbed and propelled towards the cliff. Both girls were preparing to hit rock when, inches from impact, the nail in Charlotte’s back stopped digging. A square of stone dropped back from the cliff-face, revealing a secret entrance. A figure emerged from within.
The man was tall and pale, and muscles rippled beneath his blue satin suit. Jamie had never seen a more beautiful creature. But he had the saddest eyes she’d ever seen.
Charlotte’s captor grabbed her shoulders and swung her round. He too was towering, and his perfectly twirled tar-black moustache gleamed in the moonlight. Jamie recognized him at once. It was the Island’s chief Doctor.
He stared into Charlotte’s eyes. Only he wasn’t looking at Charlotte. He was looking through Charlotte. At Jamie.
“Troublemakers need to be re-educated,” he said, his soft voice full of violence. Then his focus snapped back to Charlotte. “After you, Child of the Underworld.” He waved her through the door and into the cliff.
Sporadic fire-beetle lanterns lit the passageway’s earth walls, giving it a dull, green glow.
The man with the sad eyes came towards Charlotte with a syringe. The Doctor presented her arm for injection. The needle went in.
* * *
“Owwwwww!”
Seveny jolted upright in her bunk and clutched her arm. She looked round the dormitory to see if she’d woken anyone else. No one was moving and the girl above her continued to gurgle. She was glad of this, for though the mysterious pain in her arm was subsiding quickly, she was in no state for idle chat.
Seveny had a powerful heart. Sometimes she worried its beats might shatter a rib. Right now it was beating so hard she could actually hear it. She concentrated on the girl above’s gurgle, and the image that had seared her brain started to dissolve and her pulse began to settle. But it sped up again when she saw the empty bed opposite.
Charlotte wasn’t back. She’d been Called to Dancing Ledge and she wasn’t back.
Seveny eyed the cracked wooden door at the far end of the dorm. She’d been staring at it for the last hour or so, willing Charlotte’s return. As though wanting something hard enough would make it happen.
But as she watched, the door began to open. The full moon powered through the muslin of the dorm’s lone window and silhouetted a figure in the darkness. Seveny could just make out a small form, dressed in the Orphanage’s compulsory pyjamas.
“Charlotte?” she whispered, trying not to wake the sixteen other girls.
The mustard-clad figure tiptoed nearer.
Please be Charlotte.
The figure looked at her friend’s empty bunk, at the mattress’s springs poking cheerily through the threadbare sheet. Its eyes were large, round, and wet-looking. “Where’s Charlotte?” its small voice asked.
“At Dancing Ledge, Kai,” Seveny whispered. “She’ll be having the time of her life.”
Kai sniffed, and his eyes skitted to Seveny’s bed. He’d often sneak into the girls’ dorm, past Mr Gribbin the warden, to join his older sister in her bunk. He was only six, seven years younger than Charlotte and Seveny, but though his sister was tiny and they could share comfortably, Seveny had to reorganize her long limbs to make space.
Kai jumped in, wrapped Seveny’s arm round him, twisted a lock of her long golden hair round his hand, and sucked his thumb. Seveny felt pinned down and awkwardly folded, but she was glad of the company: with Kai in the way she couldn’t see his sister’s empty bed. And that gave her space to think.
Just before the pain had coursed through her, she’d seen a vision of Charlotte and Jamie at Dancing Ledge. Except, somehow, they were the same girl. Sort of… She could understand why she’d pictured Charlotte there: Charlotte was attending her Taking tonight. But she had no idea why she’d seen Jamie. Jamie had turned thirteen just a few days before Seveny. They’d attended the same Taking, seven months ago.
But dreams are dreams, she thought. And dreams are strange.
Except Seveny had not been asleep. She’d been staring at the door when the vision had stabbed her between the eyes.
Charlotte and Jamie had been one. Combined. And their mouths? Seveny shuddered. Had both been open. Screaming.
.
“Aaaaaaaagh!”
Jamie thrashed out and hit something warm and furry. It flew off the bed, thumped into a wall, and let out a miaow of indignation.
“Loopy!” She beckoned the black cat onto the bed and tweaked his long white whiskers. “You shouldn’t even be up here! But I think you may have saved my life.”
Jamie had thought she was a goner after what had happened, but though her claw-punctured arm was sore, her soul seemed intact and her brain alive.
She still wondered how it had all gone so wrong.
It was around seven months ago that her soul had started wandering. She figured it must be her soul because though she was asleep when it happened, when she woke up she wasn’t in her own skin. The first time her soul travelled, it hadn’t gone far: it had dropped into her dad’s tired body, lying awake in the room just next door. The next time it went further afield, ending up in the slow-moving, slower-brained night-watchman who guarded the school. Last month’s wander had been much more eventful. She’d landed in Dino Scarpel, a member of the notorious Tombland Gang, in the middle of a Taking. Dino was as spiteful, dishonest and rule-breaking as they came, and Jamie was sure her soul would be Taken with his, though Dancing Ledge had left them both unscathed. So finding herself in Charlotte had been a relief. Charlotte was a Transparent: a hard-working, rule-abiding, conscientious student.
But Charlotte had been Taken.
Taken.
Jamie’s thoughts turned to tomorrow’s assembly. The Headmistress made a Taking sound like an occasion for joy: a gentle passing of souls to the Ancient Spectre, the Lord of the Underworld. A divine event ordained by the Great Goddess for the greater good.
Well, it hadn’t looked very divine to Jamie. It had looked like the Doctor was doing the Taking along with his two weird assistants, and they were snatching anyone unlucky enough to have woken up.
Jamie’s stomach lurched as she thought of the juvenites drowning in the Great Sea. The Doctor had done something to them. But what? she wondered. And what for? She hadn’t the faintest clue. But she knew the same fate awaited Billy and Charlotte.
This would hit Seveny hard: Charlotte had been like a sister to her. And something else worried Jamie, even more than her best friend’s grief. One of her closest friends still hadn’t been Called to Dancing Ledge. Ella’s thirteenth birthday was next month.
Jamie scrabbled under her bed. She retrieved her satchel, got out a small book titled PITY ME SCHOOL DIARY Year: 300 and flipped to the lunar calendar.
Tonight’s full moon: Sunday April 25th. A TAKING.
Next full moon: Sunday May 23rd. A TAKING.
The full moon after that: Monday June 21st. THE SUMMER SACRIFICE.
Jamie threw the satchel and diary back under the bed and disappeared beneath the sheets.
None of this is real, she told herself. I might think I have the ability to drop into other people’s bodies when I sleep, but I’m just dreaming.
But a red rash was snaking up her face. She was a terrible liar, and she knew it.
The Summer Sacrifice cover reveal. It’s today!
There comes a time when ‘tomorrow’ turns into ‘today.’
That time has come.
The Summer Sacrifice’s cover is now out in all its shining glory. (Designed by the marvelous David Revoy.)
You can find the cover and its creation process at:
Candace’s Book Blog
Batch of Books
Second Run Reviews
Book Lover’s Life
Gin’s Book Notes
My Tangled Skeins
Cassandra Lost in Books
Turning the Pages
Jump Into Books
Chosen By You Book Club
Asylum for Book Addicts
Donnie Darko Girl
Michael Pierce Blog
Aly’s Miscellany
TiffyFit
The Haunting of Orchid Forsythia
The Tome Gnome
3 Partners in Shopping
Three Boy Circus
Once Upon a YA Book
Victoria Simcox’s Blog
FUOnlyKnew
Suzy Turner
Becoming Books
Sammy the Cover Lover
Sarit Yaholomi. Coffee, Books and Art
The Cozy Corner
Last but not least, the artist David Revoy.
Whilst you’re over there, why not have a look at his other beautiful works of art.
Hope you enjoy!