Blog Tour! Blackbrooke by Emma Silver Guest Post + Giveaway

Welcome to my tour stop for Blackbrooke by Emma Silver hosted by Book Me!

You can visit the full tour HERE

Today I have Emma Silver and she is going to share a little bit about writing at age 11 and writing Blackbrooke!

Young ADULT - Guest Post by Emma Silver

I’ve written stories for a really long time and I clearly remember my first foray into young adult horror. It was a story I penned when I was eleven about children that went missing after entering a Santa’s Grotto in a run-down shopping centre. It was told from the perspective of a girl whose sister was taken who then made it her mission to track down the kidnapper.

It was originally entitled, Santa’s Grotto.

Oh come on, I was eleven.

Like most of the stories I wrote as a teenager, there wasn’t much in the way of adult characters. They were peripheral, only written in to obstruct my heroine from getting to where she wanted to go.

Over-bearing parents.

Too-strict teachers.

The baddies.

My late teens and early twenties proved to be a bit of a writing lull as I studied for my degree and then attempted to claw my way up the career ladder (I didn’t get very far on that front…). And when I finally started to write again, Blackbrooke was born and I made a funny observation...

All of the Blackbrooke characters are my babies and, depending on the day, my mind changes as to who’s my favourite. However, I do have a soft spot for the hippie boss of Tales from the Crits, Denzil.

Written with a few of my friends in mind who never fail to have me in stitches, I’d giggle to myself after writing some of Denzil’s sarcastic comments. His comments would then be quickly followed with an eye roll from his unlikely friend, seventeen year old, Liberty, and I’d feel as though I was stood on that shop floor exchanging knowing glances with him at her disgust.

And there I was.

Halfway between Liberty’s and Denzil’s age and I could empathise with both of them at the same time. In fact, it made me realise Blackbrooke was the first book I’d written where I’d possessed any kind of empathy for my adult characters. They weren’t just inserted as fillers but in fact some of the protagonists in the Blackbrooke trilogy.

I think I’ll always write from a teenage perspective. I remember the time so well. After all, its when I’d while away hours and even days of my life with my own thoughts and dreams. No work. No responsibilities, just me.

Age is a funny thing. You don’t see it creeping up until you find yourself sucking in a breath when you eye the latest electricity bill.

Or perhaps writing an older character you could imagine propping up a bar with.

But just as much I can imagine knocking back the shots with the dreadlocked thirty something Denzil, I could be round at Liberty’s friend Gemma’s house, eating popcorn and swooning over the Twilight boys.

And I hope that’s where I’ll remain.

I live in Blackbrooke and you would have had to be living under a rock to never have heard of it before now. This town is different to most others…Humans aren’t the only residents…”

The residents of Blackbrooke share their town with the Creatures, or Crits as they are known. Grotesque, roaming the streets at night looking for food, their presence means humans have to live by the Rules, keeping them indoors and forbidding them of basic desires.

The most important Rule?

Don’t be a ‘walk out’!

Straight-A student, Liberty Connor, hates the Crits and the endless Rules she and her tight knit group of friends have to live by.

Planning her new life on the Outside with her boyfriend, Gabriel, Liberty whiles away her days waiting to turn 18, so they can leave and be free. That is, until the world she thinks she knows begins to unravel…

Her friends start to walk out. So she’s told. However, something’s not right. Things don’t add up.

Liberty faces a race against time to discover what’s going on with the Creatures of Blackbrooke. Is it them she has to fear, or something much closer to home?

Blackbrooke is a Young Adult horror novel that has you on the edge of your seat.

~ Giveaway ~
 Win an e-copy of Blackbrooke + an Amazon gift voucher worth £20, supplied by
the good people at Crooked {Cat} Publishing and the lovely Emma Silver!
Open Internationally

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