Deadwood, my middle-grade mystery fantasy debut, is out from Spencer Hill Press today! What a great feeling — exhilaration, anxiety, the realization of a long-held dream.
But wait… this feeling is so familiar. Is it deja vu?
Not quite. It’s Debut Redux.
My kids’ contemporary fantasy was released by a small press which went out of business, and now it’s being re-released by the innovative, risk-taking folks at Spencer Hill Middle Grade, including my wonderful editor Jennifer Carson. I hold deep gratitude for the writers, family, and friends who supported me throughout the process.The story of how I got here is a long and twisty one, but I like the ending.
Or is this beginning?
Either way, some things are better the second time around.
Deadwood by Kell Andrews
Order on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, BAM, Powell’s, or from your favorite independent bookstore, including Children’s Book World and Paperback Exchange.
Sometimes a lucky ritual becomes a curse.
Seventh-grader Martin Cruz hates his rotten new town, Lower Brynwood, but with his mom fighting a war in Afghanistan, he has no other choice but to live with his crazy aunt. Then he gets a message from a tree telling him it’s cursed—and so is he.
It’s not just any tree either, it’s the Spirit Tree, an ancient beech the football team carves for good luck before the season opener. But every year they lose.
Now the Spirit Tree is dying, and the other trees in the park are toppling around it like dominoes. The town is plagued with unexplainable accidents and people begin to fade, drained of life.
Martin must team up with a know-it-all soccer star, Hannah Vaughan, if he has any chance of breaking the curse. If they fail to save the Spirit Tree, it could mean the destruction of Lower Brynwood and a permanent case of bad luck.
I took my new copy of Deadwood out to the tree that first sparked the idea. It’s a gorgeous old American beech (Fagus grandifolia) in Wynnewood Valley Park, a small wooded park near my home in Lower Merion, PA, that I spotted when I was brainstorming for a new novel idea four years ago. The arborglyphs in the bark were both interesting and disturbing, and I started to wonder what kind of magic they could introduce. That seed of an idea grew into Deadwood.