YA Scavenger Hunt: Spring 2016 Edition

Edited 4/4/16 – This hunt has ended. Thanks for participating!

Welcome to the Spring 2016 YA Scavenger Hunt! At this hunt, you not only get access to exclusive content from each author, you also get a clue for the hunt. Add up the clues, and you can enter for our prize–one lucky winner will receive one signed book from each author on the hunt in my team! (THE GOLD TEAM!!) But play fast: this contest (and all the exclusive bonus material) will only be online for 72 hours!

Go to the YA Scavenger Hunt page to find out all about the hunt. There are six contests going on simultaneously, and you can enter one or all! I am a part of the GOLD TEAM— but there is also RED, BLUE, GREEN, ORANGE, TEAL, PURPLE, SILVER, & PINK teams for a chance to win a whole different set of signed books!

If you’d like to find out more about the hunt, see links to all the authors participating, and see the full list of prizes up for grabs, go to the YA Scavenger Hunt Author List.

If you get stuck or need help, you can check out the How to Hunt page.

Scavenger Hunt Puzzle

Directions: Below, you’ll notice that I’ve listed my favorite number. Collect the favorite numbers of all the authors on the GOLD team, and then add them up (don’t worry, you can use a calculator!).

Entry Form: Once you’ve added up all the numbers, make sure you fill out the form here to officially qualify for the grand prize. Only entries that have the correct number will qualify.

Rules: Open internationally, anyone below the age of 18 should have a parent or guardian’s permission to enter. To be eligible for the grand prize, you must submit the completed entry form by Sunday, April 3rd, at noon Pacific Time. Entries sent without the correct number or without contact information will not be considered.

Welcome, Carly Anne West!

Today, I am hosting Carly Anne West on my website for the YA Scavenger Hunt!

Carly Anne West is the author of YA novels THE MURMURINGS and THE BARGAINING. She lives between the ocean and the trees in Seattle, Washington with her crazy family. She also loves your face a whole lot.

About The Bargaining

The fact that neither of her parents wants to deal with her is nothing new to Penny. She’s used to being discussed like a problem, a problem her mother has finally passed on to her father. What she hasn’t gotten used to is her stepmother…especially when she finds out that she’ll have to spend the summer with April in the remote woods of Washington to restore a broken-down old house.

Set deep in a dense forest, the old Carver House is filled with abandoned antique furniture, rich architectural details, and its own chilling past. The only respite Penny can find away from April’s renovations is in Miller, the young guy who runs the local general store. He’s her only chance at a normal, and enjoyable, summer. But Miller has his own connection to the Carver House, and it’s one that goes beyond the mysterious tapping Penny hears at her window, the handprints she finds smudging the glass panes, and the visions of children who beckon Penny to follow them into the dark woods. Miller’s past just might threaten to become the terror of Penny’s future …

Exclusive Content

Hi there, YASHers! When I do book events, I always get the best questions from readers. I’ve pulled together a few of my faves about THE BARGAINING, along with (spoiler-free) answers to give you a peek into the totally messed up way my imagination works. I hope you enjoy, and I hope you read THE BARGAINING, or my other book, THE MURMURINGS (both standalones, so not to worry if you read them out of order). Okay, on to THE BARGAINING …

Where the heck is Point Finney?

It’s in my brain. I’d been living in the Seattle area for a little under a year when I first started THE BARGAINING, and I was swimming in isolation. I’d moved from east Oakland, where we could practically reach out of our windows and touch the neighboring houses. I also had friends and a community. Then I had none of those, and our house was a little bigger, and our yard was a lot bigger, and there were just so many trees. Every time the wind blew, their leaves clacked like tiny rattles and their branches creaked. And I was desperately lonely, which was surprising since I thought I liked being alone. But that’s the difference between loneliness and aloneness, I guess. Anyway, I knew my next setting would be in Washington, and it would have to be among the thickest knot of trees I could find. I tried visiting various islands and tiny towns around the state, but none of them quite captured the insular vibe I’d imagined for this setting. Luckily for me, I write fiction. So I made it up.

Do children scare you or something?

Sometimes. I have two of my own. Sometimes kids say incredibly chilling things. I think there’s at least one Reddit thread dedicated to this. And the only thing scarier than real children is children who may or may not be real.

What’s with those tiny handprints on the window?

It’s not a spoiler. Just a component of the plot. There are handprints. The idea came from my witnessing a tiny handprint in the window on our front door. The house we were living in at the time had one of those crescent-shaped windows at the top. Tall enough for an adult to reach, but not nearly tall enough for my then-two-year-old son to touch. Now, what’d probably happened was my husband had lifted him up at some point to see out of the window, and my son had touched the window like kids are known to do, and bam. A handprint on a window. But that’s not where my strange brain went at first. I thought about children of the less-alive sort, peering out of windows or into them, leaving handprints where they shouldn’t be able to leave them.

You seem sort of chipper. You wear bright lipstick. And yet you write horror.

This is one of those questions in the form of a statement … you don’t want to accuse me of having a sinister side, so you just let me fill in the blank, yes? Yes. I have a sinister side. I’m not alone in this. It’s therapeutic for me to write about it, and really, I think there’s so much truth in stories that scare us.

Happy hunting, YASHers! I can’t tell you how thrilling it is to participate in an event that attracts such rabid readers.

*****

Thanks for stopping by my blog, Carly! Don’t forget to enter the contest for a chance to win a ton of signed books by me (Jessica) and more! To enter, you need to know that my favorite number is 11. Add up all the favorite numbers of the authors on the GOLD team and you’ll have all the secret code to enter for the grand prize!